Afon
I walk into the logging camp at noon with my hands open and my coat unzipped so they can see I'm not carrying. The snow is deep and untouched except for two sets of snowmobile tracks coming in from the east.
It's abandoned once again. The clear, cold sky opens up over complete and total stillness. No men. No trucks.
I stand in the middle of the clearing and I wait.
It only takes about three minutes. Then a snowmobile comes whining up the eastern trail, two men on it. One drives. The other has a rifle pointed at my chest the whole way in. They stop a few dozen feet off.
"Hands behind your head," the gunman says.
Once I do it, the second man gets off and pats me down. He finds the folding knife in my pocket and takes it, but there's nothing else to find.
"Where's my nephew?" I ask.
"You'll see him soon enough." He zip-ties my wrists behind my back, tight, the plastic biting into the skin. Then he hauls me onto the back of the snowmobile between him and the driver, and we go.
We climb a ridge, drop into a drainage, follow a creek, and then come up on a long drive with a gate that somebody's chained open.
At the end of it sits a big timber lodge, two stories, with a wraparound porch and a stone chimney pumping smoke.
Outbuildings on either side. There are men everywhere—on the porch, by the trucks, walking the tree line.
So this was the real spot. The camp was theater. I figured it would be.
They drag me off the snowmobile and march me up the steps and through the front door. Inside, it's warm, a fire roaring in a fieldstone hearth big enough to stand in. Trophy heads hang on the walls, elk and bear, the glass eyes catching the firelight.
At the far end of the long room, in a chair that somebody dragged in front of the fire like a throne, sits Viktor Reznik.
The years have changed him. He's heavier through the shoulders, sturdier in a way. The hungry kid Gervasii pulled out of a Kingston gutter has grown into a thick, well-fed man in a good coat, gray salting his temples, a gold watch on his wrist.
But the eyes are the same. Flat and dead like a shark's.
"Afon Satyrin," he says with a broad, friendly smile that shows a flash of gold tooth. "It's been a very long time."
"Yes," I agree, "it has. You look like you've done well for yourself."
"I have indeed." He spreads his hands wide. "You should see what I built. You and Gervasii, you ran a few kilos over a few mountains and thought you were kings. I run the whole range now. Both sides of the border. You wouldn't recognize the Lastochka."
"It's not the Lastochka," I say. "The Lastochka died with my brother."
He laughs. "Still a sentimental bastard, I see. Well, that's good, because I've got some more sentiment for you." He waves at someone behind him. "Bring the boy."
Two men go through a side door and come back dragging Matvei.
He's alive but badly beaten—lip split, one eye swelling shut, a bruise spreading along his jaw, his expensive suit torn at the shoulder and stained with gore. But he's on his feet, more or less. His good eye finds me across the room and goes wide.
"Uncle Afon," he rasps. "No, goddammit. You shouldn't have—"
"Shut up, Mat," I interrupt.
I hate seeing him like this. After all that we both went through to get free and clear of the Bratva life, seeing it put its hands on him again makes me sick to my stomach. He was out. Married, happy, free.
Then Reznik pulled him in, just to get to me.
"There," Reznik says. "You see? Alive and unharmed, more or less. I'm a man of my word, Afon. Just like you. You came alone, you came unarmed, and so the boy goes free." He nods at his men. "Walk him to the road and send him on his merry way."
The men start to move Matvei toward the door.
"Afon," Mat snarls again, struggling against them, "don't do this. Whatever he told you—"
"It's done, Mat." I look at him, this boy who's Gervasii's spitting image. "Go home. Tell Cass—" I stop. My throat closes. "Just go home. Live your life. That's all I ever wanted for you."
They drag him out and the door bangs shut.
Good. That's done. That's the only thing I came here to do, and it's done.
Now, there's just me.
"Sit him down," Reznik says.
A man kicks a chair into the back of my knees and I drop into it. Another stands behind me with a hand on my shoulder, pinning me in place. My wrists are still bound behind the chair back. There are six men in the room with us now, that I can count. More outside, I'm sure.
Reznik gets up out of his throne and comes over. He crouches in front of me so we're eye to eye, the way you'd talk to a child.
"I have waited a long time for this," he informs me.
"So have I," I say. "I just didn't know it was you I was waiting for."
"No?" He leans his head to one side. "Come on, Afon. You always were the smart one. Gervasii had the ambition and you had the brains. You must have wondered."
"I wondered about a lot of things."
"You wondered," he fills in, "about your wife."
Every noise in the background fades away. It's just gold-toothed Viktor Reznik leering at me that I care about now.
"Yelena," he purrs, savoring her name. "Pretty, sassy Yelena."
I keep my face like stone, because that's the only thing I have left. But inside me, something old and terrible is unfurling itself, something I thought I left behind when I retreated into the mountains.
Violent, vicious rage.
"You want to know," he says. "After all this time, you still aren't quite sure. So I'm going to tell you. It's not like it matters anymore, because you're not leaving this lodge anyway."
He leans in close enough that I can smell the cigarettes on him.
"It was me," he croons. "I killed her. I was twenty-two years old and hungry in a way that even you could never understand.
I wanted what you and Gervasii had. The route.
The money. The respect. And you two were going to keep me a runner forever, a kid you sent up the mountain in the cold while you sat in warm restaurants and made deals. So I decided to make a move."
I grunt wordlessly. I won't give him the satisfaction of a real response, even though every word he says is another knife in my stomach.
"I followed her out of the city that night.
On a snowmobile, paralleling the road in the trees.
I came out of the woods at her, fast, lights off.
I only meant to spook her." He shrugs. "But she swerved.
The car rolled. And then it was quiet, and I sat there on my machine in the dark and I thought, Well.
Now, they'll understand. Now, they'll know. "
My hands have gone numb. I don't know if it's the zip tie or the storm raging in my chest.
"You killed her," I say, "to scare us."
He nods in agreement. "And it didn't even work! You and Gervasii didn't quit. You doubled down. So I had to think differently after that."
He stands up and starts pacing a small loop in front of the fire.
"Gervasii," he tuts. "Now, Gervasii, I didn't kill. Not with my own hands, at least." He turns. "But I sold him."
The man behind me tightens his grip on my shoulder. I think he feels me twitching.
"You always thought it was bad luck." He shakes his head, almost sad.
"It wasn't, Afon. It was me. I went to the men you were dealing with, and I fed you to them.
I knew Gervasii wouldn't come out of it.
And once he was gone, and you crawled back to Lukas with your tail between your legs, the Lastochka had no owners.
Just an empty route through the mountains, waiting for someone hungry enough to take it. "
"Someone meaning you," I say.
"That's right." He smiles again, gold and chilling.
"I built everything you see on the bones of the thing you and your brother made.
It's served me well for these last twenty years.
And the whole time, there was only one loose thread left in the world who knew where I came from.
" He points at me. "You. You're the last one, Afon.
The last witness. Gervasii's dead. Yelena's dead.
All the other men from back then are dead or scattered.
It was just you, hiding up on a mountain with that fucking mutt.
And then, would you believe it? You walk right back into my territory and build a cabin one valley over from my operation.
" He laughs, delighted. "The universe handed you to me. I couldn't believe my luck."
The rage is steady. But what I feel even more than anger is a terrible, hollow calm. Because there's nothing to do with my bloodlust anymore. There's no action it leads to. I'm tied to a chair in a room full of his men, and outside, there are more.
I came here knowing I wasn't walking out.
The only thing I got was Mat's freedom.
As for Caroline… I can't even let my thoughts turn to her. She's busy right now getting ready for a wedding that's not going to happen. Soon, she'll realize I'm not coming to that altar. Maybe she'll forgive me, maybe she won't. But at least she'll be alive.
"Here's the thing, Afon." Reznik crouches down again. "I don't actually want to kill you."
I look at him.
"I mean it. I've thought about it. Twenty years ago, I'd have killed you on sight. But seeing you here, like this?" He shrugs. "We're the last two who remember. There's a kind of brotherhood in that, isn't there?"
"You are not my fucking brother," I snarl.
"I could be." He says it like he means it.
Like it's an old, generous offer he's making again out of fondness.
"You're old, Afon, but you're not finished.
I've watched you. You took out six of my men at that camp with a hunting rifle and your bare hands.
You're still the smartest, hardest man I've ever known, and I learned everything I know from you and your brother.
" He leans in and licks his lips. "Run it with me.
I'll forgive the trouble you've caused. Then we can finish what your brother started, the two of us, together. The way it was always supposed to be."
It's the same offer he must have wanted twenty years ago. The hungry kid has spent two decades eating, but it isn't enough.
Let me sit at the table. Let me be one of you.
He killed my wife and sold my brother because we wouldn't give him a seat. Now, he owns the whole table and he still wants me at it, because I'm the one thing his prosperity can't buy.
Somebody who knew him when he was nothing. Only I can look at him and say, You made it.
I look at this man. At the gold watch and the dishonest smile and the harsh, deadened eyes.
"Viktor," I say.
"Yes?"
"Go fuck yourself."
His smile fades.
"You killed my wife, and you sold out my brother, and you think I'll come be your little lapdog?
You think I'll give you my blessing?" The man at my shoulder tightens his grip, but I'm long past caring.
"I'd rather die in this chair. Even then, you won't have won.
I came here to die. You're not even taking anything from me that I didn't already give away.
So no. The answer is no. It's always going to be no. "
The warmth drains out of his face.
What's left is the kid from the gutter, the hungry thing, ugly and cold.
"That's a shame," he says. He stands, steps back, and nods at the man behind me. "Wake him up a little first, yeah? Then we'll do it slow."
The man behind me drives a fist into my kidney, right where my still-healing wound is, and the pain is like fresh snow thrown across my eyes.
Another comes around the front and hits me in the face. My head snaps back and I taste blood.
More blows. Fists, elbows. They work me over methodically. The whole time, Reznik watches from his throne by the fire, sipping from a glass.
There's no one coming for me. I know that now. A few hours south of here, a wedding is about to begin, but they won't be able to finish it.
By the time the bridal march starts, I'll already be dead.