Chapter 22
MAKSIM
They take Ivan first.
A guard appears at the door, the keys turning in the lock with a heavy, deliberate sound that echoes through the concrete floor like a warning. He offers no explanation, no apology. He simply opens the door and gestures with two fingers.
Move.
Ivan rises.
For a moment, he resembles the heir once more: posture straight, face composed, eyes empty in a way that convinces men he cannot be harmed. He smooths his jacket, a reflex from a boardroom he is no longer in. Then he passes me, close enough for his shoulder to brush against mine.
It would be easy to mistake it for an accident.
But nothing Ivan does is accidental.
His fingers graze my shoulder—barely a touch, a message transmitted through skin because voices can be recorded, walls have ears, and this building was designed by those who understand that privacy is a myth.
Then he is gone.
The door closes. The lock clicks. Silence rushes back in to fill the space he left behind.
I am alone in the room where men are reduced to compliance.
I count.
The Kennel taught me to count when nothing else is stable. When I cannot control the outcome, I can control the measurement: breaths, heartbeats, seconds—anything that steadies the mind when it wants to spiral into every possible future.
I count the sound of my own breathing. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Slow enough to keep my pulse from betraying me to the camera in the corner.
Five minutes.
Ten.
Fifteen.
The light doesn't change. The room remains constant by design—no windows, no clock, no shift of sunlight to indicate whether the world is moving or standing still. The air is recycled, smelling of ozone, floor wax, and old fear.
The only movement is inside me.
At twenty minutes, my leg begins to throb again, a deep, rhythmic pressure beneath the bandage reminding me that the stitches Ivan put in are not medical miracles; they are sewing thread holding flesh together.
At thirty minutes, my mouth goes dry. At forty, my hands start to shake with the smallest tremor—adrenaline curdling into anxiety.
An hour.
My count says an hour. My body says it's been longer.
I think about what is happening upstairs.
I picture Ivan in front of Sergei. Standing tall.
Speaking in those careful, razor-wire sentences he uses to disarm enemies.
Offering evidence like tribute. I envision Sergei's face as I saw it through the dim light of the tablet: not anger, not disgust at the act of sex, but contempt for vulnerability.
The particular disdain of a man who believes that any attachment is a handle for someone else to grab.
I think about the video.
Thirty-seven seconds. My hand on Ivan's neck. His mouth against mine. The desperation in the way we leaned into each other.
Sergei will not care that Boris tried to kill Ivan. He will care about stability, about control, and about the fact that his heir has been recorded doing something that could undermine him.
And I know where I stand in that hierarchy.
I am not a person; I am a malfunctioning tool, a weakness, a correction waiting to happen.
The lock turns.
The sound echoes in the quiet room.
The door opens.
Ivan stands in the doorway. For a moment, I don't recognize him.
Not because his face is bruised or bloody—there are no visible marks.
It's worse than that. He looks as if something inside him has been hollowed out and then forcibly reshaped by sheer will.
His skin has turned the color of old paper.
His eyes are too dark, pupils wide. His mouth is set in a line reminiscent of men walking to their executions.
He steps inside.
The guard remains outside, visible through the crack in the door, hand resting near his belt. The door stays slightly ajar, as if to remind us that this moment is permitted but not private.
Ivan's gaze locks onto mine.
I understand before he speaks: whatever happened upstairs has cost him everything he had left.
"Ivan."
I rise and cross the room in two strides, ignoring the pain in my thigh. My hands find his arms. Solid. Warm. He's here. He's still here.
"What happened?"
He doesn't respond right away. He stands very still under my hands, rigid, as if any movement would make him come apart. His breath is shallow, controlled like a man forcing bile back down his throat.
Then, roughly: "Boris is finished."
The words hit me like a punch.
For a moment, relief floods through me—violent, blinding. The past week collapses into a single line: the cabin, the fire, the blood, the raids, the motel rooms. All of it culminating in one undeniable fact.
We won.
"My father accepted the evidence," Ivan continues, his voice hoarse. "He verified it while I stood there—calls made, accounts frozen. Boris is being taken into custody right now. His lieutenants are being rounded up. Anyone who remained loyal is being contained before they can scatter."
Not "arrested." Not by the police.
By Sergei. By the organization. A clean internal execution.
I exhale, feeling as if I've been holding that breath for five days.
"We did it," I say, needing Ivan to hear it aloud, needing him to know it mattered. "Ivan, we—"
"No."
The single word is so final that it halts the air in my lungs.
Ivan's eyes remain fixed on mine. They are wet, glassy, terrified.
"I did it," he corrects. "You are leaving."
For a moment, my mind struggles to comprehend the sentence. It processes each word separately—leaving—but fails to construct meaning around it.
"What?" My voice comes out wrong. Thin.
Ivan's jaw tightens, and I can sense an internal flinch, as if my confusion strikes him like a physical blow.
"My father's condition," he says. "For sparing your life. For allowing you to leave this building alive."
Condition. Price.
My stomach drops.
"You're being reassigned," he continues. "Effective immediately."
Reassigned.
I understand what that means in this context. It's exile masquerading as efficiency. Not a death sentence, but a burial. A way to eliminate a problem without creating a martyr; a method to store a weapon where it can't be misused.
"Where?" I ask, already knowing the answer won't be good.
Ivan's voice falters on the name, as if his throat is full of glass.
"Volgograd."
He swallows hard. "A plane leaves in two hours. You'll be there by morning."
The room tilts.
Volgograd is more than just a city; it is a coordinate etched into my memory. It carries the scent of bleach and cabbage, concrete floors that never warm, numbers instead of names, and the chilling mix of snow and blood. It is Voronin's voice explaining function while boys perish in locked rooms.
Sending me back there is not merely exile; it is erasure.
"You said he would kill me."
"He would have." Ivan's hands rise to my face, cradling my jaw with the same desperate tenderness he showed in the motel, fear evident in his touch. His fingers are cold. "He made it clear. Not later. Not quietly. Here."
I try to envision it.
Sergei nodding once.
Guards entering.
A gunshot echoing off concrete.
My body on the floor.
Ivan's face forced into stillness while his father calls it correction.
I can picture it too easily. I've witnessed men die for far less—over a wrong glance at a woman or skimming a shipment. We dismantled the organization's infrastructure, and I came into contact with the heir.
Ivan bargained.
He traded something for my heartbeat.
And the cost is exile.
"No," I say, my body and chest refusing to accept it. "Ivan, no. We can run. We can disappear—we have the cash, we have—"
"He will find you." Ivan's thumbs trace my cheekbones, gentle enough to hurt. "And if I'm anywhere near you when he does, he will kill you in front of me. Not as punishment. As proof."
Proof of what? That love is a weakness. That weakness can be removed. That the heir can be corrected like a faulty component.
Ivan's father doesn't need to torture me to hurt
him; he only needs to remove me.
I feel my hands curling into fists at my sides. I want to hit something, to shatter the one-way mirror, to tear this room apart until it stops feeling like a coffin.
Then I force my hands open.
Control. No visible defiance. No display. Everything I do here is information. Everything I do here gets reported upstairs.
Sergei built this place, and he knows the room continues its work even when he's not in it.
"How long?" I ask.
Ivan leans in, pressing his forehead against mine. He trembles slightly, a vibration that passes from him to me.
"Five minutes."
My throat tightens with a painful ache.
Five minutes to say goodbye after weeks of war and years of hunger.
Five minutes to distill everything we've become into something that can be carried across an ocean.
Outside the door, the guard clears his throat—quiet yet pointed. A reminder that time is slipping away.
Here, time exists as pressure.
"Ivan—"
"Don't say goodbye." His voice sharpens, desperate, as if he could slice the word from my mouth if he acts quickly enough. "Don't frame it as the end. I will find a way."
He speaks like it's a vow, a plan, a command to the universe.
"I will earn his trust. I will prove I can function without you. I will be the heir he desires until he stops watching. And then I will bring you back."
"He will never allow it," I say, the honesty tasting like blood. "He knows what we are now."
Ivan's eyes flash—something cold and calculating, inherited.
"He will not live forever."
Those words are a blade. We both know it, and though it's treasonous to say in a room wired for sound, he doesn't care.
I also know Sergei Baranov could outlive both of us out of spite.
I don't say that.
Instead, I focus on what I can control: I direct Ivan toward survival.
"Don't do anything reckless," I tell him. "Not now. Not while he's watching for signs of compromise."
"I know."