Vadim
The first few days after she left I was occupied settling into my other property. Security had to be upgraded and the rebuilding of the compound drafted by an architect—a man I trusted precisely because he had rebuilt for me before and understood that certain rooms did not appear on official plans.
My byki and Olya moved with me. Radovan took a position at the new iron gates.
Tau departed for a job in Spain. My constants remained my brother and my men—the same configuration they had always been, the same table, the same vodka, the same arguments conducted in the same order.
The house was different. Everything else was identical.
There was speculation about what had taken place.
No one said a word to me directly. Konstantin, Ruslan, Valentin and Bogdan knew.
Tau and Radovan had been present. The rest of the brotherhood could draw their own conclusions.
This wasn’t the Chechens. This wasn’t an external attack on the infrastructure or a challenge to the hierarchy.
This was a personal dispute.
There was a distinction and people understood it.
Her audacity made me want to choke the life out of her.
At other times—the times I was being honest with myself in the cold shower at dawn with no audience—I grudgingly admitted that I had underestimated her.
Comprehensively. The woman had assembled an exit inside my own house using my own resources and walked out through my own gates while my men held them open for her.
Right now I wanted to choke her out.
Perhaps fuck her first. Then choke her out.
“You’ve put me off marriage entirely,” Valentin murmured as I turned another page in the file he had prepared.
“Good,” I said, and gritted my teeth at the credit card statement clipped to the inside cover.
“Thirteen first-class flights,” I said, shaking the piece of paper in the air.
“It was clever,” he murmured.
I glared at him before returning to the destinations.
Various continents. Different sizes of cities. Departure times spread across four days, no two from the same airport. I stared at the list and looked for a pattern the way I looked for patterns in everything.
There was none.
She had bought noise. Thirteen routes going in thirteen directions and no way to know which one she had actually followed, if any.
“Isn’t there anything else your hacker can do?” I said.
“Mrs Dragunov has been resourceful and discreet,” Valentin said, with the careful neutrality of a man selecting his words. “Besides—I thought you said you were well rid of her.”
I turned another page.
“It is always best to know where your enemies are,” I muttered.
The credit card charges had stopped a week after the flights were booked.
She had gone dark—no digital footprint, no further transactions, nothing.
Either she had other funds or she was living carefully.
Both options were consistent with what I now knew about her.
I was beginning to suspect both were true.
“It’s been a month.” Valentin stood and straightened his jacket. “The feelers are out. Spartak is following the boy.” He paused at the door. “There isn’t much else to do but wait.”
I said nothing.
He left.
I turned back to the list of thirteen destinations and stared at it until the cities stopped meaning anything.
Somewhere in that noise was Iskra Kozlova.
It shouldn’t matter where she ended up.
But it did.
The rings she had left on her nightstand were a gauntlet.
A declaration that she was no longer my property.
And that didn't sit right with me. It made me want to prove her wrong. To remind her of what passed between us.
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Summer was here and it should have been pleasing. It wasn’t.
Everything I did recently fell flat—a dullness that had settled over the months like a second skin I couldn’t shed.
The slight edge my premium vodka used to remove no longer worked.
My expensive cigars tasted bitter, the smoothness gone, the ritual of them hollow.
The women I paid no longer held any attraction.
Not even the ones Bogdan sourced with particular care.
Not even the ones who looked nothing like her.
Iskra had been natural. Her eyes soft when she wasn’t watching herself.
A smart mouth she deployed with the precision of someone who had decided early that it was her best weapon.
It had taken almost two months for her to heal from the accident—and other than a few faint cuts on her hands and arms, there hadn’t been a single blemish on her when she walked out of my house and blew half of it down behind her.
The accident that took my son.
“Not the house,” I said, without looking at my men. “Take me to the graveyard.”
He was dead. The mortuary had been notified, the coffin chosen, the body buried.
I had been given the location and hadn’t visited—the Chechens first, then my uncle, then the elusive cousin had kept me occupied with the particular convenience of men who needed to be dealt with.
I had used them as an excuse and I knew it.
The car came to a standstill and Bogdan moved to open my door.
My shoe caught the sun as I stepped out, the gravel shifting beneath my feet with the sound of a place that absorbed grief without comment.
The old section bled into the new—the elaborate marble monuments of men who had lived long lives beside the smaller, quieter markers of those who hadn’t.
I had a whole section bought and paid for. Ready to utilise, when the time came.
My step faltered when I saw how small the grave was.
She had visited often. I could tell by the small plant placed beside the headstone—tended, deliberate, the kind of thing that required returning to.
Makari Kozlov.
Beloved son of Iskra Natalya Kozlova.
Taken too soon.
Until we meet again.
I read the words.
Then again, as the anger began to seep in.
She had named him. And taken my name away from my son in the same motion—carved me out of the only record that existed of him, the way I had carved her out of every decision that followed the accident. I understood the symmetry even as it enraged me.
The anger vanished as quickly as it came.
She was his mother. She had visited him regularly. Named him when I should have. Grieved him in her own way.
Alone.
I thought of the three days it had taken me to give her the location of the grave. Three days I hadn’t examined too closely until now, standing over the soil with the sun on my back and nowhere useful to direct my attention.
I crouched down and said nothing for a moment. The apology arrived without words—directed at the ground, at the small grave, at the son I had held once and had buried without her and never visited.
My flesh. My blood.
The headstone was beautifully considered.
The date inscribed in a much smaller font at the base—as though she hadn’t wanted it to be the first thing the eye found.
As though the day of his death was information to be held rather than announced.
I understood that too. I touched the soft blades of grass attempting to grow over the burial site before I stood.
“Dispatch a soldier to remain here,” I said to Bogdan. “I want to know of anyone who visits this grave.”
With a heavy heart I walked back to the car, trying to leave the past in the ground where it belonged so I could focus on what came next.
I almost convinced myself.
Until I entered my silent home.
Makari Dragunov had a loving mother who put me to shame.