Chapter 35 #2
If Mikhail and Igor are both here, we have a problem.
On top of that, Kolya Ilyin and Vanya Orlov hover by the windows, a contrasting pair. Kolya’s broad, silent, and olive-skinned, with menace built into every line of him. While Vanya’s pale, slim, and stylish, with his soft brown hair swept back and his face absent of his usual smile.
Both stay stone-still, their faces set as they observe like men who understand that what comes next won’t be pretty.
Max Belov, the family’s real wild card, slumps against the wall, his dark hair hiding his expression as he stares at the floor, disconnected from the tension but still present.
Alexei Kozlov stands across from his father and uncle, the blue of his eyes shining through his curly brown hair. He’s stiff and uncomfortable, his left thumb twisting the wedding band on his finger.
The room holds the disquieting air of a firing squad.
And at the other end of the Pakhan’s desk, isolated like a disease vector, sits the last man of this tense council.
Sasha Pisarev.
Igor’s son. He’s recently started doing jobs on his own.
Did fine on his first few, so why’s he acting so grim now?
Beneath his shaggy half-buzzed hair, his paper-pale face grimaces with mostly healed bruises.
His hands tremble in his pockets and sweat beads on his thin upper lip despite the room’s perfect temperature.
He looks like prey that’s wandered into a den of lions.
I shove the thought away and recalibrate. This has nothing to do with my mission, with Jordan, or with the package still tucked against my side.
This is something else entirely.
I position myself beside Kolya, who glances at me before focusing on Roman again. Another soldier in position, ready to provide backup at a moment’s notice.
I keep my voice low enough that only Kolya can hear. “What the hell is going on?”
His eyes drop to the box, lingering for a heartbeat before he shakes his head. “Nothing good.”
No shit.
Roman cuts us off before anything else can be said, his voice quiet and deadly. “Sasha. Did you meet with a detective?”
The question explodes through the room.
I jolt, as do several others, all of us whipping around to gawk at Sasha.
The accusation rings clear.
We don’t talk to cops.
Ever.
That’s our first, most fundamental rule. Break that law, and everything else falls apart.
Sasha flinches before his eyes go wide and dart frantically around the room, seeking an ally. He finds none.
“No!” The word bursts from him, high and thin. “Never. I swear on my life.”
Interesting word choice, considering he’s lying.
I can read the truth in the pitch of his voice, the flush creeping up his neck, and the way his eyes won’t settle. The eager Sasha Pisarev, always striving to prove himself, always desperate for approval, has committed the one unforgivable sin.
Everyone else in this room realizes this too.
Including Igor, whose silence means his son is one wrong step from oblivion. Otherwise, he’d be speaking up on Sasha’s behalf.
Mikhail, reliable as sunrise, always sides with Roman. Even when weaker men would have folded under the pressures of family, money, or thirst for power, the elder brother consistently backs the younger.
Dressed in a sleek dark suit, Kolya looks like he might fit in at Hearst’s charity gala with Chicago’s socialites.
Vanya’s suit is far more ostentatious, the stud in his ear flashing as his jaw clenches.
Max is already starting to appear unpredictable, a fuse burning down to who knows what.
Alexei just stares, his shoulders tight, a coin flipping between his fingers.
All four remain silent, as do I. No one can stop this.
Every eye settles on Roman, the axis around which our realities turn. Law, judgment, and sentence fused in one.
Our Pakhan doesn’t require theatrics or threats. He slides a glossy eight by ten across the desk, the photo gliding on polished wood. A silent hammer.
The paper whispers to a stop in front of Sasha.
I can’t see the details from where I stand, but I don’t have to. The guilt is written on Sasha’s face.
His complexion changes from white to green and back before he sags, the fight draining out of him in an instant.
Roman leans in. “You were saying?” He taps his desk, daring Sasha to reject the evidence laid out in front of us all.
I edge forward, drawn in by the need to see for myself.
In the picture, Sasha stands in a parking garage, hunched and tense, with his whole body angled toward a rumpled middle-aged man. The other man’s hand clamps on Sasha’s arm. Friendly? Perhaps threatening? You can’t tell from the image, but the outcome remains clear.
Sasha’s mouth hangs open. He’s talking without a hint of anger on his face, clearly not yelling at the man to take his hand off.
My blood goes cold, a sharp freeze that starts in my diaphragm and radiates outward.
I recognize that cop.
Detective Colvin.
“This is the same guy who came searching for Jordan Thorne. He showed up at the Hearst gala tonight.” My mind races through the implications.
Roman raises his eyebrow at that, though his attention remains locked on Sasha.
If Colvin talked to Sasha as well, he did so intentionally. It’s a pattern. A targeted investigation. And if he’s approached Jordan, Eleanor Hearst, and Sasha…who else has he reached out to? What does he know? What is he really after?
“I… It’s not… We didn’t…” Sasha’s voice breaks as he stares at his father’s rigid expression. “He was just asking about an old case! That’s all. I swear on Mama’s soul.”
I glance at Igor, expecting to find rage or for him to defend his son. Instead, I see only resignation.
He knows what’s coming.
We all do.
Roman’s eyes never leave Sasha, who shrinks with each passing second, folding in on himself like paper burning at the edges. “What did you tell him?”
Sasha shakes his head frantically. “Nothing! I swear, I said nothing, told him nothing—”
Roman cuts him off. “You met with him. In secret. Without informing anyone. And today, you lied to my face, in front of your father. You lied. To your Pakhan.”
His words are a death knell.
My face hardens. This isn’t about the gift box anymore. This is about survival. About the family. About the code that keeps us all alive and free.
Sasha has betrayed us. And betrayal has only one price.
I’ve witnessed this before. A man, a lowly foot soldier, went snitching to the cops when a rival gang started a bar fight. The quarrel had nothing to do with the family, with Roman, or with any of us.
Still, Roman found him guilty.
And the man died for his sin.
Slowly, Roman rises from behind his desk, his movements deliberate and unhurried, each gesture carrying the weight of absolute authority. He walks to the window with his hands clasped behind his back, silhouetted against the night.
As the silence stretches, taut as a bowstring, my gaze flicks to Igor. His shoulders are bent with the knowledge of things he can’t change.
Part of me wants to offer some semblance of support. But I stay, frozen in place with the others, waiting for Roman’s verdict.
Waiting to hear what we all already know.
Sasha’s eyes well with tears, likely from the realization of what he’s done, what he’s lost, and everything he still has left to lose. “I thought I could handle it myself. I didn’t want to disappoint—”
“Enough.” Roman’s voice remains soft, almost kind, and that’s worse than his rage. He doesn’t want to do this. But he will. For the Bratva. “The penalty for betrayal has always been clear.”
The tension in the room shatters everyone in different ways.
My mind goes to a silent, calm retreat. Where the screams and cries and begging don’t reach. Into the cold, where only the wind howls.
Max sits with his head down, muttering, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” A litany of useless protest. His fist clenches and unclenches on his knee, his knuckles white with the strain.
Igor turns his face away, unable to look at his son, to witness the moment when family bonds dissolve into nothing. His shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath.
Vanya simply watches, his smooth features arranged in careful neutrality, but his eyes spark. A calculation, maybe, of how close any of us might come to Sasha’s position one day.
Kolya holds his hand over his mouth, staring at the floor and shaking his head slowly. Alexei closes his fingers around his coin, his jaw tight.
The gift box in my hands feels like a grenade with the pin pulled. Irrelevant and all-consuming at once. My mind is already working ahead, mapping what this means for all of us.
“Sasha Pisarev, you are a traitor.” The Pakhan’s irreversible, immutable words settle around us.
One of us will have to kill Sasha. An order we all know we might receive one day.
Kill the one you once loved, the one you once considered family.
Some mistakes cannot be forgiven.
The cold bleeds through my mind and into my body, leaving numbness in its wake. This is worse than kholodno.
Someone I watched grow up, someone we all often still think of as just a kid compared to the rest of us, is dead to me now. He must be. I would never betray Roman, and his word is law.
Sasha is a traitor, and now he’s our enemy.
The truth of that hits firm and clear, slicing through the frost.
Wildly, I think of Jordan and her calm stare in the mirror as I tried on penguin suits.
What I wouldn’t give to have her wrist in my hold, steadying me, anchoring…
Mikhail rises and moves to Roman’s side in silent support. The man’s face is grim, his eyes hard as flint. But he backs up his leader, ready to do what must be done.
Igor remains frozen, caught between loyalty to Roman and love for his son. His position, his years of service, and the code we’ve all learned to live by decide for him. But the cost shows in the new lines etched into his skin and the slight tremor in his hands.
Sasha gawks at his father, disbelief and betrayal warring on his face. He frantically gazes around the room, desperate for any ally or sign of mercy.
When he finds none, all hope withers within him, replaced by animal instinct.
Survival at any cost.
He erupts from his chair. In a wild surge of motion that rips through the room, he barrels past one of the guards at the door. The other man lurches, late to react because he hadn’t expected the violence of Sasha’s desperation.
Sasha flees. His footsteps thunder down the hallway, each beat receding like a pulse about to flatline.
No one goes after him. Not me. Not Igor. Not any of the others. We’re paralyzed, ensnared in this charged hush, a family tableau shattered and suspended in the moment of rupture.
Roman doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have to. His heavy, absolute judgment hangs in the air. The chase will come. It’s just a question of when.
The glue holding the Kozlovs together is dissolving right in front of us, and nobody knows how to halt the unraveling, or how to gather the splinters and remake what’s lost.
Jordan ghosts through my mind. Her endless talk of energy, of sensing the truths that live under every surface.
She would have seen this coming, would have heard the shift in the foundation, long before it split open beneath our feet.
She would know what to say now to smooth the edges of this fracture.
My stomach knots. Not with fear, but with something deeper and more elemental. With the sense that the floor’s about to collapse and a storm I can’t outrun is rolling in, slow and colossal and inevitable.
What does any of this mean for Jordan? Is she safer away from me or naked to threats I can’t even see? Have I shielded her or served her up to wolves?
Despite my swarming doubts and concerns, I remain silent, waiting for Roman to speak or dole out orders.
That’s who I am. This is what I do.