Roman
Moscow looks exactly as I left it.
Cold. Gray. Beautiful only if one has learned to appreciate stone, shadow, and restraint.
It doesn’t charm the way Paris does or seduce the way New York does at night. Moscow makes a person earn whatever affection they have for it. It stands there with its wide roads, ancient buildings, heavy sky, and gold domes half-hidden behind winter haze, daring you to misunderstand it.
To me, it’s familiar enough to be almost dull.
To Katerina, it’s magic.
She sits beside me in the back of the car wearing the dark green dress I knew would suit her, a long wool coat buttoned to her throat, and boots warm enough that she’s stopped pretending she’s not freezing.
Her hair falls loose over one shoulder, still soft from the shower, and she keeps leaning toward the window like a child who has been told not to touch glass but cannot help herself.
“What is that?” she asks.
I follow the direction of her finger. “A bank.”
Her face falls. “Oh.”
I almost smile. “You expected a palace?”
“It looks like a palace.”
“In Moscow, many banks do.”
She keeps looking anyway, her breath fogging the window slightly before the car’s heat clears it. A few minutes later, she points again. “And that?”
“A government building.”
“Why does everything look important?”
“Because most things here are trying to intimidate you.”
She turns toward me, eyes bright. “It’s working.”
Moscow slides past us in winter fragments.
Black branches against a white sky. Snow packed along the edges of the pavement.
Women in long coats moving quickly through crosswalks.
Men with briefcases, heads lowered against the wind.
The river, dark and slow beneath the bridges.
A flash of red brick. A dome catching weak morning light.
I have crossed these roads with guns in the car. With blood on my shirt. With men beside me who didn’t live long enough to see another winter.
Today, I’m watching a woman discover the city through a tinted window, and somehow that feels more dangerous.
I look away from her and let my eyes move over the street. My mind tries to return to the reason I’m here.
Revenge.
For years, I have carried it without letting it show. I have built companies, bought loyalties, buried enemies, and let men call me patient because they did not understand the difference between patience and hunger.
I have not come back to Moscow to make peace with Andrei Morozov. I have come back to end him.
My father.
The man who gave me blood and denied me name.
The man who kept his legitimate family safe by making my mother and me disappear into another country, another life, another version of history.
The man who let his wife call me a bastard in rooms full of men who laughed because they knew he would not defend me.
Tomorrow night, I have a meeting with Oleg Voronin.
He worked for my father for almost thirty years and knows how the Morozov business is actually held together.
I need three things from him: the men who can be turned, the accounts Andrei keeps off the books, and proof of which officials are still on his payroll.
If Oleg gives me even half of what he claims to have, I can start pulling my father’s operation apart before Andrei realizes where the damage is coming from.
I have come back to take his house apart from the inside.
First the money. Then the men. Then the alliances. Then the name.
The Morozov line ends here.
If I have to go down with it, so be it.
That has always been the price.
I already know what waits there. Elena asking for confirmation. One of my men updating me on Oleg’s movements. The address for tonight, the security plan, the list of exits, the names of everyone who will be in the room. Useful information, all of it.
For the first time in a long while, I let it wait.
My gaze shifts, without permission, to the woman beside me.
Katerina is leaning toward the car window, one gloved hand pressed lightly to the leather seat, her face turned toward Moscow with open wonder she keeps forgetting to hide.
She has no idea she’s sitting beside a man planning the extinction of his own bloodline.
Katerina is a complication I did not plan for, and I do not tolerate complications well.
By tonight, I need to be focused. Oleg will not walk into that meeting because of sentiment.
He will come because he’s afraid, angry, and greedy enough to risk betraying the Morozovs.
Men like that require pressure in one hand and an exit in the other.
If I mishandle him, he will run back to my father, and I will lose months.
Possibly more.
“Everything here looks like a world heritage sight,” she says. “How does anyone get any work done around here?”
Then the car turns, and the Kremlin walls come into view.
Katerina stops speaking.
The red brick rises ahead of us, severe and unmistakable, cutting through the pale morning. Traffic slows near the square. Beyond the walls, the domes of St. Basil’s appear in color, strange and bright against the winter sky.
Her hand lifts to the window. This time, she touches the glass. “Oh,” she says softly.
The driver pulls closer to the curb.
I glance at him through the mirror. “Stop here.”
Katerina turns to me at once. “We can get out?”
“You wanted to see it.”
“I thought you meant from the car.”
“That would be a poor tour.”
Her face changes so quickly that I nearly smile. The fatigue, the caution, the weight of everything she’s running from, all of it lifts for a second.
The car stops.
My man gets out first. He checks the street with one calm glance, then opens my door. I step out into the cold, button my coat, and circle around before Katerina can open her own door.
She gives me a look when I offer my hand. “I can get out of a car.”
“I’m relieved.”
She places her hand in mine anyway.
The moment she steps onto the pavement, the cold hits her. Her breath catches, and she pulls her coat tighter around herself. “This is ridiculous.”
“This is mild.”
She stares at me. “Mild?”
“Yes.”
“I take back everything romantic I ever thought about winter.”
“You have been outside for six seconds.”
“And I have learned enough.”
Snow begins to fall as we walk toward the square. Thin flakes drift through the air, catching in her hair and on the shoulders of her coat. She notices one land on her glove and stops to stare at it before it melts.
I have seen Moscow under snow too many times to count. I have seen it from black cars, penthouse windows, cemetery roads, police stations, private clubs, hospital entrances. Snow covers filth and blood with the same white hand. It has never been pure to me.
Until now, for one brief moment, reflected on her face.
Katerina opens her eyes and catches me staring. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You always say nothing when it’s not nothing.”
“You always ask questions when you already know I will not answer.”
“Maybe I keep hoping you will surprise me.”
That should not feel like a challenge, but it does.
We move into Red Square slowly. She refuses to rush, and I let her set the pace.
Every few steps, something stops her. The cathedral.
The towers. The serious faces of guards near the entrance.
The patterned stone beneath her boots. The way the wind cuts across the open space and makes her laugh even as she shivers.
She asks questions constantly.
Some I answer. Some I avoid.
Not all of them satisfies her, she gives me a suspicious look and says, “You made that up.”
“That’s called being a better guide.”
“You’re a terrible guide.”
“You have not left.”
“I have no idea where I am.”
“That helps.”
She narrows her eyes at me, but there’s a smile behind it.
The driver follows at a distance with the car, and two of my men keep farther back. Katerina doesn’t notice at first. When she finally does, we’re walking past a shop window filled with lacquer boxes and painted ornaments.
Her gaze shifts over my shoulder, then returns to me. “Are those men with you?”
“Yes.”
She stops walking. “You say that as if it’s normal.”
“For me, it is.”
“Do you always travel with men behind you?”
“When I need to.”
“And today you need to?”
“Yes.”
Her expression changes. The delight of the morning dims at the edges, and caution comes back into her eyes.
I dislike that. I dislike being the reason for it even more.
“They are not watching you,” I say.
“Good, because I was about to charge them for the privilege.”
A smile touches my mouth before I can prevent it. “You’re safe with them.”
“That’s not the same as saying I’m safe with you.”
“No,” I admit. “It’s not.”
She studies me in the cold, and for a moment, I think she’ll ask the question directly. What are you? What kind of man needs guards in Moscow? What did I get into when I followed you out of that airport?
Instead, she looks back toward the shop window. “I want to buy something ridiculous.”
I let the subject go because she has chosen to give me that mercy.
Inside, the shop is small, warm, and bright with painted wood, enamel, silk scarves, and glass ornaments. Katerina walks through it with careful fingers, touching almost nothing, though I can see she wants to. She pauses over a tiny red box painted with a winter scene.
“Is this handmade?”
The old woman behind the counter answers in Russian. Katerina looks to me.
“She says yes,” I translate. “She also says it’s one of the best pieces in the shop.”
Katerina’s mouth curves. “Is it?”
“No.”
The old woman hears me and scowls.
Katerina bursts out laughing. I buy the box anyway.
She protests the entire time. “I said I wanted to buy something,” she says. “Not just anything.”
“You chose emotionally.”
“That’s how souvenirs work.”
“That’s how people get overcharged.”
She tries to take the bag from me when we leave. I do not give it to her. “This is very controlling.”
“You will survive,” I say matter-of-factly.
“Will I?”
“I’m optimistic.”
“You do not seem like an optimistic man.”
“I contain multitudes.”
She looks at me, delighted. “Did you just make a joke?”
“No.”