4. A Romanov Always Fulfills a Promise #2
My eyes drifted to the doorframe, catching shallow marks carved into the wood near the lock.
Height measurements and dates written in fading black marker—not for children, but for objects.
Furniture, televisions, appliances. Evidence that the man inside believed possessions deserved recording, while people apparently did not.
I knocked. Three measured taps.
Nothing. I waited thirty seconds, then knocked again.
Footsteps approached, heavy and unhurried, before several locks disengaged. The door swung halfway open.
He looked older than his photographs. Thirty-six, perhaps, with broad shoulders softening into laziness, a patch of rough stubble, and a beer in one hand, annoyance already forming on his face before he even spoke.
“Yeah?”
His eyes traveled down my tailored coat, the watch, the shoes. Recognition didn’t come—only calculation. Not police, not debt collectors, not anyone he immediately feared. His shoulders relaxed.
Mistake.
“I think you’ve got the wrong apartment,” he said.
“I don’t.”
His grip tightened slightly around the bottle. “…Who are you?”
I didn’t answer, looking past his shoulder instead.
The apartment was small: the television still playing, an ashtray overflowing beside the sofa, empty bottles gathered beneath the coffee table, and laundry draped across the back of a chair.
Untreated water damage bloomed across one corner of the ceiling.
It was ordinary—painfully, utterly ordinary.
Then I saw it.
A photograph sat half-hidden on a bookshelf, wedged between packs of cigarettes bills and a chipped ceramic mug.
Nikolai—younger, smiling. Not the careful smile I’d come to know, nor the hesitant one he wore when he thought happiness might disappear if he enjoyed it too much. This one actually reached his eyes.
I stared at it longer than I intended. “He smiled there.”
The words left my mouth before I had consciously chosen to speak them.
“What?”
“He smiled.”
Kuzmar frowned, his brow furrowing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I kept my gaze fixed on the photograph. “I didn’t know he ever smiled like that.”
Silence stretched between us until I finally met his eyes for the first time.
“May I come in?”
“No.”
I nodded once, then took a step forward anyway. Kuzmar instinctively backed up—not because I’d physically forced him, but because somewhere deep inside himself, he had already realized this was an interaction he was ever going to control.
The apartment door clicked shut behind me, and without acknowledging Kuzmar, introducing myself, or asking permission to move further inside, I simply crossed the room to where the photograph sat. Nikolai.
I picked up the frame, holding it in silence before asking, “Did you hit him?”
Behind me, Kuzmar shifted his weight. “What?”
“The boy in this photograph,” I said, keeping my back to him while my thumb brushed lightly over the edge of the frame. “Did you hit him?”
“…Who are you?”
“That wasn’t the question,” I said, staring at the picture a moment longer before finally turning to face him. “I asked… did you hit him?”
He folded his arms, his jaw tightening as he said, “If this is about something that happened years ago, it wasn’t your business. Relationships are complicated.”
Wrong answer.
“My patience is limited,” I said, pulling my phone from my pocket and dialing. “Lev. Come upstairs.”
I disconnected the line, leaving Kuzmar frowning in confusion. “…Who’s Lev?”
I didn’t answer, and thirty seconds later, three firm knocks sounded at the door. I opened it myself to let Lev in. Carrying a slim leather folder, he ignored Kuzmar entirely and handed it straight to me.
“Sir.”
“The file.”
I opened it slowly, flipping through the stack of paper inside while I read aloud.
“Kuzmar Smirnov. Two counts of tax fraud currently under review, four unpaid gambling debts, three private lenders, a civil assault complaint, failure to appear in district court, and several undeclared income streams.” I closed the folder and looked up. “You’ve lived a remarkably careless life.”
As his confidence evaporated, he looked between the two of us and asked, “How did you—what do you want?”
“I already told you,” I said, lifting the photograph again. “An answer.”
His breathing turned noticeably heavy in the quiet room. “…Yes. I hit him. I was angry, and he made mistakes—”
“He loved you,” I interrupted, “and you mistook love for permission.”
He looked down, muttering, “I said I was angry.”
“You were cruel,” I corrected. “You broke someone who had already arrived broken. I spent the last week learning who Nikolai Levin was before he met me, and do you know what surprised me? It wasn’t the violence; it was how thoroughly you convinced him he deserved it.”
When his face lost what little color remained, I laid the photograph back exactly where I’d found it and turned to Lev. “How long?”
Understanding immediately, Lev opened his own copy of the file and began laying documents onto the table one by one.
“If every agency cooperates? A decade. The tax authority, the financial crimes division, collections, civil litigation, licensing—they’ve all been waiting.”
Kuzmar stared at the growing pile on the table. “You can’t do this. You’ll ruin my life.”
“I haven’t… yet,” I said, stepping closer until I was speaking directly in his ear.
“You ruined your own life, but I have the resources to ensure nobody misplaces the paperwork. For years, you made sure his every morning began with fear, so here’s what I’m giving you in return: a knock on your door that could come any day, a phone call you’ll learn to dread, a letter in the mail, another investigation, another lawsuit, another creditor.
You’ll start wondering whether it’s over, but it won’t be—not for a very long time. ”
Speech failed him.
“I could kill you,” I added as casually as commenting on the weather, adjusting my coat as I spoke. “It would take less than a minute, but then you’d stop suffering, and I don’t believe you’ve earned that mercy.”
I turned toward the exit and instructed, “Lev, see that every document in that folder reaches the appropriate office today, personally.”
“Yes, sir.”
I reached the hallway before stopping, resting one hand on the doorframe without turning back. “Oh… my fiancé still believes people deserve second chances. I don’t.”