MAKSIM #2
They would. Men like Moretti can smell weakness across borders, and they’ve been trying to bite into our corridors for years. Elena’s father just handed them a sharper knife.
We reach the office, and I walk in with Leonid and Petrov.
Men are already waiting inside. Men I trust to varying degrees.
The security chief is already by the window with the older men, two of them old enough to remember my father.
One old enough to remember my grandfather.
Another too ambitious for his own good, which means he has to be watched even when he’s useful.
Papers lie open on the table. A decanter sits untouched. No one is pretending this is casual.
I go behind the desk and stay standing. “Say it cleanly.”
The security chief clears his throat and opens first because numbers make cowards brave. “Her listed designation is now active in the minds of the people who matter, whether formally acknowledged or not. If there’s ambiguity around her status, that ambiguity becomes opportunity.”
The older man near the window nods once. “That means pressure from outside and recalculation from inside.”
I look at him. “Say inside.”
That lands. Men shift. No one enjoys being told to voice the ugliest part aloud, but if they won’t say it here, they’ll whisper it somewhere worse.
The ambitious one finally speaks. “She changes succession logic, leverage logic, and exposure. If enemies can get to her, they get a path into continuity. If allies think you’re compromised through her, they start making their own private plans.”
A girl enters a house, and suddenly, old men start rewriting futures in their heads.
“What’s being said?” I ask.
The security chief glances once toward the others, then answers me directly. “That if the ledger stands, the status has to be resolved before more factions circle close enough to interfere.”
“Resolved how?”
Someone else answers—a senior operations man, forty-five, steady for years, useful often enough that I’d allowed myself to stop watching him every second. He sets both hands on the table and speaks in the tone men use when they think they’re being practical.
“Drug her,” he says. “Sign what can be signed, close what can be closed, and dispose of the problem before more people build interest around her.”
I move immediately, and my hand closes on his throat before the chair has fully scraped back under him, and I drive him into the wall hard enough that framed plans shake. He gets one useless sound out before my fist breaks his mouth open.
I hit him again, and his head snaps sideways. Teeth clatter across the floor. He tries to get an arm up, and I slam it aside and hit him a third time.
Blood goes everywhere.
Somebody says my title. Somebody else grabs for my shoulder and thinks better of it. I hear the office door shut fast behind us because the guards outside are smarter than the men inside.
The man tries to speak again through blood, and I tighten my hand on his throat until his eyes bulge.
“She isn’t inventory,” I tell him, and my voice is so calm, I see the fear arrive properly in his face for the first time. “You will never use that kind of language in this house again.”
I let him choke on it for another second, then throw him sideways onto the carpet.
He lands badly and folds in on himself, coughing red into his hand. No one moves to help him.
I look around slowly, blood drying across my knuckles. “Does anyone else have a practical suggestion?”
No one answers, and no one looks away either, because the men worth keeping know better than to flinch after the fact. They just recalculate and survive it.
“The listed status stands,” I say. “That part is not rumor, and the men who matter will interpret it aggressively if I leave any opening around her. That means there will be no opening.”
I step around the front of the desk and plant both hands on the wood.
“Inside this organization, her status is simple. She is under my direct protection, and any attempt to interpret, exploit, move, frighten, sign through, or speak around that status without my authority will be treated as betrayal.”
The oldest man at the table nods once. The others follow a second later.
“Outside this house, nothing is confirmed,” I continue. “If anyone asks whether the Sokolov girl is still live collateral or already under my control, the answer is silence. If they push harder, they get silence again until I decide otherwise.”
Petrov glances at the blood on the carpet, then back at me. “And Italy?”
I’m about to answer when there’s a measured knock at the office door. “Come in,” I say.
Dima steps inside, my inner-circle enforcer, trusted because he executes orders without drift. He has a phone in hand and enough sense to look at the floor before he looks at me. “Message just arrived through the Trieste relay,” he says. “Moretti-linked.”
He crosses to me and offers the device. I take it, read once, then read it again because irritation has a way of sharpening text.
The message is clean, formal, and written by someone who thinks polish excuses hunger.
Before 11 a.m. tomorrow, formal talks are requested regarding the listed Volkov collateral.
They don’t call her Sokolov’s daughter or the listed girl now. They call her listed Volkov collateral, already stitching her into my name.