Chapter 18 – Maxim #2
“The bribes, the government connections, the network of contacts he’s built up over the years. I don’t think it’s just about facilitating our business. I think he’s been systematically collecting information, building leverage, creating dependencies.”
“For what purpose?”
“Power. Control. The ability to manipulate outcomes to serve his own interests.” Lev stood up, moving to join me at the window. “Maxim, I think Dmitry Chertov has been playing a longer game than any of us realized. I think he’s been positioning himself to take over this entire operation.”
“Rafael would never….”
“Rafael trusts him completely. So did you, until yesterday. So does everyone else in the organization. If something happened to Rafael, if he were killed or arrested or forced to step down, who do you think would be the natural choice to replace him?”
The answer was obvious, and it made my blood run cold. Dmitry had the connections, the respect, the track record of success. He was the logical choice to lead the organization if Rafael was removed from the equation, regardless of blood ties.
“How long do we have?” I asked.
“That depends on what his timeline is, what his ultimate goal looks like. But I can tell you this.” Lev pulled out his phone, scrolling through what looked like call logs. “The night Eleanor was attacked, Beaumont and Dmitry had a phone conversation that lasted exactly fifteen seconds.”
“Fifteen seconds?”
“Just long enough to confirm that the plan was in motion, or to call it off, or to provide last-minute instructions.” He showed me the timestamp. “This call happened twenty minutes before the first shots were fired.”
I felt rage building in my chest, hot and murderous and focused on a single target. Dmitry hadn’t just betrayed us. He’d gambled with Eleanor’s life, treated her like a pawn in his elaborate chess game, and been willing to accept her death as the cost of advancing his own agenda.
“Where is he now?”
“His office, as far as I know. Acting like nothing’s changed, playing the role of concerned associate who’s helping investigate the attack on your wife.”
I turned away from the window, my decision crystallizing into something hard and unforgiving. “Set up a meeting.”
“Maxim, if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking….”
“I’m thinking that Dmitry Chertov has been playing games with my family’s lives, and it’s time for those games to end.”
“You can’t just kill him. He’s too connected, too visible. His death would raise questions we can’t answer, create problems we can’t solve.”
“Then we don’t kill him immediately. We make him useful first.”
“How?”
“By letting him think his plan worked. By making him believe he’s successfully positioned himself as the hero of this situation.” I moved back to my desk, already planning the next phase. “He wants to be indispensable? We’ll let him prove just how indispensable he really is.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that someone with Dmitry’s connections and resources could be very helpful in identifying other threats to this organization. Someone with his network of contacts could help us eliminate competitors and consolidate power.”
“You want to use him.”
“I want to bleed him dry of every piece of information, every contact, every advantage he’s built up over the years. And then, when he’s no longer useful, when we’ve extracted everything of value from his network….”
“Then we kill him.”
“Then we kill him in a way that sends a message to anyone else who might be thinking of playing similar games.”
Lev grinned, and for the first time in days, it looked genuine. “I like this plan.”
“Good. Because we’re going to need to be very fucking careful about how we execute it. Dmitry is smart, experienced, and paranoid. If he suspects we’re onto him, he’ll disappear faster than we can blink.”
“What about Eleanor?”
“What about her?”
“Does she need to know about this?”
I thought about my wife, probably sitting in her office right now, working on her fashion show and trying to pretend that the world wasn’t actively trying to kill her.
She deserved to know that the threat was more complex than we’d realized, that the danger was coming from inside our own organization.
But she also deserved to focus on her dreams without constantly looking over her shoulder, wondering which of the people around her might be planning her destruction.
“Not yet,” I decided. “Not until we have this handled. She’s got enough to worry about without adding paranoia about our own people to the list.”
“Understood.”
“Lev?”
“Yeah?”
“When this is over, when Dmitry is dead and his network is destroyed, I want you to promise me something.”
“What?”
“I want you to promise me that we’ll never again let someone get that close to the heart of this organization without knowing exactly where their loyalty lies.”
“I promise.”
“Good. Because the next person who threatens my wife isn’t going to get the luxury of an elaborate death. They’re just going to fucking disappear.”
Lev nodded, understanding the weight of the promise he’d just made. In our world, trust was the most valuable and dangerous commodity. And Dmitry Chertov had just proven that it could be weaponized in ways that threatened everything we’d built .