34. Roman #3
Pavel doesn’t answer. He turns the book so they can see. “The elimination of Roman Volkonsky.”
The room erupts. This time Vera doesn’t have to explain a thing. They can see it for themselves, in Dmitri’s own hand, Anton’s initials scrawled beside a conspiracy that stretches back years. And beside one of the final entries, the two words that end him.
K informed.
Konstantin pushes back from the table. “This is absurd.”
Pavel looks up. “Is it?”
“I will not sit here and be judged by men who owe everything they have to me.”
“That,” Pavel says, “is exactly why you will.”
Konstantin’s expression goes flat, and the room shifts around him.
I feel it happen. Men who wouldn’t meet his eyes minutes ago are staring straight at him now.
One elder quietly closes the financial file.
Another draws his chair back from Konstantin’s end of the table, an inch, no more.
Small movements. My father catches every one.
He looks around the room slowly, at Pavel, at the ledger, at me, and last of all at Vera.
And for the first time in my life, Konstantin Volkonsky looks like a man who can bleed.
Not weak. He has never been weak, not for a single second of his life.
But mortal. Cornered. The old wolf who has finally felt the pack turn, and knows, before any of them, how this ends.
“The evidence needs to be authenticated,” one elder says.
“Agreed,” another replies. “Every account. Every signature.”
Konstantin’s gaze snaps toward him. Good. Let it hurt. They aren’t condemning him yet.
Pavel nods. “Until that review is complete, Konstantin should relinquish operational authority.”
“No.” The word cuts through the room.
Pavel looks at him. “Konstantin?—”
“I said no. You do not strip me of anything. I built this family.”
“You compromised it,” Pavel replies. “If these records are legitimate?—”
“They aren’t.”
“And if they are?”
Konstantin’s nostrils flare, but no answer comes.
Pavel looks toward me. “Until the evidence is reviewed, Roman retains control of Dmitri’s territory. Konstantin’s authority will be suspended.”
There it is. Not death, not imprisonment, but humiliation. My father has lost the one thing he valued more than either of his sons: control.
He looks at me. “You think you’ve won.”
I force myself upright despite the pain. “No.”
His brow furrows. “Then what?”
“I think I’m done.”
Something flashes in his eyes. “Done?”
“With you.” The room disappears around us. “I spent years waiting for you to admit you were wrong. Then I spent years telling myself I didn’t care.” My throat feels tight, and I hate that. “Turns out I don’t need either anymore.”
Konstantin stares at me. Then he laughs, and there’s nothing amused in it. “You’ll come crawling back. You always do.”
“Not this time.”
His gaze slides to Vera, and something in him changes.
It’s small. His right shoulder drops, barely an inch. But I’ve seen my father reach inside that jacket too many times to mistake it for anything else, and my body knows what’s coming before my mind can name it.
He isn’t looking at me. He’s looking at my wife.
Lev lunges. I’m faster.
Everything narrows to a single point. Whatever this room decides, whatever my father was, none of it exists anymore. There is only Vera, and the child she carries, and the family I chose over his.
Konstantin’s hand clears his jacket.
Mine is already up.
The shot cracks through the chamber. Vera flinches against my side. My father stops.
For one long moment, he stays on his feet, and then his gun slides from his fingers and hits the floor. His eyes find mine, and there’s no fury in them, no hatred. Only shock. The disbelief of a man who never once imagined the son he threw into the dark would be the one left standing over him.
Then my father folds and drops beside the chair at the far end of the table. The chair that used to be his.
No one breathes. My ears ring. Blood creeps out from under him, dark against the floor, and I feel nothing at all.
I stare down at him. My father. The man who made me, dead by the very thing he made.
I keep waiting to feel it land—the grief, guilt, or the dark thing that might pass for satisfaction.
Nothing comes. Only a strange, hollow quiet, as if some door that stood open my whole life has finally swung shut.
Then Vera’s hand slips into mine, and I turn to her. “Are you hurt?”
“No.”
I search her anyway, my eyes moving over her face, her chest, her stomach, hunting for blood I don’t find. She’s unhurt. Only then do I let myself breathe.
Pavel rises slowly from his chair, his gaze moving from Konstantin’s body to the gun lying inches from his hand. “He drew first,” he says. No one contradicts him. Another elder reaches down and kicks the weapon farther from the body.
“The evidence will still be reviewed,” Pavel continues. “But I believe Konstantin has answered one question for us himself.”
I turn to Vera, pulling her against my chest. When I kiss the top of her head, she lets out a sigh.
“Let’s go home.”