2. Aleksandr
ALEKSANDR
Idon’t like unanswered questions.
Especially the kind that linger, scratching at the back of my skull long after a man has left the room.
Ramil Borchin is that kind of problem. Men like that don’t rot like that overnight.
They corrode slowly from the inside out.
Something is always ignored first, a weakness indulged or some kind of compromise justifying the root of it until it becomes a character flaw.
And I refuse to believe this decay appeared in a vacuum.
So I do something I rarely bother with unless instinct tells me something is deeply off.
I make a call.
Sasha Sokolov is one of the few people whose reach extends far enough, and deep enough, to explain this kind of transformation.
If there’s leverage buried under medals and ceremony, if there’s a scandal scrubbed clean before it ever reached the daylight to affect an otherwise spotless political career, he’d know.
He always does.
I expect rumors at the very least. Quiet affairs hushed with money or a body buried somewhere with a cover-up attached so thorough, it required favors that still haven’t been paid off yet. Men like Ramil don’t become monsters in private without leaving fingerprints somewhere.
The phone rings twice before he answers.
“Volkov,” he says, voice neutral.
“Sokolov,” I answer right back. I don’t bother with a greeting. There’s no point in pretending with him. We’ve never been the type for performative niceties, and today is no exception.
A beat of silence stretches across the line
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asks, the faintest thread of dry annoyance woven through it.
I don’t bite.
I let the silence sit another second longer just to remind him I’m not the one who needs to fill empty air. My thumb traces the edge of the phone pressed to my ear while I decide how much truth I’m prepared to hand over.
This isn’t usual. I dig for information all the time. Cross-referencing contacts, sniffing out double-dealers. That’s routine. Expected. That kind of information exchange happens at regular intervals depending on whatever dealings we’re each working.
But this… this is different.
This is personal.
“I need information,” I finally say.
“On?”
“A man named Ramil Borchin. Do you know him?”
I can almost hear the gears turning on his end—the faint recalibration as he slots the name into whatever mental map he keeps of every player in Moscow and beyond.
“I might,” he answers carefully. “Why?”
“Curiosity.” The lie slips out smoothly.
He’ll know it’s a lie. He always does. But there’s no reason for him to push, and even less reason for me to give him the truth.
All four of us keep our personal lives sealed off for a reason.
Intermingling gets messy fast. Attachments become weakness, and weakness becomes a blade someone else can turn against you.
Besides, there’s no reason for Sokolov to care enough to dig deeper. He has his own obsession—Alina.
Katerina Borchin means nothing to him.
Or she should be nothing.
“What interest does the Iron Pact have with Borchin?” he asks.
I sigh at him. “The Pact doesn’t. I was hoping that you might have crossed paths with him. Professionally or otherwise.”
“I haven’t,” he says simply.
“Hmm.” I let the sound drag out, low in my throat. “Unfortunate.”
“For whom?” he asks immediately, his voice carrying the faintest hint of curiosity.
I scoff at him. “None of your business, Sokolov. Hasn’t anyone ever told you to mind your manners?”
“And yet here you are, calling me for a favor.”
I roll my eyes even though he can’t see it, the gesture automatic. “It isn’t a favor. It’s an information exchange.”
“And what, exactly, would we be exchanging?” he counters smoothly. “You have nothing to offer me.”
“A favor,” I reply blandly.
He lets out a low laugh, genuinely amused. Bastard. “Again, you have nothing to offer me. What good would a favor do?”
This is why I can’t stand this man.
Every conversation with him feels like stepping into a ring where the rules keep changing and he’s the only one who knows them.
He never gives an inch without taking three in return, and he does it all with that bored, almost polite tone that makes you want to put a fist through the wall just to hear something real.
I lean back in the chair, the leather creaking under my weight, and force my voice to stay level. “I’ll… have your back when it comes to Viktor Morozov’s daughter. Keeping her at your estate. If Malyshko brings it to the table to debate again, I’ll be on your side.”
“Malyshko’s already given me his stamp of approval.”
“What?” I snap. The word snaps out before I can catch it.
How the hell did that happen?
He sounds bored when he replies, “Yes. We had quite the dinner discussion a few weeks ago. He’s come to understand that what’s mine isn’t to be touched.”
For a long moment, I have nothing to say.
My mind is racing, turning over every possible deal that must have happened behind closed doors. Nikolai Malyshko—of all people—gave him the green light to keep a woman whom we all once judged to be a liability.
Approved of a weakness so blatantly obvious, it should have been a death sentence. The man who once executed his own father now looks the other way while Sasha keeps Viktor Morozov’s daughter in his house like she’s some kind of… pet.
How?
What possible leverage could Sokolov have used against him?
What did he offer? What did he threaten? What dirt did he dig up that even Nikolai couldn’t bury?
Why her?
It makes no sense.
I exhale slowly through my nose, forcing the questions down. Realistically, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t call to gossip. I called for information, and I’ve already wasted enough time not getting any of it.
“I see,” I say, voice flat. “If you come across anything pertaining to Borchin, send it my way. We can discuss a price tag then.”
I hang up before he can answer.
Shaking away the disbelief that Sokolov’s paramour has somehow won over our king, I find a new feeling rising.
This unsettles me more than any buried scandal ever could.
If there were at the very least rumors, then at least there would be some kind of semblance of a pattern.
A cause. Something external that pushed him down this path.
Corruption I could trace, leverage I could exploit, a moment where the man’s moral compass fractured and never bothered to put himself back together properly.
But… there’s nothing.
No paper trail. No whispered stories. No skeletons rattling in closets that don’t belong to everyone else in his circle. Just a spotless public record and a reputation polished to a dull, blinding shine. If his debts weren’t being held by me personally, I would have never suspected a thing.
That’s what bothers me most.
Ramil Borchin doesn’t look like a man with a gambling addiction.
There’s no sloppiness, no public recklessness, no visible desperation.
His life is immaculate, the careful restraint of someone who understands how to curate an image down to the smallest detail.
If the numbers weren’t currently sitting on my desk, I would have believed the lie just like everyone else.
Which means this didn’t happen because Ramil Borchin was cornered by circumstance. It happened because he chose it.
There was no single catastrophic failure. No crisis that forced his hand. He simply woke up one day, looked at the balance sheet of what he owed me, and decided that saving himself mattered more than his own child.
With nothing else to uncover and the unease still crawling under my skin, I make the call.
He answers on the third ring. “This is Borchin.”
I don’t waste time dressing any of this up with playful banter. I lean back in my chair, one arm resting along the edge of the desk, and let my tone flatten until it borders on bored. “I’ve considered your offer.”
Silence floods the line.
Under any other circumstance, I would have enjoyed this moment. I’ve always appreciated the sound of powerful men realizing their fate rests in someone else’s hands. That suspended second where everything they’ve built teeters on a single word.
Usually, I savor it.
Today, I don’t.
That pause doesn’t give me satisfaction.
It doesn’t make me feel in control. Instead, it tightens something unpleasant in my chest, a pressure I don’t like and don’t fully understand.
The longer he stays silent, the more the conversation feels wrong.
Like somehow I’ve crossed a line I can’t retreat from.
I shake the thoughts away before they can take root.
Indecision is a luxury I don’t indulge. Whatever unease this situation stirs, it won’t be resolved by hesitation. I straighten slightly in my chair, forcing my voice back into something controlled, something more familiar.
“I’ll take your daughter,” I say flatly. “Have her delivered to me within the week. Once she’s secure, your debts are wiped completely.”
There’s a faint exhale on the other end of the line, gone before he can fully mask it. Relief, pure and unfiltered. It slips through the cracks despite his discipline, and the sound of it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
He doesn’t ask what conditions I intend to impose. He doesn’t ask where she’ll be kept, how she’ll be treated, or what this arrangement will actually cost her. Not a single question crosses his mind about the daughter he’s just traded away.
Ramil Borchin doesn’t thank me, nor does he acknowledge the gravity of what he’s agreed to. He doesn’t even pretend to wrestle with the decision now that it’s been made. Instead, he responds the way men like him always do when they believe they’ve narrowly escaped disaster.
“Of course. I will send you the details as soon as possible.” Clipped. Efficient. Professional. As if we’re finalizing the transfer of property or closing a tedious account. An unpleasant but necessary transaction. Business concluded. Problem solved.
“I look forward to it,” I reply, my voice smooth enough to pass for cordial.
After the line is dropped, I sit there for a long moment with the phone resting in my lap, listening to nothing. The silence that follows is nearly deafening, thick with implications I refuse to fully examine yet.
For him, the problem is solved.
The debt is handled, the numbers wiped clean, the threat of exposure erased with a single phone call and a signature he never has to look back on once he walks out my office door.
He will sleep easier tonight knowing the weight is no longer pressing down on his chest, knowing the vice he let spiral out of control has finally been buried along with the consequences attached to it.
For Katerina Borchin, his supposed guiding light, his greatest pride as he’s always claimed in interviews and speeches, this is only the beginning of her worst nightmare.
She has no idea that in the span of a few measured sentences, she has been reduced to a transaction. A bargaining chip. Something traded and already forgotten the moment it served its purpose. Her father has already moved past her, mentally filing her away as a cost of doing business.
In public, nothing will change.
Ramil Borchin will continue to play the devoted father with practiced ease.
He will stand behind podiums framed by flags and medals, speaking earnestly about honor, sacrifice, and duty to one’s country.
He will smile for the cameras and reference his daughter with pride, painting her as strong, intelligent, and independent—everything he needs her to be so no one ever questions why she’s no longer at his side.
And no one will.
Because men like him are protected by perception and their shining reputations. The careful illusion of virtue they’ve spent decades cultivating is what will always shield them from earned consequences. Whatever happens after this will never touch him unless he allows it to.
But this moment, this choice, is the one that defines him. Not as a desperate man cornered by circumstance. Not as a victim of bad luck or poor judgment. But as someone who chose himself, deliberately and without shame, over the one person he was always meant to protect.