11. Aleksandr
ALEKSANDR
Idon’t send word ahead that I’m coming.
Ramil Borchin doesn’t deserve the small mercy of a few minutes to rehearse his excuses or plaster on whatever pathetic mask he thinks might soften my judgment. He doesn’t deserve the illusion of dignity that comes with preparation.
Courtesy is wasted on men like him.
If anything, Borchin forfeited every kindness this world had to offer the moment he handed me his daughter with the guarantee to do anything I wanted to her with absolutely no consequences or strings attached.
He’s always known the kind of man I am rumored to be.
Everyone does.
Every goddamn whisper in Moscow paints me as some feral, ruthless beast incapable of reason beyond my own selfish interests. Borchin may be a coward, but he isn’t ignorant. He knew exactly who he chose to give his daughter to and what it would mean for her future.
A father giving up his precious baby girl to a monster as property, as entertainment…
flesh to break until it bends into something obedient.
He believed me capable of unspeakable things and chose to do it anyway with little regard for how the rest of her life would unfold.
Whether it would be mercifully short or dragged out torturously long depending on the depravity he assumed I was capable of didn’t matter to him so long as he was granted a debt-free future.
It sickens me just as it did the day he first presented me with the offer.
What kind of father does that?
I have never been particularly paternal.
My own childhood cured me of any romantic notions about fatherhood long before I was old enough to shave.
My father was a drunk with fists like sledgehammers and a temper that ignited over absolutely nothing.
I still remember the sound of his belt hitting skin—mine, my mother’s, the maids’.
It didn’t matter who so long as they were within striking distance.
A heart attack buried him the day I turned twenty-two. I stood at his gravesite the day after he’d been lowered into the half-frozen ground and felt nothing but relief. My mother wept for the man he might have been once, but all I could think was how we were finally free.
I never wanted children after that.
I never wanted to risk passing that kind of poison down to an offspring innocent of its parents’ prior transgressions.
My worst nightmare would be to see my own face reflected in a smaller one.
To look down at a child and recognize the same hollowed-out grief, the same quiet fury and impossible hunger for comfort from a man incapable of giving it.
To watch myself repeat the very cycle I once clawed my way out of barely alive.
Katerina makes me question things I thought were long buried.
Not because I suddenly want to be a father.
I don’t. I know what kind of man I am, what my world demands and what it destroys.
Bringing a child into it has never been an option I would entertain.
Not out of selflessness but out of sheer pragmatism.
However, watching Borchin treat her like this by discarding her safety, weaponizing her, lying to her, sending her into danger he never intended to help her navigate her way out of stirs something in me that I don’t like, a primal and ugly protectiveness that tries desperately to fight its way out my chest.
She is mine by choice. Mine because I claimed her to be so. Mine because I refuse to let any man, her own father included, touch, influence, or direct her when she belongs to only me.
If Borchin believes he can throw her away with little consequence, he is sorely mistaken.
I drive alone without a convoy escort trailing behind me like obedient shadows.
The streets of Moscow are less busy than usual this afternoon, snow falling in lazy, fat flakes that melt as soon as they hit the windshield.
I keep the radio off while I drive. I don’t need music or news to fill the silence, my thoughts are plenty loud enough.
With every kilometer that passes, my chest tightens with building anger. By the time I reach the drive to the Borchin estate, my hands are gripping the wheel hard enough to lock my joints up.
His staff barely have time to register what’s happening before I’m parked and heading up to the front doors of the mansion. Their protests are brief, cut off just as quickly as they come when I step inside and follow the familiar path down to his office.
Every part of this house is polished to perfection in an over-the-top, pretentious way.
Every room is curated to look overstated.
Every piece of furniture chosen to project respectability and wealth.
It’s the kind of home designed to reassure guests that nothing ugly could possibly exist within its walls.
That honor lives here and corruption belongs somewhere else far, far away.
I feel a flicker of contempt twist through my chest at the irony.
Ramil looks up from behind his desk, surprise flickering across his face the moment I throw the door open without knocking and step over the threshold.
He schools his expression almost immediately, plastering on that stiff composure he relies on like armor.
He rises from his chair the instant I close the door behind me and lock it, the soft click freezing him mid-motion.
His eyes dart toward the lock over my shoulder, then back to me as I approach. A trapped animal weighing its odds.
I can see the conflict twisting in his features—indignation that I dare intrude without announcement, and caution because even in his arrogance, he isn’t stupid enough to forget who he’s dealing with.
His mouth opens, the beginning of a challenge, a question, a demand for explanation, but he hasn’t yet decided how to phrase it without offending me.
He won’t get that chance.
The leather creaks softly beneath my weight when I settle into the chair opposite of his desk.
With that single motion, the air in the room shifts decisively.
Power settles over the space like dust falling after an explosion.
Unspoken and undeniably, the pendulum between us swings irrevocably in my direction.
“Sit,” I tell him.
He swallows hard.
Whatever righteous indignation he thought he could muster, whatever polished authority he intended to wield, it withers on his tongue. He lowers himself back into his chair stiffly, waiting mutely for me to proceed with whatever it is I came here for.
I simply reach into my pocket and withdraw the burner phone and place it on the polished surface between us.
Then, I slide it toward him using two fingers, the device gliding across the glossy wood until it stops directly in front of his hands.
Close enough that he can’t pretend to misunderstand what’s happening.
Ramil’s eyes drop down to the phone.
Behind him, his medals and awards catch the afternoon sunlight, glinting with a quiet, accusing brightness that is almost hard to look at.
Rows of polished brass, framed badges, decades of service, discipline, and supposed honor all sit uniformly surrounding him.
Physical proof of a man who once pretended he stood for something now gleam behind him like a cruel joke.
I lean forward and tap the screen twice.
It wakes with a flare of light, revealing message after message from the unanswered thread already pulled up. The chair under me creaks again once I settle back into it, folding my hands into my lap.
For a long, suspended second, he doesn’t move.
Not even to breathe.
Something inside him fractures visibly, given the way the muscle in his jaw jumps. His composure, that careful mask he’s worn for decades in uniform and in public, cracks right down the middle.
Then he lifts his eyes to mine. They dart between mine frantically, searching for mercy he already knows will not be granted to him. Dozens of questions flash behind them, silent and useless.
Where did you get this?
How did you get this?
How could my daughter be careless enough to allow you to find it?
Did she sell me out? Is that why you’re sitting here with proof in your hand instead of back at the estate punishing her?
None of them matter anymore.
They all lead to the same dead end—me, here, inside his private residence holding the evidence of his betrayal like a loaded gun pointed straight at his chest
He rubs a hand over his face, fingers dragging down slowly, pulling at the skin around his eyes until it looks painful. When he exhales, it’s shaky, his hand wavering as he lowers them back to his desk.
“This…” His voice cracks on the first syllable. He clears his throat and tries again. “This was never meant to get back to you. But not in the way you’re thinking.”
I say nothing.
His throat bobs when he swallows again. “I never expected her to actually bring you down. I’m not a fool. Men like you… men tied to the Iron Pact don’t fall that easily. If ever. I never intended to use any of this against you.”
I don’t dignify that with a response.
That much is obvious. Painfully so.
“It was only supposed to distract her,” he adds. “Enough that she wouldn’t fight you while she was there.”
There it is, the truth finally stripped of its ceremony.
He keeps going, faster now as though momentum of the confession might carry him past the edge of the cliff he’s already standing on.
“That story was for her, to make her cooperate. To make her believe she was serving a greater purpose while she acclimated to your estate. That’s all.
If I’d told her about the debts, she would have refused. So I… simply reframed it.”
For a long moment, I let the silence fall over us again.
He shifts uncomfortably in his seat, eyes darting to the door, to the window, to anywhere but my face. He’s used to my being amused, detached in a macabre way. He waits for the version of me that always arrives with a smirk and leaves with whatever he came for, no matter the initial protesting.
Rarely does he ever see this side of me. And never has it been directed at him until now.