15. Aleksandr #2
I’ve dealt with men like Katerina’s father my entire life, even before I became a Pakhan.
Men wrapped in medals and ceremony who believe authority makes them untouchable.
Men who hide behind institutions and expect reverence to protect them from consequence.
I’ve watched them posture and threaten only to fold just like everyone else once the illusion of their power cracks and they are reminded someone else will always have enough influence to take them down.
Uniforms don’t impress me.
Titles don’t scare me.
Government authority has never meant immunity.
The military is no different from an overly eager syndicate in my eyes. They posture when they believe it will get them what they want. They protect their own until it becomes inconvenient. Self-preservation always outweighs loyalty in the end.
I’ve seen it too many times to be cowed by warnings now.
Nikolai studies me closely, searching for signs of doubt, for a flicker of hesitation that would tell him I can still be reasoned with and still be controlled.
He won’t find it.
I’ve long since given up pretending Katerina’s revenge isn’t personal. That it isn’t hers alone to bear the weight of. That I’m not willing to risk every fragile equilibrium the Pact has built in order to give her the justice she deserves.
He sighs. “Chaos is not a fire you always get to control.”
I meet his gaze steadily. “Are justifiable consequences supposed to take a back seat, then? You can’t honestly tell me you’d agree with that. You of all people.”
His eyes flare suddenly.
The words hang between us. An unspoken line—one drawn years ago, etched into the fragile architecture of the Pact itself—has just been stepped over without hesitation. Yet, I refuse to take it back.
I don’t know many details surrounding Nikolai’s father, nor do I choose to.
If he had been weak enough to be taken over by a coup within his own Bratva, led by his own heir, he was not strong enough to lead us. That is a fact I have always reconciled no matter how hard it rocked the four of us when it happened.
Unlike Sokolov who still carries the memory of that time like a grudge he’ll never admit to, my respect for Nikolai has never been contingent on sentiment. It has always been contingent on one thing. His own moral code.
Sokolov sees our leader as a man unhinged enough to destroy the patriarch of his own family and nearly topple the syndicate in the process.
I don’t.
Nikolai is many things. He is cruel in ways that surprise even me at times.
He is uncompromising, unforgiving. His unwillingness to bend his own values is what makes him nearly impossible to reason with, especially when it comes to his opinion on attachments and sentiment.
He views them the way a surgeon views a tumor—threats to be excised before they metastasize.
But that is also what convinces me the death of his father happened for a justifiable reason.
Whatever turmoil had been brewing in the months leading up to the coup is anyone’s guess.
Artyom Malyshko had been famously tight-lipped when it came to his own syndicate, bordering on obsessive paranoia.
He compartmentalized everything until even his inner circle knew only fragments of what was happening behind closed doors.
There would have been no way any of us could have predicted the coup ahead of time, let alone prepared to stop it.
Nearly severing our careful control over Moscow had fractured the four of us for a long time.
The power vacuum that came from the death of one of us lasted weeks.
Tensions ran high enough that Sokolov and I nearly came to blows more times than I can count.
Trust was thin, alliances were tested, the Pact itself teetered on the edge of collapse when we were forced to answer to a man more than ten years our junior.
Yet, despite all of that, I have never once questioned the shift in power.
Nikolai’s morals are unyieldingly clear, black and white in a world most of us inhabit in shades of gray.
Whatever had caused him to deem his own father worthy of judgment and execution must have been severe enough to outweigh every bond of blood and loyalty the old man had ever demanded from him.
Nikolai does not act on impulse. He never has in the three decades he’s been alive.
He acts purely on principle.
Which is exactly what I am hoping will exonerate me now from whatever ruling he is prepared to give me at the end of this.
I hold his gaze without flinching.
He exhales through his nose and straightens slowly, rolling his shoulders as though shaking off an unwelcome weight.
The look on his face melts back into one of cool indifference shortly after. “I will not support you when things go south.”
When, not if.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I say evenly. I intend to do everything in my power to prove him wrong.
His eyes drift from mine again, down to the envelopes sitting on my desk. The silence stretches between us long enough that I can hear the faint tick of the clock behind me. Every tick snaps a little bit more of my patience.
When he speaks again, his voice is quiet, almost gentle. It throws me off completely. “Be very careful about mistaking yourself to be invincible… It would be a shame to learn you aren’t when you have so much that can be taken from you.”
My brows pull together before I can stop them.
The warning is clear enough on the surface without his having to specify, the implication pointing in the same direction.
Katerina. If this plan goes sideways—if the military pushes back harder than we expect, and the government decides to make an example out of her by turning the backlash into something we can’t contain, she will be the first thing they reach for to prosecute.
I’ve been obsessively planning for exactly that scenario since the moment she told me she wanted to do this publicly.
Contingencies upon contingencies worth of false trails, offshore accounts in her new name, safe houses in three countries, extraction routes that don’t touch any of my known properties, private security already on standby in case we need to disappear her for a while.
I’ve mapped every avenue they might try to take her from me, even the illegal ones. I’ve spent sleepless nights running those scenarios until my head felt close to exploding, until I could recite every possible failure point backward.
But the way Malyshko says it… makes it sound like he is speaking from experience. Not about this specific scenario but one in general of losing something valuable.
His father, maybe?
The thought drags a cold finger down my spine.
Regardless of his convictions, he is still human. Carrying guilt over his father’s death is to be expected, no matter how justified it may have been. It’s just… odd to see the walls he surrounds himself with lower enough to show it.
Especially with someone like me.
He is young, inexperienced in many ways despite the indifference and aloofness he protects himself with.
I shake off the unsettling feeling that comes with witnessing a thread of humanity within him. There is more important work to be done. “Thank you for the warning.”
He nods, moving away from my desk then. He pauses only when our shoulders nearly brush on his way out the door.
“Good luck,” he says.
And then he is gone.