Chapter Vadim
Vadim
As much as I had been looking forward to teaching Iskra her place, Konstantin’s call took precedence.
Chechens. Discovered north of the city, along the river. Five men, positioned and waiting. They knew the route. They knew the thaw was coming and they had chosen their ground accordingly, which meant either excellent intelligence or someone on our side who had provided it.
Neither possibility was acceptable.
I stood at my office window and watched Ruslan’s car pull through the gates below. His byki climbed out with him, but he spoke to them briefly and they fell back—one lighting a cigarette against the cold, the other returning to the car. Ruslan alone came inside. A conversation he wanted contained.
I poured two drinks and waited.
The knock was perfunctory. He entered, clocked the glasses immediately, and crossed the room to take one with the ease of a man who had been doing exactly this for years.
“What a day to begin your nuptials,” he murmured, and took a sip.
I shrugged. The marriage was filed, the ceremony was done, the wife was in the west wing being shown to her room. It would keep.
“How many men were found?”
“Five confirmed. They are being interrogated now.”
“Ortsa or Tolam?”
“Could be either faction.” He turned the glass slowly. “Or worse—both.”
I considered that. Two Chechen factions operating in coordination along our northern route was a different problem to one. It suggested communication, shared objective, and someone willing to broker between groups that had no history of cooperation.
“How did they get into our territory?”
“That we don’t have yet. It will take time to extract.”
I took a long pull of vodka before I said it.
“What if our own people gave them access?”
Ruslan’s expression didn’t change dramatically, but something shifted behind his eyes—the look of a man who had already considered the same possibility and hadn’t wanted to be the one to say it first.
“It’s possible,” he said. “Konstantin is on site. Grigori and Aleksandr too.”
Good. Between the three of them there would be no ambiguity about how the interrogation was conducted or how thoroughly the surrounding area was swept. Grigori was methodical. Aleksandr was thorough. Konstantin was neither of those things, which in this context was exactly what was needed.
“I want answers,” I said, tightening my grip on the glass. “All of them. Names, entry point, who spoke to whom and when. Everything.”
“Yes, Pakhan.” Ruslan set his glass on the desk and reached for his phone.
The thaw had barely begun and the Chechens were already testing the routes.
It was going to be a long spring.
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The hour was late when Ruslan, Valentin and Mikhail finally left.
Alternative routes had been plotted along the northern corridor, finances repositioned to account for increased security deployment, patrol schedules restructured.
Eight men found in total. Eight men who had talked—because they all talked eventually, and Konstantin’s dual position as enforcer and killer existed precisely to accelerate that process.
Grigori and Aleksandr’s soldiers had observed and learned.
The interrogations had been educational for everyone present, in different ways.
They were all Tolam’s men. Spies first, soldiers second, and none of them had accounted for what they were walking into.
A price Tolam would pay heavily for.
Tomorrow we would move through the city and remove every residual trace of his presence—every contact, every safe house, every man who had passed information or opened a door or looked the other way for Chechen money.
The purge would be visible. Deliberate. The kind of message that didn’t require translation.
No one tested the brotherhood during a transition and walked away intact. No one looked at a new Pakhan and mistook the newness for weakness.
My anger had been simmering since Konstantin’s first call. It had not cooled during the hours of planning. If anything the careful, methodical work of the evening had compressed it—banked it down into something that would burn longer and more completely than rage.
I needed it controlled for tomorrow. Messy enough to be understood. Contained enough to be mine.
I took a final draw from my cigarette and crushed it into the ashtray.
The Dragunov name would be written into this city again before the week was out. The Black City was ours—had always been ours—and any man who needed reminding of that would receive the reminder in a form he wouldn’t survive.
Any future son would watch and learn.
I left the office and took the stairs. Sharp left at the top—Iskra’s side of the house. The corridor was quiet, the lamps on the wall turned low. Spartak was stationed outside her door and straightened when he saw me coming, stepping to the side before I reached him.
“Pakhan.”
“Did she leave the room?”
“Yes, Pakhan. Twice. She found the kitchen, washed up. Then she wandered—the corridor, the landing. She went back to her room about an hour ago. Her belongings will be collected from her parents’ house in the morning.”
I noted the parents’ house rather than her house. Accurate, as of today.
I grunted and opened the door.
The room was dark. The heavy curtains were drawn and doing their job, no light from outside penetrating. The light from the hallway behind me cut a narrow path across the floor to the bed and I used it.
She was entirely buried. The bedding covered every inch of her except her head and one hand resting open on the pillow, fingers loose.
She had found something of mine to sleep in—one of the shirts left in the room’s wardrobe, presumably, the collar visible above the duvet.
Her faint floral perfume had settled into the room, the kind of scent that didn’t announce itself but was there when you were close enough.
I stood at the foot of the bed for a moment.
My father had been right. Not about much, in my estimation, but about this—the need for an heir was not sentiment, it was infrastructure. Flesh and blood to carry the name forward. Something to build toward that existed beyond the contracts and the routes and the men who needed managing.
Strange, after years of careful discipline, to now discard the habit entirely.
Condoms had been practised and automatic—the only way to guarantee that nothing took hold, that no woman could leverage an accident into an obligation.
The clinical separation of it had become routine.
Fucking mouths had become preferable—flesh against flesh without consequence, without the particular risk of forgetting yourself inside someone.
But that calculus had changed.
She had signed the contract. She was in my house, in my west wing, in my shirt, in my bed. The womb I had negotiated for was three feet from where I stood and it would do what it was contracted to do.
Not tonight.
Tonight the Chechens took precedence and she could sleep.
But the reprieve was temporary—a function of scheduling, not consideration. As soon as Tolam’s residual presence had been removed from this city and the northern route was secured, I would turn my attention to the remaining outstanding item on the list.
She had one use.
I intended to make use of her.
I pulled the door shut behind me and told Spartak to stay where he was.