11. Mikhail #2
The technician brings up the comm log, and a message appears—short, and not encrypted the way it should be. It’s a plain directive. Clear post, keep her moving, don’t spook her.
The captain stares at it like he’s seeing it for the first time. I look at him. “That isn’t you?” I say. “That’s someone above you or beside you?”
His mouth works, and he can’t decide whether to admit or deny, and that indecision is enough.
Enzo comes back in and immediately understands from the room’s temperature what he’s walked into. I don’t speak to the captain again. I speak to Enzo. “Take him downstairs,” I say flatly, “and bring me the man who sent that message.”
The captain’s knees bend slightly, and he catches himself. He starts talking, and the words tumble, and he names a contact he shouldn’t have, and he says it was curiosity, and he says he didn’t think it would matter, and he says he never meant to hurt her.
Enzo takes him, and the door closes.
The technician keeps working, and my commander keeps swallowing, and nobody speaks until the next name appears on the access list tied to my code.
A name I recognize, because I recognized his loyalty once. “Bring him,” I say.
The second man arrives within the hour, and he arrives too composed, and that’s what gives him away. Men who aren’t guilty want to be understood, and men who are guilty want to look controlled.
I question him calmly and simply, giving him enough space to bury himself. He answers cleanly at first, then he slips, because he’s trying to keep track of two versions of his story at the same time.
He says he was on the outer road, but the camera shows he was inside. Then he tells me his device was misplaced, contrary to where the device log shows movement. He says he never accessed my authorization token, and the system shows his signature under the access point.
I let him finish, then I nod once. “Enzo,” I say.
Enzo steps forward.
The man’s eyes widen, and he starts to plead, and the pleading isn’t for mercy. It’s for time to let him build a new angle. “I didn’t shoot,” he says fast. “I didn’t fire the weapon, Boss, I swear.”
“I know,” I reply, and I watch his face break at the certainty.
He starts shaking then. Denial doesn’t work when the person across from you already knows which lie you chose. “Who paid you?” I ask.
His eyes flick to the side like he’s checking whether anyone in the room is his ally. No one moves.
“Who?” I repeat.
He swallows. “I didn’t take money.”
I take a breath. “Then you took fear,” I say.
His throat bobs and his eyes water, and he tries again. “I was told it was to scare her, Boss. I was told it would calm the outsiders down. I was told it would show you were still in control.”
I stare at him. “Outsiders,” I repeat. “Which outsiders?”
He shakes his head fast. “I don’t know, I never met them. It was a contact of a contact. It came as instructions.”
“Names?”
He gives one, and it’s a small name, and it’s a stupid name, and it tells me he’s trying to protect the real one.
I tilt my head slightly. “That’s not your real chain.”
He breaks then, and he starts talking too fast. He names the corridor captain first, then an outside handler and a courier, and he insists he never met the top. That’s fine. I don’t need the top in this room. I need the leak stopped.
I nod once at Enzo, who understands. There’s no spectacle, audience, or long walk. The man is taken out through the side door that leads to the downstairs service corridor. The sound that follows is contained and final, and the house absorbs it the way a house like this always does.
A few minutes later, Enzo returns. His face doesn’t change, and neither does his voice. “It’s done,” he says.
“Good,” I reply.
I say, “Now we clean,” and the words aren’t dramatic. They’re instruction.
By evening, routes are changed, code phrases rotated, and the guard posts that Sergei treated like decoration become what they were always meant to be. Anyone who was promoted under Sergei without my approval gets moved to the outer ring, and anyone who complains gets moved out entirely.
I don’t stop at one interrogation.
I pull the same men twice, and I ask the same questions twice, and I watch for story drift, because truth stays in place and lies shift.
When I’m satisfied enough to breathe, I go back upstairs.
Alina’s door is guarded from the inside and outside, and I can feel the tension before I even open it.
I knock once, then step in.
She’s sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed, and her hands are folded so tightly in her lap that her knuckles are pale. She stands the moment I enter, and she does it like she expects bad news because in her experience, bad news always follows silence.
“Sit,” I say.
She sits again, her eyes fixed on me. I don’t move deep into the room. I stay nearer the door, and I keep the distance because distance keeps my voice clean. “It’s handled,” I tell her. “The man who lied is gone, and the rest have been reassigned.”
Her face tightens. “Gone,” she repeats.
“Yes.”
She draws in a breath, and it shakes. “Did you kill him?”
I don’t lie to her, because lying makes people reckless later. “Yes,” I say.
Then she says, very quietly, “This will never stop.”
I hold her gaze and I don’t deny it.
I don’t deny it, because denying it would be another lie.
Her eyes soften for a fraction of a second, then harden again, and she looks past me as if she’s already figuring out how to survive the next thing. That’s when it lands, sharp and clean, and it doesn’t need poetry to be true.
She will never belong to this world, and the world won’t care, because it doesn’t ask permission before it takes blood.
But she’s mine, and I’ll burn the world down to ashes before it tries to take her from me.