31. Artem
Artem
They come to me the morning after Viktor's funeral.
I don't expect them to wait, but it further amplifies that none of these people care about who their leader is as long as the money and power continue to flow uninterrupted.
It's why, despite my history with the Bratva, the old guard sits before me.
Six stoic Russians, all representing various outfits within the U.S. and Russia.
These men, Viktor's inner circle, are a great deal older than I am. They all learned this business in Moscow in the eighties, when the rules were different and the brutality was quieter and a man's word was the only contract that mattered.
Grishin speaks first, because Grishin always speaks first. He's a heavyset man with silver hair and the confidence of someone who has never once in his life been told no by anyone he respected.
He served as Viktor's second for decades, and now he's part of the council that makes Bratva decisions, especially during such a significant moment — the death of the Pakhan.
"The transition," he says, settling into a chair without being invited. "We wanted to discuss it."
"The transition is handled," I tell him. "The remainder of the Moscow council has been notified."
"Yes." He folds his hands. "We've seen the documents." A pause, weighted and deliberate. "Your wife's name features prominently."
"She's Viktor's heir. Her name should feature prominently."
The men exchange glances. Small and careful, the kind that have been practiced so long they barely register. I catalog each one. I'm not na?ve enough to believe none of these men will pose a threat to me or Katya.
"Viktor was a great man," says Morev, from the end of the table. He's head of the L.A. syndicate. "A traditional man. He understood how things work. He had three sons, and yet only one female heir." He shakes his head as though that is the worst thing that could happen to a man.
"Not sure that Viktor anticipated all three predeceasing him."
"True." Grishin's voice is pleasant, which means we're approaching the part of the conversation he actually came for. "And while things have changed, our men are soldiers, and they follow strength. They follow certainty." He pauses. "They don't follow women."
The room is very quiet.
I lean back in my chair. I anticipated this, and if they do not follow, I have contingencies.
Pyotr is against the door, my chosen second. I see the twinkle in his eyes and the twitch in his hand as he waits for my instruction.
This, right here, is exactly why I married Katya. It wasn't just about taking care of Viktor. It was about gaining access to the whole fucking network.
"My wife," I say, "is Viktor Popov's granddaughter and the only living heir to this organization. Her name attached to mine is what gives this transition legitimacy. Without her, we have a power vacuum." I let that sit. "Is that what you want? A bloodbath?"
"What we want," Grishin says carefully, "is continuity. Stability." He leans forward. "An heir, Artem. A son. Something that makes it clear this isn't a temporary arrangement, that there is a future, a bloodline, a reason for the men to stay loyal long term."
I'm silent, but I feel a tick in my jaw. This was not something I considered — stupid of me. I know how the old guard works. I'd been banking on them not accepting Katya as their new leader because she's a woman.
I didn't expect that they'd require more than a marriage. I didn't think they'd force the idea of an heir.
I curse myself for missing that blind spot.
"Your wife is young," Morev continues. "Healthy. There's no reason?—"
"My wife," I say, and my voice comes out quiet in the way that stops rooms, "is my business."
Grishin smiles. It doesn't reach his eyes. "Of course. We're simply saying that if there were to be an heir, the backing of everyone in this room would be unconditional. Complete." He spreads his hands. "You are already married to her. It's a natural next step."
I hold his gaze for a long moment, then take a measured breath. This is a hiccup, nothing more. One I can navigate.
"We're married," I remind them. "An heir is required by more than just the Bratva."
There's a grunt across the room. They read between the lines. The Orlov family is wealthy, with deep history and ties to Russia. I'd be expected to continue the family name, almost more than I would be expected to provide a future Pakhan.
The men smile and nod, as though the child is already a done deal.
The implication settles over the room like a blanket. I've said nothing and committed to nothing and given them exactly enough to leave satisfied.
We move on to other business, discussing everything but my coronation. It's a done deal, and yet I feel something gnawing inside of me.
Pyotr finds me afterward in the garden. I needed a moment away from the fucking house and everything it holds.
I want to burn the thing down, but instead, like everything else, I use it as a status symbol. Not that it keeps the walls from closing in.
I'm pacing, feeling unmoored, and I'm not in the mood to discuss the meeting with Pyotr, or anyone.
"Don't," I warn him.
"I haven't said anything."
"You're about to."
He's quiet for another moment. "This has gone too far."
"I'm aware."
"Are you?" He turns to look at me, and I can see the judgment in his eyes. If he were anyone else, I would have gouged them out. "Because what those men just asked you to do — using a child to bind a woman to a life she didn't choose — that's what your father did. It's what Viktor required."
"It's not the same."
"It's the same machinery, Artem."
I look at the hedges. The garden is bare in December, everything stripped back to structure and bone.
"She could already be pregnant." Not a justification. Just a fact I've been turning over since I woke up.
Pyotr's jaw flexes.
"Is that what you want? A child?"
The question sits between us. I don't answer it, which is its own kind of answer.
"You like her," he states. "I can tell. If you didn't, you would have locked her up and stopped caring whether she was happy. You aren't sentimental."
"Leave it, Pyotr."
"When are you going to stop punishing her for Viktor? He's dead."
I turn to look at him. "Katya isn't being punished."
His voice is even, not accusatory, just exact.
"You chose her because she was Viktor's blood.
You married her because she was Viktor's blood.
You've spent months watching her fall apart and telling yourself it's necessary, it's the plan, it's for Irina.
" He holds my gaze. "Viktor is dead. The plan is complete, and yet you've made no mention of freeing her. "
"The plan was always to take over. You know that."
Pyotr rolls his eyes. "It was to stop the machine. Not become the engineer."
I have no answer.
He nods, like that's what he expected. "Don't give them what they want. Don't become what you came here to dismantle."
He leaves me there with the bare garden and the December cold and the silence of a man who has just heard something he already knew and has been refusing to look at directly.
I go back to the study.
I sit at Viktor's desk — my desk — and I stare at the surface of it and think about last night.
The specific, tactile memory of it. Her hands in my hair.
The way she gasped. The moment of stillness when I realized what happened, and the way her face changed, and the way I looked at her afterward and felt something I haven't felt in a long time.
Fear.
Not the tactical kind. Not the calculated risk assessment that has kept me alive through things that should have killed me. The other kind. The kind that arrives when you understand that something matters and you have no control over what happens to it.
She could be pregnant.
I try to locate how I feel about that, and I find something I wasn't prepared for — not satisfaction, not the cold strategic pleasure of a plan advancing, but something complicated and hot and entirely inconvenient. Something that has a shape but not a name yet.
I think about what Grishin said. A son. Something that makes it clear this isn't a temporary arrangement.
I think about what Pyotr said. Don't become what you came here to dismantle.
I think about my sister in a marriage she didn't choose, a life that was decided for her by men sitting around tables exactly like the one I just stood at. It was simply luck that Irina never became pregnant.
I think about Katya at the window last night, the sheet around her shoulders, her voice going flat and final when she said I want a divorce.
I think about the tunnel.
Pyotr told me this morning, quietly, before the meeting. She slipped out through the groundskeeper's cottage. Was gone for three hours. He has a reasonable guess about where she went.
I didn't have her followed. I made that decision before I was fully awake and I haven't reconsidered it, which tells me something about where I am that I'm not ready to examine directly.
I know it the way I know most things — not because I have evidence, but because I understand the logic of it, the sequence of decisions a woman in her position would make when she's run out of people she can trust.
I should be calculating. I should be assessing the threat, mapping the exposure, planning the countermove. I've been doing those things since I was twenty-two years old. They come as naturally as breathing.
Instead I sit here and think about a child.
Not an heir. Not a strategic asset or a political instrument or a guarantee of loyalty from six old men who will be dead within the decade anyway.
A child. A small, specific person who would not have asked to be born into this, who would arrive in the middle of a marriage built on extortion and revenge and the wreckage of two families, who would need things I have spent years forgetting how to give.
The thought doesn't horrify me the way it should.
That's the problem.
The thought of Katya carrying my child, of something permanent and irreversible and entirely outside the plan — it doesn't feel like strategy. It feels like the first real thing I've ever wanted.
I reach into the desk drawer. Pull out the photograph.
Her face. The terrified smile. The white dress.
I look at it for a long time.
Then I put it away.
Not in the locked drawer. In the top drawer, unfolded, face up. Where I can see it when I open it and it doesn't have to be a secret anymore.
I close my eyes.
I don't want to use a child to keep her.
I don't want to keep her at all.
I want her to stay.
There's a difference.
I'm not sure, sitting here in this dead man's study in the December quiet, whether I've done enough damage to make that impossible.
I think I might have.
The thought sits in my chest like a coal. Hot. Persistent.
I don't put it out.