Chapter 028 Viktor
I stand in the center of the empty street for eighteen minutes after the taillights of the SUV disappear. I count each one.
The silence is heavy, pressing against my eardrums. My hands hang at my sides, blood drying into a tight, flaky crust on my knuckles. Other men’s blood. Spilled for her. And she stepped into a car with her brothers and left me standing here.
The drive back to the compound is a blur of motion I don’t register. The leather of the passenger seat mocks me, empty and cold. Thirty minutes ago, she was there. I can still see the ghost of her silhouette against the window, the way her breath hitched when I touched her.
Now, nothing.
I steer the car through the iron gates. The compound is in chaos. Men run drills, shouting orders, securing the perimeter in the aftermath of the civil war I just kicked off. I walk through them like a ghost. Boris approaches, his face pale, arm in a sling. Pavel is shouting about assignments.
"Pakhan," someone says.
I keep walking. I don’t hear them. I don’t care.
The hallway to my quarters stretches out, long and shadowed. I stop at the threshold. The door is slightly ajar. Her scent drifts out—that specific blend of floral perfume and warm skin, underscored by the metallic tang of the violence we just survived. It hits me like a physical blow.
I can’t go in there. The sheets will still hold the shape of her body.
I turn away, my boots heavy on the hardwood, and find myself in the kitchen. I pour vodka into a crystal glass. My hand shakes. Not a tremor, but a violent vibration that sloshes the clear liquid over the rim. I set the glass down hard on the marble counter.
I reach into my pocket. The silver metal is warm from my body heat.
Two halves of a broken heart.
I fit them together on the counter. The jagged edges lock perfectly. One half I pulled from her wrist. The other...
I stare at the tarnished silver. The engraving is worn, but I know what it would say if I flipped it over.
It has to be Dimitri’s. Misha’s.
The realization sits in my gut like swallowed lead. She ran from the lakehouse because she found this. She found something in Misha’s preserved room that broke her so completely she couldn’t stand to look at me.
My mother is dead. Misha has been in the ground for eleven years. All I have left are a dead man’s secrets and a woman who looks at me like I’m the devil because of them.
I need answers. And there is only one place in this fortress where answers were ever kept.
I walk to the east wing. The air here is stale, the temperature dropping five degrees. The double doors of my father’s study loom at the end of the hall. I haven’t stepped foot inside since the day we buried him.
The hinges groan as I push the doors open. The smell hits me instantly—stale Cuban cigars, old leather, and the oppressive weight of a man who thought himself a god.
I flip the switch. The lamp on the desk flickers to life, casting long, distorted shadows across the Persian rugs. The room is exactly as he left it. A shrine to organized cruelty.
I walk to the desk. It’s a massive slab of mahogany, imposing and immovable. Just like him. I run a hand over the surface, leaving a smear of dried blood on the polished wood. Fitting.
I start with the filing cabinets. Enemies. Allies. Territory disputes. The Rozetti file is thin, useless. Nothing I don’t already know.
I turn back to the desk. The central drawer is locked.
Of course. Viktor Sokolov never left anything open. He loved his secrets more than his sons.
I don’t bother looking for a key. I grab the heavy brass letter opener from the desktop and jam it into the gap. I leverage my weight against it. The wood groans, splinters, and then the lock gives way with a sharp crack that sounds like a snapping bone.
I yank the drawer open.
A single, thick manila folder lies inside. Unmarked.
I open it.
The first photo stops my breath.
Misha. He’s in a garden, sitting on a stone bench, smiling at someone off-camera. He looks so young. Alive. The date stamp in the corner is eleven years ago. Three months before the massacre that killed him.
I flip to the next photo.
My blood turns to ice.
A girl. Blonde hair catching the sun. She’s laughing, her head thrown back, a hand resting easily on Misha’s forearm. She looks fifteen, maybe sixteen. Innocent. Radiant.
Isabella.
My hands are trembling so hard I nearly drop the stack. I spread them out across the desk, a mosaic of betrayal. Dozens of surveillance photos. Misha and Isabella walking in a park. Misha reading to her. Misha holding her face in his hands.
In one close-up, the silver heart hangs around her neck.
I stare at her face in the photo. She looks at my brother with a devotion that makes my chest ache.
I grab the next document in the folder. It’s a memo, typed on my father’s personal letterhead. Dated two days before Misha died.
Subject: Asset M.
Assessment: M has become compromised. Emotional attachment to Moretti girl presents operational liability. Focus has shifted from bratva interests to extraction strategies.
Options:
(1) Eliminate the girl.
(2) Redirect M's loyalty through traditional methods.
(3) Allow situation to resolve naturally.
Recommendation: Option 3. M will likely attend the meeting to warn the Rosettis. Acceptable collateral for larger operational success.
The room tilts.
Acceptable collateral.
I read the words again. The letters blur and sharpen. Acceptable collateral.
My father wrote those words about his own son.
I flip the page. Security logs. My father’s handwriting in the margins, sharp and jagged.
Ordered perimeter team to stand down 20:00-02:00. M departed 20:42.
A drop of blood from my knuckle falls onto the paper, landing right next to the time stamp.
He knew. He knew Misha was going to the warehouse. He knew it was a trap. He pulled the security team back to clear the path for him. He opened the door and watched his son walk into a slaughter.
I can’t breathe. The air in the room is too thin.
There is one more thing in the folder. A sealed envelope. On the front, in that same jagged script: Viktor.
I tear it open. The paper is heavy, expensive cream linen.
Viktor,
If you are reading this, I am dead and you have found what I kept hidden. Yes, I knew about Dimitri and the girl. Yes, I let him go that night.
He was weak. Sentimental. He had a poet’s heart, unfit to lead the bratva into the future. You were always the stronger one. The one with the capacity for necessary cruelty. But you lacked focus.
Dimitri’s death made you pakhan. It hardened you into the weapon our family needed. It stripped away your hesitation. Every great leader is forged in the fire of loss.
Consider his sacrifice my final gift to you.
You’re welcome.
The sound that tears out of my throat isn’t human. It’s animal. A raw, guttural roar that scrapes my vocal cords raw.
I grab the heavy mahogany desk and shove. It barely moves, but the lamp crashes to the floor, shattering.
"You’re welcome?" I scream at the empty room. "You’re welcome?"
I pick up the chair—heavy, leather, worth more than most people’s cars—and hurl it through the window. Glass explodes outward, raining down into the courtyard below.
It’s not enough.
I tear the books from the shelves. I smash the framed photos of him shaking hands with politicians. I rip the curtains down. I destroy everything that bears his mark. I want to burn his legacy until there is nothing left but ash.
My father didn’t just let Misha die. He orchestrated it. He used my brother’s blood to mold me. He turned me into a monster and then thanked himself for the craftsmanship.
When the rage finally empties out, leaving me hollowed and shaking, I drop to my knees in the wreckage. The letter is still clutched in my hand, crumpled into a ball.
Isabella.
The realization hits me so hard I nearly double over.
She kept Misha’s secret. She was fifteen years old, terrified, trying to protect the boy she loved from the father she knew would destroy him. She thought she was saving him.
She thinks she killed him.
"Christ," I whisper.
She’s been carrying this guilt for eleven years. She thinks she’s poison. She thinks she’s the reason Misha is dead.
She was trying to save him from the man who had already signed his death warrant.
I fumble for my phone. My fingers are slick with sweat and fresh blood. I dial the number by muscle memory.
"Viktor?" Katya’s voice is groggy. It’s late in Moscow. "What is it? Why are you calling?"
"He killed Misha."
The silence on the line is absolute.
"What?" Her voice is small.
"Father," I rasp. "He knew. He let him walk into the ambush. He called it 'acceptable collateral.' He wrote me a letter, Katya. He said... he said I should thank him."
I hear the sharp intake of breath, then a sob she tries to stifle.
"Read it to me," she says.
I smooth out the crumpled paper on my knee. I read her the words. He was weak. Unfit. You’re welcome.
By the time I finish, she’s weeping openly. That ugly, jagged sound of a world fracturing.
"I’m glad Mama didn’t know," she chokes out. "It would have killed her."
"I found the proof in his study."
"Burn it," Katya says. Her voice shifts, hardening into the ice of a Russian winter. "Burn every word that bastard wrote. Burn the study to the ground if you have to. Don't let his poison stay in this world."
"I will."
I hang up.
I gather the papers. The photos of Isabella and Misha. The memo. The security logs.
I walk to the fireplace. I strike a match and toss it onto the dry logs. The flames catch quickly.
I feed the lies to the fire.
I watch the photo of my father curl and blacken. I watch the memo turn to ash. I keep only the letter—the proof I might need later—and watch the rest disappear.
Smoke fills the room, acrid and biting.
I stand in the ruins of my father’s empire, the truth settling into my bones.
Viktor Sokolov is dead, but he was still pulling the strings. He killed Misha. He twisted me. And he destroyed Isabella.
Isabella.
She left me because she thinks she deserves to suffer. She thinks she owes a debt to the dead.
I close my eyes, and I see her face in the moonlight on that street. The devastation in her eyes.
I love her.
The thought isn't a surprise. It’s a fact, solid and undeniable as the gun on my hip. I don’t just want to possess her. I don’t just want to own her.
I love her with a desperation that terrifies me.
She is out there right now, drowning in guilt for sins that belong to my father. She thinks she is unworthy of love, unworthy of life, because she couldn't save a boy who was already doomed.
"No," I say to the empty room.
My father took my brother. He won't take her too.
I turn away from the fire. The rage is gone, replaced by something colder. Something sharper.
I’m going to find her. I’m going to burn down every barrier she puts up. I’m going to drag the truth into the light and force her to see it.
She’s not poison. She’s mine.
I step over the shattered remains of the desk lamp and walk out of the study. I don't look back at the ashes.
I have a war to finish. And I have a woman to bring home.