Chapter 18
Lev
I know we’re out of time before Ruslan clears the second turn away from the hotel.
He drives with both hands on the wheel and his mouth shut, which means he’s either furious or thinking. Tonight, I suspect it’s both. I sit in the back with Polina, and all I can think is that she’s in danger because of me.
I was invited to the event as a potential donor. I declined at first, but once I found out through the grapevine that Polina would be there, I decided to use that as an excuse to see her.
Thank God I changed my mind.
My father’s men followed her to a public event. They were watching. That alone is a problem. If they start asking questions, it gets worse fast.
They won’t need much. One clerk willing to talk, one report pulled by the wrong man, and her face lands in front of my father, and he does what he always does when he sees something useful near an enemy family.
He either turns it into leverage or gets rid of it.
By the time I get Polina home, my decision is already forming, even if I still hate it.
She doesn’t invite me upstairs, nor do I ask.
She stands on the sidewalk, barefoot because she never put the heels back on, and she looks at me like she wants to kiss me and kill me in the same breath.
“Tell me what you’re not saying,” she demands.
Street traffic rolls past us. Ruslan waits at the curb with the engine running.
“I can’t do this here,” I reply with a sigh.
Her eyes narrow. “You keep saying that.”
“I know.”
“Stop showing up and dragging me into cars if you’re not going to tell me the truth.”
She’s right, and I still don’t tell her. I need one more night to be sure. I tell myself a lot of things while looking at the woman my father might kill because I touched her.
“Go inside,” I say instead.
Her mouth parts like she’s about to tear into me. Then she clamps it shut and takes one step back.
“I’m very tired of your half-answers, Lev.”
“I know.” It’s the only thing I can say without detonating everything on a Moscow sidewalk.
She stares at me for a second longer, then turns and walks into her building without looking back.
I get back in the car after the door closes behind her.
Ruslan checks me in the mirror. “You want me to say it?”
“You’re going to anyway.”
“You should’ve told her.”
“I know that.”
Back at home, I shower, change, and sit on the edge of my bed as I stare at the wall for an hour.
I pour whiskey and don’t drink it and spread city maps across my kitchen table like territory lines will solve a problem that stopped being about territory the second Polina looked at me in the hospital room.
By three in the morning, I stop pretending this is strategy and call it what it is.
A timeline.
How long before my father’s men connect the surgeon at the fundraiser to the woman I’ve been seeing?
Days, if I’m lucky.
Less if I’m not.
I write down every outcome I can think of, and none of them are clean.
I could move Polina, but that would be useless. My father would still find her, and she’d never forgive me for trying to hide her away without answers.
Keep lying and hope for time? Stupid. Hope isn’t a plan, and my father has never given me time when he can take blood instead.
I could tell Polina everything and run. We’d last a week before someone caught us, and she’d spend every hour hating me for dragging her into a life she didn’t choose.
Killing the men who followed her would be a temporary fix. Bodies raise more questions than reports.
I keep circling the same point until dawn turns the sky gray over the rooftops.
The only way to keep Polina alive is to take her to Dmitri Kozlov.
If I stay loyal to my father, she dies. If I betray him, I lose everything I was raised to protect. I know which loss I can survive.
The thought sits in my chest like a bullet.
Walking into Kozlov territory and confessing to sleeping with the pakhan’s cousin while my family attacks their operations isn’t a negotiation. It’s me stepping into a room full of men who have every reason to put a gun in my mouth and call it justice.
I can live with that.
What I can’t live with is my father putting Polina in a car and sending her body back as a message.
I shove the maps off the table and finally drink the whiskey.
By noon, I haven’t changed my mind.
I text Ruslan to meet me at a bar we use when we need privacy and mediocre vodka.
He arrives five minutes after I do, scans the room, and sits across from me without taking off his coat.
“You look like hell,” he comments.
“You always know how to cheer a man up.”
He signals the server with two fingers. “What’s the plan? I assume that’s why we’re here.”
I hold eye contact as I drag in a breath and reply, “I’m going to Dmitri Kozlov.”
Every muscle in his body tenses. The server drops off two glasses and a bottle. Ruslan waits until she leaves before he speaks.
“Say that again.”
“I’m taking Polina to him. I’ll give him what I know about my father’s operations and ask for protective custody.”
Ruslan lets out a slow breath and pours vodka into both glasses. “You’re insane.”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.” He slides one glass toward me. “You’re talking about walking into enemy territory and handing them your throat.”
“You asked me once if she was worth losing everything. I didn’t answer you then, but right now, I’m telling you she is.”
Ruslan drinks, then sets the glass down harder than he needs to. “What if Dmitri kills you on sight?”
“Then he kills me.”
He rubs a hand over his mouth. “And if Kozlov decides he wants leverage, too? You bring him your head and hers in one package.”
I shake mine. “Dmitri isn’t my father.”
Ruslan barks a short laugh. “He’s still a pakhan.”
“I know what he is. I also know what he does when someone threatens his family. If my father’s men make her, she dies or gets used. If Dmitri finds out from me first, he might hate me, but he’ll lock her down and keep her breathing.”
Ruslan eyes me for a long moment, tilting his head. “You’ve thought this through.”
“All night. Planned my funeral while I was at it.”
Ruslan taps one finger on the table. “What do you need from me?”
I knit my eyebrows together and lean forward, certain I misheard him.
I’ve spent years testing loyalty because most people fail when pressure hits. They want power, money, or a safer side to stand on when bullets fly. Even men who swear on blood start doing math when the risk becomes real.
Ruslan just called me insane and moved straight to logistics.
“You’d come with me?” I ask.
He gives me a look like I insulted him. “At this point, I think we’ve passed casual friendship.”
I gawk at him because I don’t know what the fuck else to do.
He lifts his glass. “Don’t make it weird.”
A laugh bubbles out of me before I can stop it. It feels wrong after the night I had, but it helps.
I scrub a hand over my face and get practical, because if I sit with what I'm about to do to my father's name—to thirty years of being the son who never flinched, chose wrong, or anything above the organization—I won't be able to move.
Half an hour later, I leave the bar with my stomach full of bad vodka and certainty.
The city feels different knowing I’m about to betray my father. Every street looks familiar and temporary. I check mirrors as I drive, check the building entry and the alley behind the dumpsters out of habit, because habit keeps men alive.
Inside, I shut the door and stand in my kitchen with my phone in my hand.
I’ve called Polina plenty of times.
To flirt. To bait her. To hear her voice after a bad day. To make sure she got home. To ask for one more hour when I already knew I didn’t deserve it.
This is different.
If I do this right, she hears the urgency and comes with me.
If I do it wrong, she hears another empty answer and hangs up.
She answers on the fourth ring. “What?”
No hello. Fair.
“It’s me.”
“I know who it is. Are you calling to explain why your father’s men were at my fundraiser, or are we doing your favorite thing, where you say just enough to make me furious and then disappear?”
I close my eyes for a second. I deserve every word.
“I’m coming over.”
“No,” she snaps. “You do not get to just announce you’re coming over after last night.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“You should’ve done that a week ago.”
“There’s something I have to tell you. You need to hear it from me before anyone else.”
A short, angry breath comes through the speaker. “You’re unbelievable.”
“So I’ve been told.”
She waits a beat, then says, “You need to hear this clearly, Lev. If this is about keeping me in the dark while you decide what I can handle, don’t come here.”
“It isn’t.”
The word costs me because it is only half true. I’m still deciding how to say what comes next. I’m still choosing the order of the damage.
But I’m coming, and I’m done keeping her outside the door.