Chapter 28 Lev
Lev
Tony drops an encrypted drive on the desk and says, “Tell me whether I’m wasting my evening.”
I look at the drive, then at him. “That depends. Are we talking about Morozov accounting or your personality?”
He pulls out the chair across from me and sits. “Funny. Turns out, Ruslan smuggled out a batch of files before he crossed over. We recovered the last dead drop this morning, and half of it is still encrypted. I want to know whether there’s anything in there we haven’t already used.”
That tracks. Ruslan didn’t hold anything back.
He came here with what he had, and Tony has spent the last few weeks chasing down the rest. Dead drops, relay points, and backups buried under names no normal person would ever think to check.
As I’m learning, this is the kind of work Morozov men do when they assume they’ll need proof later.
I lean back in the chair and eye the drive. “You really know how to show a man a good time.”
Tony snorts. “You know the system. You know the naming conventions. You know which folders are worth opening and which ones are there to waste hours. That makes you useful.”
“There it is. I was starting to think you respected me.”
“Don’t ruin the moment.”
The office off the main study is too small for the amount of work that gets done in it with two chairs, one desk, and one laptop that’s already open. Tony’s legal pad sits to the right with three pages of notes in block letters.
He turns the screen toward me. Folders line the monitor filled with dates, region tags, and internal labels I haven’t looked at this closely since I walked away from my father’s operation.
“Start with operations,” he suggests. “Flag anything current. Cross-check what you already gave us. Dmitri wants to know whether this changes anything.”
“It probably won’t.”
“We need to know that for sure.”
He makes a face as I plug in the drive and open the first folder.
It’s filled with shipping routes, safe houses, and burner accounts.
Most of it is old. Some of it is already dead.
A few entries match what I gave Dmitri and Boris the first week I got here, right down to the account markers and courier names.
Tony takes notes while I move through the directories.
“This one matches the Kazan facility map you gave us,” he remarks. “And this transfer chain?”
“Customs bribes and transport cover. It fed through Georgia for eight months.”
He writes that down. “You handed Boris the access points on that one.”
“I did.”
“So the recovered archive confirms your story.”
I glance at him. “Were you hoping it wouldn’t?”
Tony huffs a laugh. “You really are exhausting.”
“You say that like you haven’t been enjoying yourself.”
He ignores me and taps the screen with his pen. “Open the next one.”
I do. Then the next. Then another after that.
The rhythm turns mechanical. He asks. I answer. He writes it down. I kill three old routes in Rostov, flag one active contact in Tver, and identify two shell companies that should have been burned months ago. Tony writes every piece of it down.
By the time his phone vibrates, we’ve gone through half of all of it.
He checks the caller ID and swears. “Dmitri.” He rises and points at the screen. “Keep going. Flag anything live. I’ll be back.” He starts toward the door, then stops. “And Lev?”
“Mm.”
“Don’t get cute.”
I wave him off, and the office quiets down after the door closes. I flex my hand once and open the next directory. More internal reporting. More operations. More old damage dressed up as logistics.
Most of it, I already know, which is comforting. Familiar filth is easier to sort than fresh surprises.
Then I open a folder marked 08.17.06 / MERCURY, and my whole body locks.
I stare at it for one second before I move again.
The date is off by a few days. Internal files are usually stamped when accounting processes them, not when the work happened.
The code name matters more. I know it. I knew it two years ago when I cracked a sealed archive in one of my father’s private offices and found documents he never meant for anyone else to see.
My hand tightens on the mouse.
Then I click.
A spreadsheet opens first. It’s filled with driver names, surveillance notes, vehicle registrations, and payment approvals routed through one of the offshore shells my father uses when he wants distance between himself and blood.
I open the next file.
It’s a memo, short and to the point, written by a man who treated death like scheduling.
Target male prepared to disclose operational details concerning joint Kozlov-Morozov transport channel. Immediate intervention approved. Spouse included due to exposure risk. Scene to support accidental loss of control. Local police contact confirmed.
I stop breathing for a second.
Not because the memo surprises me. It doesn’t. I know every line before I finish reading it. But because it’s here, sitting in front of me, who knows who else on the Kozlov team has or will find it.
I open the third document…and there it is.
The payout ledger. The police contact. The cleanup team. The mechanic who altered the brake system. Final confirmation from my father’s office that both targets were deceased and the matter was closed.
Polina’s parents.
Their crash wasn’t a matter of black-ice or bad luck.
It wasn’t some family tragedy everyone accepted because the paperwork looked right.
Her father threatened to expose a joint Kozlov-Morozov operation because he didn’t believe the Kozlovs should be working with the enemy without informing the men dying for the cause and my father had him killed before the problem reached anyone powerful enough to use it.
Her mother died with him because witnesses were inconvenient.
I sit there with my eyes on the screen until the back of my neck starts to ache.
Two years ago, I found these same files in a locked archive hidden behind a false cabinet wall in my father’s private study while he was away handling business in Moscow.
I was tearing through everything I could reach, looking for leverage, insurance, something I could keep in my back pocket before the rest of the family decided exactly where I belonged and how much of a threat I’d become.
I found this instead.
At first, I thought I had the wrong file.
Polina’s parents were a story everyone in our world knew in pieces.
Respected surgeon, just as his daughter eventually became.
Quiet wife. Dead on a highway outside Saint Petersburg.
Then I saw the Kozlov notation. Then the routing number. Then my father’s approval code.
And I buried it.
Those files didn’t just prove murder. They proved the Morozovs and Kozlovs had worked together, even briefly, and if that got out, it wouldn’t just stain my father’s name.
It could blow a hole through the whole empire he built.
Men had died for less. Allies would turn.
Enemies would smell blood. Half our power rested on the lie that we stood apart from families like hers.
So I moved the documents into a deeper storage layer, locked the archive again, and told myself I was buying time.
For him. For me. For the machine that raised me and taught me exactly how to protect it even as I was searching for ways to dismantle it.
Even then, I knew what I was doing. I chose the empire over the truth.
Now I’m sitting in Dmitri’s house, helping tear that same empire apart piece by piece, and all I can think is that I should have burned this thing to the ground the day I found it.
Then time turned into two years. Two years turned into Polina in my bed, Polina in my arms, and now, Polina looking at me like she wants to hate me but can’t figure out how.
Then I see the import path at the top of the screen.
Cross-reference.
DAUGHTER #1 – keep watch
DAUGHTER #2 – too young to be a risk
Of course, they kept tabs on their children. They would keep tabs on any weakness someone could use against Dmitri if needed.
But as of yet, nobody in this house knows these documents exist.
That won’t last long.
For a long time, I do nothing. The house keeps moving around me. Doors open somewhere down the hall. Footsteps pass the office once and keep going. Somebody laughs in another room. Routine carries on while I sit in front of the thing that will rip my life apart the second it reaches the wrong eyes.
Polina is upstairs. Maybe she’s reading. Maybe she’s pretending not to wait for me. I could walk out of this office right now and tell her everything. No half-truths. No protection dressed up as mercy.
My father had your parents killed. I found out two years ago. I hid it because I wanted more time before you looked at me and saw his blood.
There is no version of that conversation that ends with her staying, and I could never ask for anything more than a bitter “fuck you.”
I stand and cross the room once before I turn back.
The laptop waits where I left it. The admin tools are one click away.
Deleting the folder would take less than a minute.
Burying it would take two. I know where Tony keeps the archived imports.
I know how their backups run. I know which logs I would need to alter and which ones I could leave alone because nobody here is as thorough as they think.
I could make this disappear.
I already did once. My father spent his life deciding what other people could live with if it served him. He decided what truth they could bear. He decided what loss they could survive. He killed Polina’s parents to protect an operation. I hid the proof to protect myself from losing her.
The scale is different. The disease is not.
I sit again and pull up the admin panel. My login opens half the paths I need. Tony’s temporary override gives me the rest because he assumed I was helping. One command clears the active folder. Another corrupts the index. A third poisons the backup chain just enough to buy time.
Nobody would know.
Polina would keep looking at me the way she did last night. Angry, hurt, and wanting me anyway. I could hold on to that a little longer. Maybe long enough to get her out before this house turns into a war zone. Maybe long enough to pretend wanting something badly enough changes what I deserve.
My hand hovers over the keyboard.
Then I drop it into my lap and sit there breathing through the panic clawing up my throat.
No.
I do not get to bury her life twice.
So, I close the admin panel and leave the folder where it is. Then I switch off the ceiling fixtures and stay in my chair with the screen in front of me, finally accepting what I should have accepted two years ago.
The truth is here now. Sooner or later, it will reach her, and when it does, it will take everything with it.