Chapter 32 Lev
Lev
They send two men for me just after sunrise, which is polite by Bratva standards and a bad sign by any other measure.
Neither of them speaks on the walk to Dmitri’s office. They don’t need to. Men don’t get escorted through a guarded compound before breakfast unless somebody has died or somebody is about to. Since I’m still breathing, I can make an educated guess which category I belong to.
I knew this was coming the second Polina walked out of my quarters with that file in her hands and murder in her eyes.
I enter Dmitri’s office alone. One look tells me this is not a private conversation.
Dmitri stands behind his desk. Alexei is seated to his right with his elbows on his knees and violence written all over his face.
Tony leans against the wall beside the windows, quiet as ever, though I don’t miss the fact that he is armed twice over.
Boris has taken the chair near the bookshelf. He looks old, tired, and furious.
No one offers me a seat.
Dmitri rests one hand on a file spread open in front of him. “You know why you’re here.”
“Yes.”
Alexei lets out a low, humorless laugh. “At least he’s not stupid.”
“That remains under review,” Dmitri contends. His eyes stay on mine. “You seduced my cousin, dated her for months knowing what kind of hell that could cause her, all the while knowing damn good and well your father ordered the hit on her parents.”
I swallow hard and force out, “Yes.”
Alexei rises so fast his chair jerks back across the floor. “That’s it? That’s the whole fucking answer?”
I refuse to flinch as I keep my eyes on Dmitri. He’s the one in charge here. Not his little brother, no matter how bad the man’s temper may be. “Do you want a longer one?”
“I want a reason not to kill you,” Alexei snarls.
“I don’t have one.”
That buys me half a second of silence.
Dmitri closes the file. “Why?”
There are a dozen ways I could answer. None of them change what I did.
“Because I chose my family over her,” I answer simply. “Then I kept choosing it every day after.”
Alexei swears and takes a step toward me. Tony leaves the wall at once, not to defend me, but to head off the very immediate possibility that this meeting ends with Alexei breaking my jaw before Dmitri says his piece.
“Sit down,” Dmitri tells his brother.
Alexei stares at him for one long second, then yanks his chair back into place and sits, though every line of him promises this is temporary.
Dmitri looks at me again. “Did you ever intend to tell her?”
“I told myself I was waiting for the right time.”
Dmitri nods once, as if that answer fits what he already knew. “Did you tell anyone else? Did your father send you to her hospital?”
“No. Nobody in my family knows we’ve been seeing one another.”
Alexei sputters his lips. “How noble.”
“I never said I was noble.”
Boris finally speaks up. “Did Vadim know you read the file?”
“I imagine so. He tracks who accesses his files, same as you do. Though he never asked me about it.”
“And he trusted you anyway.”
The question under that is obvious. Why would Vadim keep a man close after handing him proof of something that could crack his own house open.
I shrug and reply, “Because I’m his dutiful son.”
Alexei rises again, slower this time, and stalks toward me until there is barely any space left between us. “My wife spent last night holding your woman together while she cried over what you did.”
I do my best not to react outwardly. I can’t afford to. But I must slip up, because Alexei’s mouth lifts in a menacing smile.
“That one hurt.”
Tony cuts in before I can answer. “Alexei.”
“No, let him answer.” Alexei turns back to Dmitri. “Or better idea, let me kill him now. We save ourselves the trouble of pretending this ends any other way.”
Boris exhales. “This is bad timing.”
Alexei throws a hand toward me. “You think?”
“We have a Morozov assault coming,” Boris reminds him, “and this bastard knows their routes, their fallback houses, their dirty money, and half the names they’ve been hiding for ten years.”
Alexei turns his glare on him. “You want to keep him?”
“I want to win first. We can deal with him once this is done.”
“That’s convenient for him.”
Tony steps in then. “It’s convenient for all of us.”
Alexei turns on him next. “You gave her the file. Not Dmitri. ”
“I knew she would tell him. I just thought she deserved a minute to sit with the information on her own terms.”
Alexei barks out a laugh. “You always sound so calm when you drop a bomb in the middle of the room.”
Tony doesn’t bother defending himself. He looks at Dmitri. “He’s guilty. We all know it. None of that changes the math. The Morozov side will move soon. If we lose his intel now, we go into that fight half blind.”
“I’m not blind,” Alexei argues.
“You are if you think pride replaces information.”
Boris rubs a hand over his mouth. “He’s right.”
Alexei rounds on him. “Are you fucking serious?”
“I’ve buried enough men in my life to know the difference between vengeance and strategy,” Boris says. “One feels better. The other keeps your people alive.”
Silence settles over the room. Not calm. Not even close. Just the ugly pause before someone decides who gets to keep breathing.
Dmitri looks at me with the same focus he would use on a gun laid out on a table. In this moment, I’m a useful object with a clear purpose that just happens to be easy to destroy later.
“Do you have anything else to say for yourself?” he asks.
“No.”
Alexei laughs again. “Amazing.”
I keep my eyes on Dmitri. “There is no defense.”
At that, something in the room eases. Not because anyone forgives me. Because at least I’m not stupid enough to insult them with excuses.
Dmitri’s voice turns colder. “So what do you propose?”
“Let me finish the operation.”
Alexei makes a disgusted sound.
I go on anyway. “I’ll give you everything I have. Every route, every name, every house, every account, every man I can turn before the Morozov side knows they’ve been sold out.”
“And after that?” Dmitri asks.
“After that, I submit to whatever justice you decide.”
Alexei’s eyes narrow. “How generous.”
“It isn’t generosity.”
“What is it, then?”
I look at him. “A debt. Not to any of you, but to Polina. I need to know that at the end of all this, she’s safe.”
Tony’s face gives nothing away. Boris watches me as if he’s taking my measure for the first time and not enjoying the result. Dmitri says nothing for so long that I start to hear the clock on the far wall.
At last he asks, “You’ll accept any outcome? Even if Polina asks for your death?”
My answer comes without effort. “Yes.”
Dmitri studies my face as if he expects to catch the lie forming before I can speak it. He won’t. There are many things I’ve lied about. This is not one of them.
Finally he nods once. “All right. You will remain available at all times. You’ll give Tony full access to everything you have on the Morozov side, and you won’t leave the compound without my approval. You will not go near Polina unless she asks to see you.”
That last one lands harder than the rest, but I nod anyway. “Understood.”
His eyes stay on mine. “Do not mistake patience for mercy, Lev. This conversation is not over.”
Alexei pushes away from the chair. “If he runs, I want the first shot.”
“I’m not running,” I state.
“That’s your best idea today.”
Dmitri closes the file. “Get out.”
I leave before anybody decides to improve the morning with blood.
The walk back to my quarters feels longer than the one in. Men nod as I pass. A few avoid my eyes. News moves fast in places like this. So does judgment.
Ruslan is waiting just outside my door. He pushes off the wall when he sees me. “You look terrible.”
“Thank you.”
“How bad was it?”
“Bad enough that Alexei wanted to shoot me in Dmitri’s office.”
Ruslan winces. “And Dmitri?”
“Wants to deal with me later.”
“That sounds worse.”
“It is.”
I open the door and step inside. Ruslan follows without asking, which tells me he has something else on his mind. I shrug off my jacket and toss it over the back of a chair.
“What?” I ask.
He takes his time answering, which I don’t like. “One of the guards on the east side saw Polina this morning. The compound has a doctor on staff, I guess. She was on her way back from seeing him.”
My body goes on alert, and my spine snaps ramrod straight. “Why was she there? Is she hurt?”
He tilts his head to the side, trying to tell me something without actually saying it. “All I know is she’s been throwing up.”
The room goes silent.
Every thought I have crashes into the next. Concern hits first, fast and hard. Is she sick? Is something wrong? Did she go alone? Then Ruslan’s look settles in, and the possibility opens under my feet.
No.
I bark out a laugh, because the second the thought takes shape, I know exactly why it terrifies me. Not only because I might have put a child in her body, but because I might have done it and lost the right to stand beside her before I ever knew.
Then one brutal truth follows another. She could be carrying my child. She could be dealing with it alone. If that’s what this is, I’ve earned every locked door waiting for me.
“Fuck,” I breathe.
I drag a hand over my mouth and look at the floor, then at the door, then back at him.
“She would have told me,” I claim, though I no longer believe it.
Ruslan lifts a brow. “Would she?”
No.
Not now.
Not after what I did.
I grab my keys off the table and head for the door.
Ruslan moves aside but tells me, “If that’s what this is, don’t go there and make it worse.”
“That advice would’ve been more useful a few months ago.”
By the time I’m out the door and across the hall, I’ve told myself five different versions of what I’ll say when she opens the door. None survive longer than a few seconds.
I reach her rooms and knock once, hard enough to be heard.
Nothing.
I wait, then knock again.
“Polina,” I yell into the wood.
No answer.
I try the handle, but it’s locked.
For one stupid second I rest my forehead against the door and listen for movement on the other side. There’s none. Either she isn’t here, or she’s here and wants me shut out.
Either way, deep down, I know the truth is, there’s no coming back from this for us. No matter how badly I wish it wasn’t true.