Chapter 34 Lev
Lev
By the time Polina walks out of the garage, I know exactly what has to happen next.
I stand there for another few seconds with Boris shouting for bandages behind me and a half-dozen injured men moving through the room, but none of it reaches me the way it should.
My father sent men onto Kozlov land to get to me.
Polina is carrying my child. Those two facts slam together and wipe out every other priority I had left.
I leave the triage station before Boris can hand me another task.
My boots hit concrete, then gravel, then the front steps of the main house.
Men move around me with rifles and radios, setting watches, checking the perimeter, and hauling crates toward the east side.
The whole compound is on alert. None of that matters as much as the one thing now pounding through my skull.
Vadim Morozov does not get near my child.
Dmitri’s guards step in front of his office when they see me coming.
“He isn’t seeing anyone,” one of them says.
“I need five minutes.”
The man on the left gives me a look that says I’m the reason nobody in this house is having a peaceful morning.
The door opens behind them before either can answer. Dmitri stands there with a phone in one hand and murder sitting just under his skin.
“You’ve got two,” he states.
I step inside, and he shuts the door behind me before he points at the chair across from his desk.
I stay standing.
He tosses his phone onto the desk. “Say what you came to say.”
I don’t bother circling it. “I want to lead the assault on my father’s compound.”
Dmitri stares at me. He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t speak. He just looks at me like I’ve found a new way to make his day worse.
Then he lets out one short laugh, shaking his head. “No.”
“He’ll be waiting for a Kozlov strike, but he won’t be expecting me to tag along. That will give us an opening.”
Dmitri crosses his arms over his chest. “This is about her.”
I drag a finger over the fresh dressing above my eyebrow. “She told me.”
Dmitri draws his brows together. “Told you what?”
“She’s…pregnant.”
For the first time since I walked in, his composure slips. Only for a second, but I see it. Then the pakhan returns, colder than before.
He steps around the desk and stops in front of me. “Do not use her pregnancy as leverage with me.”
“I’m not.” I keep my voice level because if I lose control now, he’ll throw me out before I finish.
“I’m not asking for trust. I’m not asking you to forgive what I did.
I’m telling you my father is striking at this compound because I crossed him, and I’m not giving him another chance to get close to my child. ”
Dmitri says nothing, so I continue.
“You want Vadim’s compound broken? You want his records, his money, his men, and his escape routes? I know that place better than anyone you have. I know which walls hide storage rooms. I know which tunnel he’ll use if he thinks the front gate is done.”
“You could also walk us into a trap.”
“If I wanted to do that, I’d have done it already.”
He eyes me for a minute before he turns, walks back to the desk, and presses the intercom button. “Send Boris and Tony in.” He releases it and looks at me again. “If either of them hates this as much as I do, you’re out of luck.”
Boris enters first, with Tony trailing behind him. One look at me standing in front of Dmitri’s desk tells them this isn’t routine.
“What now?” Boris asks.
Dmitri jerks his chin at me. “Tell them.”
I do, and Boris swears before I finish the first sentence.
“You want to walk point into your own father’s house?” Boris asks. “Have you taken another hit to the head since the garage?”
Tony folds his arms. “Why.”
“Because he’ll never expect Dmitri to put me at the front of a Kozlov strike.”
“He won’t expect Dmitri to trust you at all,” Boris points out.
“Exactly.”
Boris looks at Dmitri. “This is insane.”
Tony doesn’t look away from me. “It might work.”
Boris swings toward him. “Of course you’d say that.”
“It gives us a cleaner shot at Vadim before he scatters.”
“It also puts a loaded gun inside our own operation.”
Dmitri’s gaze stays on me. “I told him the same thing.”
I let them argue for another few seconds, then cut in. “Put a man behind me the entire time.”
That gets Boris’s attention. “What?”
“Two men. Yours. I’ll leave Ruslan behind so you don’t have to worry about us hatching anything. If I move wrong, your men can shoot me.”
Boris lets out a rough breath. “Jesus.”
Tony glances at Dmitri. Boris rubs his mouth. Neither looks thrilled. Good. A bad plan should disturb people before they agree to it.
“If we do this, we do it fast,” Tony states. “Vadim tested the perimeter today. He’ll either hit again, or he’ll pull back and change locations. We won’t get long.”
Boris points at me. “You will give me every entrance. Every blind corner. Every room Vadim uses for records, cash, and hostages. And if I think for one second that you’re holding something back, I won’t wait for Dmitri’s permission.”
“That’s fair.”
Dmitri exhales and reaches for a pen. “All right. We plan it now, and we move within forty-eight hours.”
Boris swears again, quieter this time.
Tony nods once, already moving toward the map cabinet. “I’ll pull the satellite prints.”
Dmitri looks at me with brutal clarity. “You do this my way. Not yours. You take orders. You don’t improvise unless I say so. You don’t break formation because you see your father and decide this is personal.”
“It is personal.”
“You know what I mean.”
I do.
“Okay,” I concede. “I’ll wait on your orders.”
He caps the pen and tosses it on the desk. “Then let’s build the assault.”
The next two days vanish into maps, routes, names, and timing.
I sleep in scraps, eat when Ruslan or Tony puts something in front of me, and spend every waking hour inside the bones of my father’s house.
I sketch floor plans from memory. I mark cameras, alarm panels, fallback rooms, and the tunnel exit hidden behind the wine cellar wall.
Boris walks the team through entry points until half his men can recite them without looking.
Tony builds contingencies for every door that doesn’t open and every hallway that turns into a killing lane.
Dmitri listens to all of it, cuts what he hates, and forces the rest into shape.
By the second night, even Ruslan has stopped mocking my mood.
He stands over my shoulder while I mark guard rotations on a printout and says, “I haven’t seen you like this since Novorossiysk.”
I don’t look up. “That mission ended badly.”
“So will this one if you keep going without sleep.”
“I sleep.”
“No, you pass out for twenty minutes and toss the entire time.”
I move a marker two inches to the left, ignoring him.
The room we’ve turned into a planning space smells like coffee, printer toner, and the cold food nobody had time to clear. Papers cover the table. Weapons line the sideboard. Somewhere down the hall, Boris is arguing with a driver about fuel and timing.
Ruslan glances at the map. “You’re going to kill him.”
“If I get the chance,” I confirm with an emotionless nod.
“What if Dmitri wants him alive?”
“Then I bring him out breathing, even if I’m not happy about it.”
Ruslan lifts a brow. “You sound very obedient.”
“I’m trying something new.”
“It looks terrible on you.”
That nearly gets a laugh out of me, which feels strange enough that I set the marker down and lean back.
Ruslan watches me for a second. “This about the baby or about her?”
“Both of them, I guess.”
He nods once as if that answer fits the day before he leaves me to the maps. I stay with them until the house quiets and the compound settles into that uneasy half-rest men take before violence. By the time I head to my room, my eyes burn, and every muscle in my back aches.
Sleep doesn’t come.
At midnight, I sit at the desk by the window with a blank sheet of paper in front of me and a pen in my hand. I stare at it for a long time because I know exactly what it means to write this letter.
I start anyway.
Polina,
The first line looks wrong, so I cross it out and begin again. I do that twice more before I force myself to stop acting like a man with options. This isn’t a speech. It’t not a plea. It’s what remains if I don’t walk back through those gates tomorrow night.
I keep it simple. I tell her the truth I should have told sooner.
That loving her was the only honest thing I’ve done in years.
That I’m sorry in ways language doesn’t cover.
That none of this was her fault. I tell her the child deserves every piece of my estate, every account Ruslan can extract, every property Tony can trace, and every safeguard Dmitri will allow.
I ask for nothing from her because I have no right to.
At the end, after three torn pages and one that I burn in the ashtray for saying too much too badly, I write the only thing that matters.
I would have chosen you. I should have done it sooner.
I fold the letter before I can ruin it by reading it again. Then I take a fresh envelope from the drawer and write across the front in block letters.
For Polina and the baby.
Ruslan opens the door without knocking at a quarter past one. He stops when he sees me dressed, armed, and sitting at the desk like a man waiting for sentence to be passed.
“You’re supposed to be asleep,” he notes.
“So are you.”
He notices the envelope in my hand at once. “What’s that.”
I hold it out. Ruslan takes it, glances at the front, and goes quiet.
In all the years I’ve known him, I’ve seen him walk through gunfire, fires, broken ribs, and one truly terrible dinner with my father without losing his composure. The look on his face gets closer than any of those.
His mouth opens, then closes. At last he says, “Don’t make me deliver this.”
I stand. “Only if I don’t come back.”
“I know how letters work.”
“Then don’t ask stupid questions.”
Ruslan looks down at the envelope again. When he lifts his head, there’s something devastating in his face that I never expected to see there.
“Come back and burn it yourself,” he demands.
But he slips the envelope inside his jacket anyway, like it weighs far more than paper should.