37. Alexei
One hour earlier…
The wheels touched down moments ago, but no one moves.
Elena and I should be up already. Moving. Leaving.
Instead, our group pores over the plan again, quietly and carefully, like repeating it enough times might sharpen its edges, might make what’s waiting outside a little less dangerous.
Inside the heart of the plane, this I can control. It’s contained. The steady hum of the engine wraps around us, dulling the world beyond these walls.
Once we step outside these walls, all of that disappears. Dad’s gaze in my direction tells me he is thinking the same thing. Whatever protection this place offers disappears with it. No barriers or buffers, only exposure and risk to everyone involved.
My attention shifts to Elena, taking in the set of her shoulders, the determination she doesn’t bother hiding. She’s ready. That doesn’t make it any easier.
I’m still not settled with this, walking her straight into the kind of danger I’ve spent so long trying to keep her from.
Every instinct I have pushes against it, claws at the edges of this decision, demanding I find another way.
There isn’t one. Not if we want a real shot at getting inside Oksana’s fortress.
We’ve discussed the plan. We know it is the best play. Now I have to trust that it’ll work.
As I search each face standing before the table, each is determined. Ready. Even if no one is pretending this is routine.
A tablet glows between the group; the compound layout is washed in cold light.
The only plans we have are the original builder’s blueprint.
The builder’s plans. Not the plans that I know, Ivan and even Oksana would have altered to include high-tech security and video surveillance.
They won’t include the tunnels or underground passages that I suspect Oksana had built in terms of escape in the event we were to get past their security.
So here we stand, compensating and planning for every unknown variable we cannot see or confirm.
Dad stands over it, one hand braced against the table, the other hovering like he hasn’t decided where the plan begins.
“It won’t hold,” Dad observes. He doesn’t look up. “It doesn’t need to.”
“It does if you want them alive when this is over,” Clara articulates.
That gets a brief, sharp glance from Dad and me.
Across the table, Clara is half leaning against the wall, arms loose, like this is another job. Like her pulse isn’t already climbing when I know it is. How she always gets right before the job starts.
“They won’t be looking for subtlety,” Clara continues. “They’ll be looking for a threat.”
“You’re assuming they react the way you want,” Fletcher replies.
She smiles, slow and easy. “They will.”
Ruslan hasn’t moved much since the discussion began. He’s seated, elbows on his knees, eyes fixed on the layout like he’s already inside it.
I didn’t trust him at first.
Men like Ruslan don’t earn trust easily, not where we come from, not with what we’ve seen. But trust isn’t always something you decide. Sometimes it builds anyway, piece-by-piece, whether you want it to or not.
He proved himself. Not with words, but with action.
He stepped in when it mattered. He took the risk when he didn’t have to. I watched him put himself between danger with Elena and Clara without hesitation, his decision already made long before that moment ever came.
And now… he stands here again. Same stance and readiness, already accepting how this could end.
The others don’t see it.
They’re locked into the plan, running through details, timing, contingencies. Necessary things. Important things.
But they’re missing him.
The small things.
The way his shoulders never fully relax, even when he’s standing still. The way his eyes track every exit without meaning to. The way his jaw tightens, not at the danger ahead, but at something that’s already happened. Something that didn’t end the way he‘d hoped.
I’ve seen that look before.
I’ve worn it.
It drags me back before I can stop it, to the days after they took Elena from me.
The waiting. Not knowing. Every hour stretching into something unbearable. Every thought twisting into something worse than the last. Wondering where she was. What they were doing to her. If I was already too late. If I had already lost her.
I remember what that did to me. The edge it carved into everything. The way it hollowed me out and filled the space with something sharp and relentless. I got her back. I was one of the lucky ones.
My gaze shifts back to him. He doesn’t have that same edge of hope buried underneath it all. What he carries, it’s heavier. Final, in a way I recognize too well.
The drive pushed him forward. The way he leans into the danger instead of away from it. The tight control wrapped around something that looks a lot like grief.
He’s not fighting for something. He’s already lost it. And whatever it was… this plan doesn’t give him the ability to get it back.
“Timing,” Ruslan says.
That’s all.
I nod once, my attention drifting to Clara. “She goes in first.”
All eyes turn toward Clara, whose upper lip twitches upwards in approval.
Fletcher exhales through his nose. “Of course she does.”
Clara pushes off the wall, stepping closer to the table. “Relax. I’m not kicking down the door.”
“No,” Fletcher retorts dryly. “You’re worse.”
Clara grins at that.
I tap the outer perimeter on the screen. “You’ll have a window before things escalate. Staff rotation, light security. You get in, get close, and get us access.”
“Access how?” Fletcher asks.
Clara tilts her head. “However, they let me.”
He doesn’t like that answer. It shows.
“You’re not improvising this,” Fletcher surmises.
“I’m always improvising,” she shoots back. “That’s why this works.”
Ruslan finally looks up. “Just open the door.”
Her eyes flick to him, amused. “Duh. That’s the bloody plan.”
“No games,” Ruslan adds, voice flat.
Something shifts between them, slightly. Maybe Clara does notice it too.
She studies him for a second longer than necessary. “You want in clean,” she notes. “I get it.”
“I want in fast.”
My throat tightens, the air in the small space turning heavy, pressing in from all sides. I drag in a breath that doesn’t quite fill my lungs and clear my throat, the sound cutting through the thickening silence.
“Once she’s in, you follow,” I tell Fletcher.
“Using access that may or may not still be valid,” Fletcher questions.
“Then make it valid.”
I cut myself off mid-thought, the edge in my voice hanging in the air longer than I intend. It sounds too sharp. Too final.
Dad’s voice echoes in the back of my mind, cool, unyielding. Don’t give me a “but.” The word always landed like a flaw, like a crack in something that should’ve held.
Excuses.
I swallow, forcing the tension down, reshaping the words before they can come out wrong again. “We find a way,” I say instead, steadier now. “We always do.”
Dad looks back at the screen, already adjusting the plan in his head. “Assuming Oksana has top-of-the-line security, cameras will flag irregular movement within thirty seconds if something’s off.”
“You’ll have less than that,” I correct.
“And when you trigger your… distraction?” Fletcher asks.
“We won’t trigger it,” Elena says quietly, for the first time. “We’ll be it.”
The silence settles more heavily among the group this time.
Ruslan leans back and crosses his arms. “When?” he asks.
I meet his gaze. “When they take us in.”
Dad shakes his head slightly. “You’re assuming they don’t kill you on sight.”
“They won’t,” Elena asserts.
Her words were spoken quickly and with certainty. Her expression tightens a fraction as she stares down at the tablet in front of us, before meeting Dad’s gaze.
“They’ll want answers,” Elena adds. “We’ll give them enough to keep them interested.”
“And if they separate you?” Fletcher presses, looking between the two of us.
My jaw clenches at the thought. “Then you don’t wait,” I answer instead.
Dad, Clara, and Ruslan study me now.
“You move,” I continue. “You finish it.”
“That’s not—” Dad starts.
“That’s the plan,” I cut in, using the same tone when I give an order as King.
Ruslan nods once. No hesitation.
Dad’s attention lands on each of us, seeing it for what it is now. Not a strategy.
Trade.
His jaw tightens. “Comms?”
“Unreliable,” I note. “Assume silence.”
Clara exhales, almost a laugh. “We’ve done worse.”
“Not like this,” Dad remarks gruffly.
The words hang in the air above all of us. For a second, no one moves.
Clara reaches out and taps the screen right over the central corridor. “Make it count,” she reiterates.
Ruslan’s voice is quieter now. Focused. Certain. “It will.”
Dad finally nods, once, like he’s signing off on something he already hates.
I straighten, the decision settling into place. “Alright,” I breathe out. “We do it this way.”
No one argues.
I check my watch. “Elena and I need to get going,” I announce.
“Alexei, a moment,” Dad persists in a tone that is enough for everyone to step back and give us space.
“Look, Dad, I know this isn’t ideal?—”
His hand comes down on my shoulder before I can finish, firm and steady. It doesn’t just stop my words, it settles something in my chest I didn’t realize had started to climb.
“I know,” he says. His grip tightens once, like he needs to make sure I hear him. “There’s no one better for this. I know you’ve gone over every angle. Every outcome.”
I let out a breath through my nose, slow, controlled, but I feel it coming anyway. That familiar push at the back of my teeth. The instinct to argue. To refine. To add the part, he’s not saying.
My jaw shifts slightly, holding it back before it can surface. He sees it. He is the only one who would.
“No but, son.”
His voice drops, rougher than usual, edged with something I don’t hear from him often. Concern. Real, unguarded concern.
“Oksana and Wendell…” He exhales through his nose, gaze drifting for half a second before locking back onto mine. “They’re more dangerous than most of the enemies I’ve dealt with in this line of work.”