1. Rowan #2
The death of Ramil Borchin should have created an opportunity, a facture point to exploit and crack open a door that has been locked down for years.
Infiltrating deep into Russia’s government sectors has always been tricky business, establishing any type of mole even more so.
But instead of taking control and filling the vacuum left in Borchin’s absence as planned, the whole thing quickly spiraled into a public spectacle.
News cycles had fed on the scandal within hours of it happening like vultures, the rumors surrounding the incident multiplying, all of them plastering the same rhetoric—a daughter with too much nerve and too little loyalty demanding retribution, and a father whose loose morals had finally come back to haunt him.
Every ugly possibility had been quickly dragged into the daylight and forced under public scrutiny, turning it into the one thing Ivan has always hated the most—a complete and uncontrollable mess.
He hates improvisation even more. And worst of all, he hates having to sit at this table pretending the last several weeks have not disrupted the careful timetable he has spent years constructing in private.
His thumb shifts once against his knuckles. A tiny motion, meaningless to anyone who doesn’t know him. To me, it may as well be a snarl.
Aleksandr Volkov is the first to speak.
He does it with a soft, derisive snort, like the entire conversation has already bored him.
He leans farther back into his chair until he is practically sprawled across it.
One arm hooks lazily over the side and his other hand drifts toward the glass near his elbow, though he doesn’t lift it.
His fingers glide over the sweaty surface.
Everything about him at first glance reads like carelessness and insolence.
I used to think he was a man too arrogant to bother respecting the room he’s in. Over the years, I’ve come to understand differently. Nothing about Volkov is careless.
It is all theater.
I have watched him do it before, letting people talk themselves into thinking he is less attentive than he is. Then the mask slips for half a second and suddenly, someone is choking on their own blood before he fully understands the conversation has turned.
“She did us a favor. Better he’s dead than making a mess. You really think this shitstorm wasn’t going to happen eventually?” His mouth twists into something that is not quite a smile. “Think logically, Kuznetsov. My wife did you all a favor.”
There is a ripple of tension that runs throughout the room after he says it. For all Volkov’s swagger and all the offense baked into the way he says my Pakhan’s name like an insult, there is logic in his position.
Katerina Borchin publicly condemning her father, then later helping to execute him for his crimes, personal and otherwise, had been an impulsive move from Volkov’s camp.
No one here would argue against that. It had detonated in public view, the fallout spreading in every direction and forcing everyone to spend weeks containing the damage.
But that did not make it the wrong move, because the truth of the matter was that Borchin had become an infection needing to be culled.
His debts alone were enough to convince the tabloids to continue sniffing around his finances after his daughter exposed him, chasing salacious details about gambling losses and expensive habits that didn’t match his official income.
Sooner or later, someone would have followed the paper trail far enough back to find the source of the money, or rather, the source of the debt.
And once they found that, everything would begin to unravel.
Volkov holding leverage over a government-connected man would be unable to be wiped away with something as simple as a few backroom deals and threats disguised as blackmail to keep certain mouths shut.
A public scandal like that never stays neatly contained in our world when the one at the helm of it has his hands dipped in more than just one government official’s back pocket.
Catastrophic is too soft a word for what that would have become.
Borchin dead meant there would no longer be a lead to dig up.
Eventually, news cycles always shift interest once the court of public opinion has no one left to prosecute.
Katerina’s revenge had done more than just satisfy her need for justice.
It gave her little reason to keep speaking.
There was no need to keep dragging her father’s sins back into the light once his blood had already paid for them.
At the head of the table, Malyshko has barely moved in the last twenty minutes. A shift of his hands once, fingers coming together in a quiet steeple beneath his chin. The faintest adjustment of one shoulder before growing still once again. The only things that move are his eyes.
It is unnerving to watch.
When he finally speaks, the room goes utterly silent.
“The problem isn’t Borchin’s demise. The government is still scrambling internally, which means disruptions for us.
Instead of keeping their heads down and doing what they are told, they are too busy looking inward trying to assemble their own investigations into the matter. ”
His gaze drifts then, first to Volkov who receives it with a slight frown tugging at the corner of his mouth, then to Ivan whose face remains composed enough that most would miss the faint hardening at the corners of his mouth. Then finally to the untouched documents near the center of the table.
It seems this is no longer about one dead official causing a temporary stir.
That would be irritating. Costly, maybe, but at the very least manageable.
A corpse can be buried without notice, a scandal can be smothered with a few journalists bought or frightened or disappeared if the situation calls for it.
We all know this. But that is not what Nikolai is talking about.
He is talking about the dangerous energy that forms when frightened institutions begin lashing out blindly because no one with enough authority has stepped in to guide that fear somewhere useful.
The government is wounded and embarrassed, suspicious of its own parties.
Wounded institutions are like wounded animals, unpredictable, desperate, and prone to thrashing at shadows until they finally hit something real.
That is what concerns him.
Volkov may be right that Borchin is more useful dead than alive. On a basic tactical level, he probably is. But Nikolai is already three moves past that line of thinking, already staring beyond the corpse and into the machinery it has disrupted.
The crisis is what his death has set into motion. It has left nervous men in government offices asking the wrong questions and has left bureaucrats peering too closely at paper trails they should have no idea existed.
Exposing any part of the Iron Pact will topple the entire regime completely. Institutions like ours only work because no one is aware who the real masterminds are behind the scenes pulling the strings.
“Regardless of whatever their investigation turns up, we do not want to be at the center of whatever conclusions they are drawing,” he finishes.
It is a hell of a predication.
These men have spent years, decades in some cases, building elaborate systems of distance between themselves and the ugliest mechanics of their empires.
Layers of deniability, loyal intermediaries, officials bought young and promoted carefully because of their obedience.
Violence here is never supposed to lead back to the hand that ordered it.
You do not survive this long by committing brutality openly and then trusting fear to protect you from consequence.
Fear has a short shelf life. Eventually, someone braver or more desperate will come along to disrupt the balance.
Ivan’s jaw tightens so subtly that most would miss it.
But I don’t. The muscle pulse near the hinge of his jaw, a tiny split in the granite calm he likes to wear when he wants to appear above the mess instead of knee-deep in it.
He does not enjoy being reminded that control is already slipping from his fingers.
More than that, he hates hearing the unspoken implication that events are moving faster than even he can contain.
My Pakhan prefers every variable be accounted for. To suggest otherwise is not merely an inconvenience. It is an insult to the religion he’s made of his own competence.
Across the table, Sokolov finally speaks. His tone is even, almost mild. “So, what are we supposed to do?”
Ivan has been waiting for that question.
I can see it in the way he shifts forward by half an inch.
His fingers unlatch and flatten against the table, broad palms braced lightly against the polished wood.
His expression doesn’t change much, but something underneath it shifts, a dormant current coming alive.
This is familiar terrain for him.
“I propose we set up a puppet within the ranks. One of our own, not paying one off already inside. Men like Borchin aren’t ideal to control when they have already been institutionalized before we get to them.
Putting one of our own in from the start will guarantee us control as they grow within their role. ”
For a second, the words simply hang in the air with no response.
He is not talking about another useful coward fed enough money and promises to keep his mouth shut while moved around to further whatever agenda is on the table that month.
He is talking about planting someone inside the machine itself and raising them there like a seed planted deliberately under concrete, waiting for the first crack in the foundation to split open around it as the roots grow deep into the soil bed.
My stomach tightens with anticipation.