24. Rowan #2
I’d only heard of Sokolov’s wife in passing and never had a face to put a name to. She had been mentioned before in fragments during the time Sokolov was dealing with whatever had taken him away from the Iron Pact’s orbit and had forced Nikolai’s hand in personally intervening.
To this day, I’m still not sure the exact details. Ivan had never been curious enough to find out, and therefore by extension, I was not privy to it.
Though, the casual use of Sokolov’s name coming from Sofia does surprise me somewhat.
In a strange way, it reminds me how many powerful men have now infiltrated her life without warning, how casually she’s being introduced to the private names and hidden corridors of a world that should never have reached her in the first place.
It still amazes me, even now, how well she’s handled this sudden transition in her life.
I lean back slowly against the headboard, staring at the embossed wallpaper while the tension inside me rearranges.
What does interest me now is how easily Sofia had been directly fed to me.
Calling up another Bratva leader, let alone a member of the Iron Pact, is not as simple as picking up a phone and dialing their number.
It is much more complicated than that. There are switch points and official channels all calls must go through, systems put in place within each secured residence where verification is solidified before the call can be sent to its proper recipient.
You do not simply ask for a Pakhan and get transferred because your voice sounds pretty on the other side of the line.
Not in this world when they have all spent decades surviving assassination attempts, infiltration from outside entities, government surveillance, debts bought, favors sold, bloodlines buried.
Considering Nikolai knows enough now about what is happening at the Kuznetsov Bratva, I find it interesting he’s allowed a message of any kind to reach my room without personally intercepting it.
Which means one of two things. Either Malyshko’s household is looser than it looks, which I doubt, or this call was allowed for some other outside reason.
Nikolai is not Volkov. He does not toy with people for sport alone. Volkov would allow a call like this because he’d enjoy the intimacy of it, the chance to watch what spills from the mouths of allies once the pressure builds high enough.
In this case, Nikolai wanted to know if Sofia would reach out to me without bothering to know the context beforehand.
The question is… why?
I shake my head and focus on something else.
If I let myself stay too long dwelling on thoughts of Nikolai’s intentions, I’m going to start breaking things in a guest room that doesn’t belong to me. And while that might be satisfying for five seconds, it won’t solve anything.
So I choose the next most immediate threat.
“Have you heard from your father?” I ask.
There’s a pause on the line, followed by a slow exhale that crackles softly through the receiver. I can picture her pinching the bridge of her nose, eyes closing for a second the way they always do when frustration starts to outweigh hope.
“No,” she says. “He’s gone MIA. I think the run-in with Volkov really scared him. I think he’s gone into hiding again.”
Not at all surprising considering his track record.
Though, it does irritate me to a certain extent.
Of course Dmitri Orlov disappears the second things become difficult. The man crawls out of the grave after twenty years drenched in a tragic tale and old promises, hands Sofia a fistful of half-truths, then vanishes the moment he senses smoke in the air.
Coward.
I don’t trust him. I never will. Not because I think every single thing that comes out of his mouth is a lie.
That would almost make him simpler to dismantle.
Men like Dmitri are worse because they lace truth through their performance just enough to make the poison easier to swallow.
They don’t fabricate so much as curate, taking the ugliest pieces of reality and truth and arranging them to patch over old wounds they themselves created and left behind.
Who knows when the next time will be that Sofia will be able to have contact with him again.
Not that I would encourage any of that. God knows I shouldn’t.
Not when every conversation with Dmitri seems to leave her more shaken than healed.
He’s already proven he can turn her need for answers into a weapon against her judgment.
And yet I know how much finding her father has meant to her so far. Sofia has spent most of her life without him, but that doesn’t mean his absence has ever stopped mattering to her. If anything, it has only made it larger.
Fantasies can be built around years of absence.
Questions.
Hopes you hate yourself for still having.
All of which I know Sofia still has.
I return my gaze to the ceiling, tracing the faint pattern of the paint’s brush strokes. “I’m sure he’ll contact you again when he’s ready to.”
On the other end of the line, Sofia is quiet for a moment.
“You think so?”
“I do.”
He didn’t come back now just to panic and vanish forever the second Volkov put hands on him.
It’s obvious he needs something. He wouldn’t risk exposing himself otherwise.
Whatever endgame he’s trying to survive will come back around sooner or later to bite him in the ass and force him out of hiding.
My eyes flick to the clock at my bedside.
1:14 a.m.
The numbers glow in the dim room like an execution sentence. It sends a pool of grief flooding into my stomach so suddenly it almost feels physical, like cold water dumped straight over my body.
Only six hours until tomorrow’s meeting. Six hours until I sit in a room with three out of the four most powerful men in Moscow and listen to them discuss the future of my former Pakhan. Soon, his death will stop being just a private horror haunting me and tearing me apart.
I rub a hand down my face slowly.
If I were any other man, I would be drowning my sorrows in alcohol and a warm body right now. Unfortunately, the one woman I desperately want is currently trapped within her uncle’s unyielding fortress.
My voice lowers. “I do have to warn you about something.”
There’s no hesitation on her end. “Tell me.”
The corner of my mouth tugs at that immediate, reckless, impossible readiness that makes me want to drag her out of Ivan’s house and shake sense into her while simultaneously wanting to kiss her senseless for being exactly who she is.
That tiny, helpless amusement cools almost as soon as it appears when I remember what tomorrow will bring.
How do I tell her?
I want for one ugly and selfish second to protect her from knowing just how gruesome this will get once the order is given from Nikolai.
“The Iron Pact will be meeting here tomorrow to discuss the next steps regarding Ivan.”
She exhales slowly. “It’s an execution order, isn’t it?”
It shouldn’t surprise me that she’s already guessed where this conversation is going. Sofia is the cleverest woman I’ve ever come across. Too clever, perhaps, for her own good sometimes.
Still, I hesitate before answering her. “That is what it is looking like. Yes.”
Sofia says, almost too softly, “I’m sorry, Rowan.”
My brows pull together.
Of all the things I expected her to say, that wasn’t one of them.
Far from it, actually. It doesn't escape me that she, locked in his house with half the estate closing in around her now that I am no longer there to protect her, is the one trying to comfort me while I sit far away enough to safely grieve in private inside another Pakhan’s territory.
“Why are you apologizing to me?” I ask. “He is your uncle.”
“You know my relationship with him is nothing compared to the one you have. You were his son in every way that mattered.”
My throat tightens as my eyes begin to burn.
I stare down at the duvet cover that’s been creased from my fingers and don’t answer for a bit because if I do, I’m not sure what will come out.
I don’t know what to call what I was to Ivan anymore except his future undoing.
I was never his by blood, never carried his name in any formal sense, but that didn’t mean much when he treated me like his own.
I suppose it’s poetic in a way to be taken out by that which you created. I’m sure there is some justice in that. Perhaps even a touch of dramatic irony to soothe the wounds left from being shut out without warning.
“Only fitting to be the one to take him out, don’t you think?” I muse.
The words come out low and bitter, more acid than humor. I’m not sure whether I’m trying to wound myself or make the horror sound smaller by dressing it like a joke.
She sighs again. “Is that what the plan is?”
She already understands that at this level, this can only end one way, arriving at the same conclusion I did the moment the last testament left my mouth while Nikolai sat across from me absorbing it all.
“From what I understand. Yes.”
“Then,” she says slowly, “tell me what you need. I’ll help from the inside. I won’t let you do this alone.”
God, she has a way of making the most gruesome things sound so sweet.
For one impossible moment, I let myself imagine what it would feel like to not do this alone.
To have her near me in a way that doesn’t end in one of us having to say goodbye.
What would it be like to look at her across a table and know that however monstrous the next chapter of our lives become, I am not the only one left to pick up the pieces in the aftermath?
My hand tightens around the phone so hard it almost hurts. I hope she is there once the dust settles.
I hope…
I want to be by her side. Wherever she goes, whatever she decides to do once she is out from under her uncle’s control, I will be there. No matter what. She is the star I will follow in the night’s sky. The beacon of light that will guide me into this next phase of our lives.
I will devote everything to her so long as she allows me to.