5. Sasha #3
This time, I shrug. “Political gain. He’s been polling poorly for the last two quarters.
His approval numbers are hemorrhaging after a series of legislative ‘reforms’ that did little more than strip his constituents of the very protections he campaigned on.
People tend to grow restless when they realize the man they voted for was selling them promises he never intended to keep. ”
She hums softly, encouraging me to continue.
“He’s been scrambling for months,” I add.
“Trying to manufacture relevance. Sympathy. Unity. And what better way to redirect public outrage than with an unforeseeable tragedy? A bombing reframes the narrative. Suddenly, he’s not the corrupt official under investigation.
He’s the grieving public servant standing shoulder to shoulder with his people.
Fear has a way of smoothing over inconvenient truths quite easily. ”
“Interesting,” Lena murmurs, tapping a manicured nail against the armrest. “Though I can’t help but wonder what purpose handing his daughter over to you served.”
It isn’t exactly a question. Not in the way an advisor or an outsider would pose to me, at least. There’s no curiosity laced with uncertainty, no testing of boundaries.
Lena already knows—or at least suspects—that Alina’s presence here is not incidental.
She understands leverage when she sees it.
She understands bargains made in desperation.
And the fact that she hasn’t said Alina’s name yet tells me she’s waiting to see how honest I intend to be.
I concede. “Morozov needed to keep his daughter out of the public eye for a while. The bombing happened at her university. Supposedly, she was supposed to be escorted around campus with bodyguards, however none were found at the scene.”
Lena’s brow shoots up immediately. “None?”
“None,” I confirm. “Which means that if any journalist worth their salt starts pulling on that thread, it becomes a problem very quickly. Why was a bomb able to go off on a campus where a high-ranking politician’s daughter was present?
How did something like that slip past her security detail?
Why wasn’t she removed immediately once the threat became credible?
” I pause, then add flatly, “He would have no answers. Because the truth is, he’s never actually done a good job protecting her. ”
Her expression sharpens, disbelief flickering across her face. “He’s left her unattended since his election?”
“No. But restricting her movements in order to maintain a level of control over her isn’t the same as actually caring about her safety.
” I clench my jaw. “He had guards on campus, yes. But they were sitting in a vehicle more than a hundred yards away from the building the bomb went off in. The same building she was inside. I had to?—”
I stop myself abruptly.
Regret pools in my stomach almost instantly, heavy and unwelcome. I shouldn’t have said that much. I shouldn’t have let irritation drag the truth so close to the surface. Especially not in front of Lena who has never once accepted half-answers from me and never will.
This, whatever this is, was never meant to leave the confines of my mind.
Ever. It was supposed to remain compartmentalized, buried beneath logistics and contingency plans and the cold calculus of power.
I have lived my entire adult life knowing precisely where to draw the line between thought and confession.
And right now, I have just stepped way over it.
Lena leans forward suddenly, elbows braced on her knees, her eyes narrowing on me. They gleam now, not with concern but with something far more dangerous. Interest. The unrestrained delight of someone watching a puzzle finally begin to assemble itself. “You had to what?”
“Nothing,” I reply immediately. “It doesn’t matter.”
She lets out a quiet laugh, the sound sharp and delighted. “Oh, it absolutely matters.” Her lips curve, slow and knowing. “Sasha… what did you do?”
I press my lips together, saying nothing because if I open my mouth now, the rest of it might spill out and once spoken, there will be no pretending this is still just a business arrangement between Morozov and me.
I say nothing, which in Lena’s world is an answer all on its own.
She leans back in her chair slowly, studying me the way a predator studies the terrain before striking its prey. Her amusement softens slowly, giving way to something else. This is the version of my sister the world rarely ever sees.
Not the cosmopolitan socialite gliding through European capitals. Not the sharp-tongued negotiator who dismantles men twice her size with simply a smile and a glass of champagne. Not the woman who wears danger like a second skin and laughs in its face.
This version of her is tender.
Her soft spot for me has always been her underbelly.
It is the one place she never armored properly, no matter how many cities she’s conquered or how many men have learned to fear her smile.
She can outmaneuver enemies, dismantle alliances, bleed information from people who swear they have nothing left to give, but with me there has always been a fracture in her defenses, a hairline crack she never bothered to seal.
Lena has never tried to save me from this life.
She knew better than to believe that was possible.
Instead, she learned how to stand close enough to intervene when I came too close to losing myself entirely.
Her tenderness is not expressed in reassurances or pleas.
It is expressed in vigilance. In questions that sound like challenges.
In moments like this when she leans back and looks at me not as a Pakhan , but as her brother.
“You warned her,” she says at last. “How unlike you.”
My jaw tightens.
“You realize what this looks like. To Malyshko, I mean,” she continues calmly.
“I’ve already gotten the lecture,” I reply flatly. “I don’t need it from you too.”
She doesn’t rise to the bait. Lena never does when it matters. Instead, she tilts her head slightly, studying me from a new angle as if recalibrating. “The Iron Pact knows you’re keeping her indefinitely?”
“Yes.”
She watches me for a long moment, her gaze sharpening, losing what little softness it had left. “He’s going to have you kill her if he believes you’re getting attached. You know that, right?”
I don’t answer immediately.
Without meaning to, my eyes drift back to the monitor. To Alina’s room.
Lev has finally arrived, standing just inside the doorway with his usual impassive posture.
She’s speaking animatedly, her hands moving as she talks, clearly frustrated and unimpressed by whatever excuse he’s giving her.
Even through a silent security feed, I can tell she’s arguing her case with the same stubborn fire she’s shown me since the moment she arrived.
I watch Lev gesture toward the hall, watch her pause, sigh, then follow him out of the room.
I fight the instinct to switch the feed to the hallway cameras, to track her every step the way I normally would. My fingers twitch toward the controls before I can stop them. I curl my hand into a tight fist instead, nails biting into my palm.
I don’t miss the way Lena’s eyes flick to my hand.
She’s right, and I hate that she is.
Nikolai Malyshko is the youngest among the four of us in the Iron Pact, yet he is also the most ruthless.
He came into power a little over five years ago, carving his place out of his father’s legacy after a coup so violent it left entire districts scrambling to rebuild from the wreckage.
He did not inherit his syndicate’s loyalty through the usual means like the rest of us through our fathers’ passing the torch.
He stole his through force.
As our unofficial king, he has made it abundantly clear that sentiment has no place in our arrangement. That distraction is a weakness. That interpersonal relationships—especially ones that blur the line between leverage and attachment—are liabilities to be excised swiftly and without remorse.
‘We are not meant to want. We are meant to control.’ has been his personal mantra for years now.
I know the moment Nikolai decides that Alina Morozova is no longer a useful piece on the board but rather a crack in my armor, he will not hesitate to force my hand.
He will frame it as necessity, as preservation of balance.
As an order issued not out of cruelty, but out of responsibility to the Pact.
To Moscow. To the empire our families built together for generations.
Kill her or lose everything.
I drag in a slow breath, forcing my expression back into something unreadable. “I’m aware.”
Lena’s gaze doesn’t soften. If anything, it hardens. “You need to be careful with your next steps moving forward. You’re gambling with more than territory this time, Sashenka.”
I don’t respond because anything I say would be redundant.
The cost of my defiance will not be measured in lost ports or seized accounts. It will not be counted in dead soldiers or burned routes. This time, the price will be personal, designed to break something inside me rather than merely inconvenience my operations.
Nikolai doesn’t just punish disobedience. He creates examples. If he decides I’m compromised, he won’t stop at forcing my hand. He’ll dismantle me and my family piece by piece. He’ll turn my allies into witnesses to my downfall and my victories into cautionary tales.
This time, the battlefield is not Moscow. It is my own resolve.
For the first time in years, I am not certain which of us—Nikolai or I—will be the one to see this through to the end.