8. Alina #3
Red lines carve through neighborhoods, black dots cluster in patterns. Some areas are circled, others slashed through, a few marked with a sharp, decisive X. There are dates scribbled in the margins. Numbers. Short phrases written in tight, angular handwriting.
My breath catches.
I know that handwriting.
I’ve seen it on documents my father brought home late at night, on notes scrawled in the margins of reports he never meant for me to read. On envelopes that would arrive periodically to our home without warning with messages that would make my father hole up in his office for days on end.
Sasha.
A cold awareness slides down my spine.
Is this… his study?
I step farther inside, the door clicking shut behind me, and only then does the realization settle fully into my chest.
I shouldn’t be here.
This isn’t just another room in the estate.
It isn’t a guest space or a shared area meant to be stumbled into by accident.
This is a place where decisions are made that ripple outward into the city, affecting lives I will never know.
Lives that I am almost certain will never know who decided their fate.
I should turn back.
Every instinct screams that this is the moment to retreat, to slip back through the door and pretend I never saw any of this.
Ignorance would be safer. It would let me keep pretending that Sasha is a man who is only interested in controlling what’s behind the gates of his estate.
It would let me cling to the smaller, more survivable fear that he isn’t only cruel in a personal way, but his power extends far behind that.
He’s part of the Iron Pact. What did you expect?
The thought lands with bitter clarity, stripping away any remaining illusion that I’ve wandered into the wrong place by accident.
Men like Sasha don’t rise by coincidence.
They don’t inherit this kind of authority without blood being paid somewhere along the line.
This has been going on for far longer than either of us have been alive for.
I swallow tightly, my throat burning.
They were supposed to be a myth.
A name whispered by politicians who liked to imagine themselves more important than they were.
A bedtime horror story told in half-jokes and careful euphemisms to keep children from misbehaving.
Four families so powerful, they operated beyond consequence, beyond law, beyond morality, but only in theory.
They were never supposed to actually be real.
My father hadn’t been paranoid. He’d been terrified. What stands in front of me now is something far worse.
This room doesn’t belong to a captor.
It belongs to a king.
Yet still, instead of retreating, I let my eyes wander.
I can’t help that I’m drawn deeper into this space, pulled forward by the terrible gravity of what’s laid bare in front of me. Knowledge has always been my weakness. It’s why I studied what I did, why I’ve always asked too many questions, why my father’s silences never sat right with me.
My hands drift over the ledgers on his desk before I can stop myself.
Everything is arranged with meticulous care, stacks aligned, edges squared, tabs color-coded.
I tell myself I’m only looking for a second.
That I’ll close whatever I open and leave no trace behind once I’m done, but I have to know for my own good.
I flip the first ledger open.
Numbers stare back at me in neat columns.
Dates, locations, transfers that make my stomach tighten the longer I read.
The language is clinical, stripped of emotion, but the implications hum beneath the surface.
Assets moved quietly from one holder to another.
Payments routed through shell companies and trusts with innocuous names.
Page after page is the same.
It’s a steady, unbroken thread of transactions that tell a story of not just opportunism but long-term planning. I close the ledger slowly, my pulse loud in my ears.
The drawers are next.
They slide open without resistance, whisper-quiet, and reveal more of the same—folders, ledgers, documents grouped into sections so orderly it borders on obsessive. My fingers skim over the tabs, reading names that mean little to me until one of them stops me abruptly at the very back.
Morozov.
My breath catches again.
It shouldn’t surprise me. Of course Sasha would keep detailed records of every man he’s ever dealt with, especially one as slippery and self-serving as my father. Still, seeing it here so close and accessible sends a strange chill down my spine.
I pull the drawer open farther and slide the file free, the weight of it heavier than it should be. I place it carefully on the desk and sit down in his chair before peeling back the folder.
The first few pages are contracts, agreements signed and dated with Sasha’s signature in bold, decisive lettering. My father’s is next to it, thinner, almost desperate in comparison. The imbalance between them is obvious even on paper.
I spot my name a few times while I scan the rest of the pages. Referenced in clauses that make my stomach twist. Custodial language dressed up as protection. Safeguards. Terms and conditions. A life reduced to legal phrasing and obligations I never consented to.
This must be the contract that was drawn up after I was brought here after the bombing.
I don’t read it closely.
I can’t.
It already upsets me enough how easy it was to trade me away.
Toward the back of my father’s file, I notice that the pages change.
They’re more worn than the rest—corners softened, edges faintly curled as if they’ve been handled more often and returned to again and again. They’re nothing like the pristine, untouched paper of recent years, but something older. Something revisited.
My pulse quickens as I separate them from the stack. It’s another transaction list, I think at first. The same neat columns, dates, and amounts. Codes I don’t immediately understand as I scan it lazily, half-expecting my eyes to glaze over the way they had with the other ledgers.
But then one line detonates in my vision like a gunshot.
Payment rendered for removal — APPROVED, AUG. 2008.
My breath leaves me in a sharp, soundless rush.
2008?
That was the year my mother died.
My fingers tighten around the edge of the paper as I read it again, slower this time. Payment rendered for removal. Approved.
Removal?
My entire body goes cold like someone has poured ice straight into my veins.
No.
No, that—this—it has to be a coincidence. A clerical term… A euphemism for something else. Property or… assets that were traded in order for my father to jumpstart his political career. That makes sense. That has to be it.
I cling to it, gripping the idea with white-knuckled insistence, because the alternative is unthinkable.
Everyone knows the story. After my mother’s tragic car accident, Papa was changed.
Grief-stricken. Haunted. A widower with a young daughter who suddenly understood how fragile life really was.
The narrative had been polished to a mirror shine over the years, repeated in interviews and campaign speeches until it felt absolute.
Her death became the catalyst. He sought to better the city, to make it safer and protect families from senseless loss like his own.
Since then, he’s risen steadily through the political ranks.
From committee to committee, office to office until his name carried real weight in Moscow.
He learned how to smile at the right moments, how to speak with conviction about reform and safety while never actually promising anything concrete.
He became untouchable in the way men with enough influence always do.
I grew up inside that story. I told it to myself more times than I can count. I’d rehearsed it to classmates and professors. To journalists who would ask gentle questions during interviews with sharpened curiosity hidden behind their sympathetic eyes.
“Mama’s death inspired him,” I’d always tell them, my voice steady, practiced. “He wanted to make sure no one else had to go through what we did.”
Rendered for removal.
My chest tightens painfully as doubt begins to seep through the cracks in my denial. Because if this was about property or assets or some abstract stepping stone toward Papa’s career, why does the date matter so much?
Why August?
Why that year?
Why does my body know deep in the place where my instincts live that this is not just coincidence?
“Looking for something, Printsessa ?”
The sound of his voice hits me like a physical blow.
I jump so violently, my knees slam into the underside of the desk, the sharp pain barely registering over the spike of panic that rips through me. My head snaps up, heart lurching into my throat, and I nearly fall out of the chair as I look toward the main doorway.
Sasha fills the frame of the door, one hand still resting on the knob, his shoulders drawn tight beneath his suit jacket, his posture rigid with a restraint that feels far more dangerous than anger.
His face is calm. Too calm, with the kind of stillness that comes from years of training himself not to react before deciding exactly how much damage he intends to do.
His eyes move slowly from the papers clutched in my shaking hands to my face and then back again.
I was so consumed by the file, by the words that have already begun unraveling my life thread by thread, that I didn’t hear him open the door. What’s worse, and what makes my stomach drop even further, is that he doesn’t look surprised.
“What—” My voice falters on the word. It comes out thin, barely recognizable as my own, but I force myself to keep going anyway. “What is this?”
I lift the papers and the folder higher as if presenting evidence in a courtroom. My hand is trembling so badly, the pages flutter. My eyes burn, the sting so sharp that I have to blink hard to keep the tears from spilling over and blurring everything completely.