25. Sasha
SASHA
I n the weeks following, I find myself falling into an easy routine.
I stop measuring my days in crises and contingencies and start measuring them in smaller, stranger ways.
Morning light spilling across the bed to wake us before either of us bothers to move.
The way Alina steals my coffee despite insisting she doesn’t like it that strong.
The sound of her footsteps coming down the hall before I even see her when she comes to collect me for bed.
All of it is a rhythm I’ve learned without realizing it.
I’m no longer worried about where we stand.
What we fall into is something that feels almost effortless.
My entire life has been built on vigilance, on anticipation and control, every relationship transactional, every alliance conditional.
I’ve always prided myself on never needing anyone.
Needing is a liability. Wanting is a crack in the armor.
Depending on someone else to steady you is how men like me end up dead.
I used to think the idea of a relationship, of domesticity, routine, emotional reliance, was horrifyingly dull.
Except… Alina has dismantled that belief piece by piece.
She doesn’t demand space in my life. She simply occupies it naturally. She doesn’t try to soften me or pretend she doesn’t see the worst parts of me. I think she understands them better than anyone ever has. Somehow, that understanding doesn’t come with fear or judgment, just love.
I still wake some nights expecting the other shoe to drop.
Expecting Nikolai to reappear with a changed mind.
For the unspoken debt to come due, for a knife I never saw coming to finally press against my throat.
Men like him don’t grant mercy without reason.
They don’t forget weakness once they’ve identified it simply because of a longstanding pact.
And yet, so far, nothing has happened.
There have been no summons. No quiet tests of loyalty.
No veiled threats coming to me at odd hours in the middle of the night.
The Iron Pact hums along as if nothing fundamental had been shifted the night Alina pulled the trigger and rewrote the balance of power between all of us with a single shot.
But I don’t question it. Questioning good fortune is how you lose it.
So instead, I focus on what I can control.
Viktor Morozov’s death is already being reshaped into another palatable tragedy for the masses.
A story woven about a tragic, senseless assassination tied to the very bombing investigation he had so bravely been championing, a man cut down while fighting for the safety of his city.
Candlelight vigils bloom overnight. His face is everywhere again, but this time, it is softened, sainted, stripped of the rot beneath the polish.
The masses eat it up.
They always do.
Grief is easier to manage when it’s packaged neatly.
When outrage can be redirected. I make sure it flows exactly where I want it—away from the Iron Pact and toward a convenient phantom enemy that will never be caught.
A shadow that can shoulder all of the blame until people grow bored and move on to the next tragedy.
By the end of the week, Viktor’s replacement is sworn in without so much as a hiccup.
Vadim Khasanova.
He’s younger than Viktor was. Hungrier. The kind of man who learned early on that survival favors flexibility over pride.
His spine bends easily when pressure is applied to it, and he has just enough ambition to keep him obedient.
Men like him don’t crave power for its own sake. They crave proximity to it.
Which makes him useful.
Unlike Viktor, Vadim doesn’t pretend to forget who placed him where he is.
He answers my calls on the first ring. He asks before making decisions instead of asking for forgiveness afterward.
He understands the unspoken rules without needing them spelled out, and most importantly, he doesn’t see Alina as leverage.
That alone makes him infinitely more preferable.
I sit at my desk late into the evening following Vadim’s swearing-in, pen scratching steadily across paper as I finalize the last strings that need pulling, bank approvals and subtle reallocations of funding that will never be traced back to me.
Every signature locks another piece of the city into place like a chessboard settling after a decisive move.
Outside my office window, snow begins to fall.
My hand pauses mid-signature when my phone rings.
I glance at the display and feel my brow crease.
Volkov.
I don’t answer it right away.
Why in the world would he be calling? We don’t call each other.
Anything we need to say usually travels through intermediaries, filtered and softened just enough to keep teeth from showing.
With the dust barely settled from our last meeting and the blood still metaphorically drying on the stone floor, I can’t imagine a single reason he’d want to make contact so soon.
Unless he’s calling to demand an apology for the fight.
The thought almost makes me snort.
Aleksandr Volkov would rather cut his own tongue out than admit defeat, and doing so to me would be unthinkable. Pride like his doesn’t bend easily, if at all. If it ever were to, I’m sure he’d force the world to burn down with it.
I set the pen down carefully before lifting the phone off my desk and answering it. “What.”
There’s a long pause on the other end. Long enough that I pull the phone slightly away from my ear and glance at the screen again, checking the connection to see if the silence could be technical rather than intentional.
It isn’t.
When he finally speaks, his voice is lower than usual, stripped of its lazy arrogance that I’ve grown used to hearing over the years.
“Sokolov.” Just my name. No insult, no greeting, no performative disdain layered over it like cheap cologne.
My posture straightens immediately.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” I ask neutrally even as something sharp coils low in my gut.
Another beat of silence stretches between us, thick and uncomfortable.
I know he is doing this on purpose by measuring my patience, testing my willingness to fill the void with idle chatter to keep the conversation moving forward.
It’s a tactic he’s used plenty of times on Kuznetsov plenty of times in the past.
I don’t. I refuse to.
Finally, he speaks again. “I need information.”
“On?”
“A man named Ramil Borchin. Do you know him?”
My brow lifts.
Borchin.
Decorated military. A career officer. The kind of man whose resume is spotless enough to be laminated and framed on the wall of the Russian Embassy.
Clean, from what little I know of him, and the sort of figure the overworld parades out when it wants to reassure the public that order still exists and the machine still works as intended.
Why the hell would Volkov care about someone like that?
“I might,” I answer carefully. “Why?”
“Curiosity,” he answers.
Volkov doesn’t get curious.
Not like this.
He calculates, exploits, and eradicates problems when he finds them growing into too much of a hassle to continue dealing with.
Curiosity is for the kind of men who haven’t already decided whether someone is useful or disposable, and Aleksandr Volkov has always been the type that decides fairly quickly in that regard.
He never wastes his energy on the military.
He’s always preferred the underbelly of our networks—weapons traffickers, smugglers, private militias.
Men who move in the dark without uniforms or rules.
Soldiers who answer to chains of command are nothing like what he prefers to deal with.
He despises rules he can’t break without repercussions.
“What interest does the Iron Pact have with Borchin?” I ask.
He exhales. “The Pact doesn’t.”
That has my brow lifting higher.
Interesting.
“I was hoping,” Volkov continues, voice measured now, “that you might have crossed paths with him. Professionally or otherwise.”
The implication settles between us.
This isn’t Pact business. This is Volkov’s business.
Which makes this infinitely more unsettling.
Whatever schemes Aleksandr Volkov gets himself tangled up in on his own time have never been my concern.
All four of us learned long ago how to keep our side ventures cleanly separated from the Pact.
None of it matters so long as it doesn’t spill across borders or threaten the balance we’ve spent decades maintaining.
That understanding is the only reason the Iron Pact has survived as long as it has.
We don’t pry. We don’t ask questions. And we certainly don’t call one another fishing for information unless something has gone horribly wrong.
Which means this phone call is already a breach of etiquette.
Volkov doesn’t reach out unless he’s either cornered or circling something dangerous enough that he wants corroboration before acting.
The fact that he chose me , of all people, only deepens my unease.
We tolerate each other, we respect each other’s authority to…
some degree, but we are not confidants and we’ve never pretended otherwise.
If he’s asking about a man like Borchin, then either the man has brushed too close to one of Volkov’s operations or Volkov has stumbled onto something he doesn’t yet understand how to manage.
Neither option is comforting.
I stay silent on the line a moment longer, letting the quiet stretch until I can almost hear him growing uncomfortable. Whatever this is, it isn’t casual curiosity. It’s the first tremor before something shifts indefinitely.
“I haven’t,” I finally say.
“Hmm,” he murmurs. “Unfortunate.”
“For whom?” I ask.
He scoffs softly, the familiar edge returning to his tone like armor snapping back into place. “None of your business, Sokolov. Hasn’t anyone ever told you to mind your manners?”
“And yet,” I reply calmly, “here you are calling me for a favor.”