28. Artem
Artem
Benedikt’s office looks the same as it always does.
The desk is huge, the windows fill the walls with the city spread out behind them, and the art on the walls is tasteful and cold.
I’ve sat across from him in this room more times than I can count. It has never felt comfortable, and I’ve never needed it to.
Today feels different.
Not because I’m uncertain about anything I’ve done, but because I’m not. Every decision I’ve made in the last week has been made with both the full knowledge of what it would cost and a complete willingness to pay it.
What’s different is that Cady is sitting beside me, her hands folded in her lap and her face composed.
Having her here, in this room that belongs to the world I’ve spent my life operating in, makes the last week feel suddenly real in a way it hasn’t until this moment.
Benedikt looks at her first. Then at me. Then back at her, quietly cataloguing what he missed and refusing to move on until he understands it.
He leans back in his chair and waits, because he knows that waiting is the most efficient way to get information from someone.
“Misha hit her.” I watch Benedikt’s expression shift into the controlled focus he uses when taking a report. “I went to Colin Gallagher, told him the arrangement was broken, and the marriage wasn’t happening. He pushed back—”
“You told Colin Gallagher the marriage was off without bringing it to me first?”
Benedikt looks at Cady again, and I see him assessing the trouble she’s caused him.
“Yes,” I confirm. “Misha is gone. I sent him away so Cady’s brothers didn’t kill him.”
He stares at me. “And then?”
“Lucas Manifold approached her today. He knew Misha was gone, and he decided that his debt transferred to her. He told her she owed him three million dollars. I ended that, too.”
“How?”
“Clean exit through the service corridor, no witnesses worth worrying about, no footage that will cause us problems.”
Benedikt sets down the pen he’s been holding and looks at me with an expression I don’t see from him often, genuine surprise and the careful management of genuine shock.
Then he takes a slow breath and folds his hands on the desk.
“Let me make sure I have all of this correctly,” he says, choosing each word carefully.
“In the span of one week, you removed your brother from the city, dissolved a sanctioned arrangement with the Gallagher family, made a unilateral agreement with Colin Gallagher regarding his daughter, and killed a sitting politician. And you did all of this without a single conversation with me beforehand.”
“That’s correct.”
“Artem.” He says my name the way he does when something has genuinely landed on him. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”
“No. I’ve been completely clear-headed through all of it.”
“Then explain to me why you moved all of these things without bringing them to me first, because in more than twenty years, I cannot think of one time you’ve done something of this magnitude without a conversation.”
I look at him steadily. This is the part I’ve been working out how to say, and I’ve decided the only way to say it is directly.
“If I’d brought it to you first, you’d have told me to manage it through the arrangement.
To keep Misha in place, to let the Gallagher situation run its course, to extract what we needed from it and hold the line until it served us.
And I knew when I walked out of your office the last time we spoke that I wasn’t going to be able to do that. ”
Benedikt looks at me for a long moment, then at Cady. “Are you going to marry this girl?”
Cady’s composure shifts, and Benedikt catches it.
He catches everything.
“You have something to say?” His tone is neither warm nor unkind, just direct. He’s pissed, but he’s not going to show it.
Not yet.
Not all the way.
Cady straightens in her chair. “I don’t need to be married. And I don’t need to be an arrangement that benefits anyone at this table. I’m not a piece in anyone’s game, and I’m not a transaction. With respect.”
The last two words land with the precision of someone who means neither of them and is offering them anyway out of the thinnest thread of diplomacy.
“With respect,” he repeats quietly before turning back to me.
“I had a sanctioned arrangement with the Gallagher family. Misha agreed to it. Colin agreed to it. I approved it. That arrangement is now gone because you decided to handle it yourself, and I want to be very clear about what that means.” His eyes on mine are steady and serious.
“The Gallaghers had obligations to us under that deal. A degree of cooperation and access that benefited this operation in ways that go beyond what Misha’s marriage would have provided.
You’ve removed all of that and replaced it with your word and whatever you said to Colin Gallagher in his office to make him agree to it.
That is not nothing, Artem. That is a significant restructuring of a relationship I spent months building. ”
“I know what it is,” I tell him. “And I know what I cost you by doing it the way I did. I’m not pretending otherwise.”
“Then what are you doing? Because all I’m seeing is a man who sits on my right side and who fucked up.”
“I’m telling you what happened because you deserve to hear it from me directly. And because I need you to understand that everything I did, I did with full knowledge of the consequences and the full intention to stand behind it.”
He sighs and averts his gaze. I went rogue, and he doesn’t know how to take it.
“Colin Gallagher is not going to stay cooperative,” he says finally. “He agreed to you in that office because you gave him no real alternative, but a man like Colin doesn’t forget when someone rearranges his plans. That’s going to become a problem.”
“I told him what happens if it does. He understood.”
“You threatened him.”
“I informed him.”
“You informed him.” He shakes his head. “And Manifold’s people. When they start asking questions about where he went?”
“Manifold was careful about his connection to Misha. He kept it quiet because it benefited him to keep it quiet. The people around him don’t know the details, and without the details, they have nothing to connect us.
I’ve already started building the alternate story.
By the time anyone looks seriously, there won’t be anything to find. ”
“Really thought this one through, huh? I hope it doesn’t backfire on you.”
It won’t.
I’m not new to the game of chess and mob connections, or enemies.
“She’s your responsibility,” he mutters.
“Every consequence of what you’ve done this week, every ripple that comes out of it, and every problem that surfaces because of the decisions you made without consulting me, lands on you.
Not on my family; on you. If the Gallaghers come looking for a fight, that fight is yours.
If Manifold’s disappearance causes problems we haven’t anticipated, you solve them.
If any of this causes a war between our family and theirs—“ He looks at me with absolute seriousness. “—it will be your life on the line before anyone else’s. Are we clear?”
“We’re clear.”
“Good.” He picks up his pen again, which means the meeting is over. “Get out of my office. Both of you.”
Cady and I rise, my hand finding her lower back as I guide her toward the door.
In the elevator, she stands beside me and says nothing for a long moment.
“Well…” she finally mutters after several moments.
“Well…”
“He’s terrifying.”
“Mhmmm.”
The elevator reaches the ground floor, and we walk out into the city together.
I reach down to grab her hand and lace our fingers together.
And there, I feel the most peace I’ve ever felt.