“You are currently in a mood where invading a small country isn’t impossible,” he replies.
“I’m touched by your faith in my ambition.”
“Take two cars.”
“One.”
“Two.”
I stare at him for several seconds, then let out a hard breath. “Fine. But no visible show.”
Kai nods once, accepting the compromise because he knows better than to chase victory past the point of usefulness. “Maksim?”
“No. I need to talk to my father, not stage an intervention involving the entire circus.”
Kai’s expression softens by a fraction, which is how he displays concern when he doesn’t want his teeth kicked in for it. “Understood.”
An hour later, I’m in the back of an armored car heading toward Kolomna under a sky thick with low clouds and no stars.
The drive is long enough for regret to try several arguments and lose them all.
I watch the city thin into quieter roads and the heavy shape of estates giving way to darker stretches of land. Russia always looks more honest at night; less polished and less interested in pretending history has been kind to anyone.
The closer we get to Kolomna, the more the pressure in my chest changes. The restlessness of Saint Helena gives way to something heavier and older.
Childhood lives in these roads in ways I rarely invite. Memories of being driven to houses where adults discussed bloodline and duty over tea while children learned how to stand still and listen.
Arseniy beside me, already carrying himself like the shield he was bred to be. Tatiana, small and bright-eyed, watching everything. Me with fury in my bones before I had a name for it.
Arseniy. That thought cuts deeper than expected tonight.
My brother, my judge, and my executioner in all but title for most of our lives. The man who loved me in that Dragovich way.Which is to say brutally, strategically, half like a sibling and half like a commander assessing whether his blade is sharp enough to survive another campaign.
He walked away from the family after I killed his wife and unborn child. Even in my own head, the sentence sits wrong.
There are ways to spin the story that sound cleaner: treason, conspiracy, internal threat, and betrayal at a level that required immediate removal. All of that is true. Arseniy’s wife was treasonous. She and the child she carried had become leverage in a game that would have gutted the family from within if I’d let it breathe.
I made the call as Pakhan and did what I believed had to be done. No reluctance. No appeal. No room left for sentiment because sentiment gets people buried, and I had long since learned how ugly survival becomes once you stop pretending otherwise.
Arseniy never forgave me, and why would he?
For years, I treated that fracture like I treated everything else: filed it under necessary damage and kept moving. But now, with all this other shit clawing its way back into place, I can’t stop looking at that silence between us and hearing a different question beneath it.
Is this how he felt?
Is this what it was like to look at someone you loved and realize the person standing in front of you is also the thing that gutted your future?
Is this the shape of rage when it can’t quite survive contact with grief?
Is this what it is to lose your blood and still not be able to stop loving the bastard responsible?
I don’t know the answer, and I don’t have the luxury of asking him. Arseniy made sure of that when he walked away and nevercame back. There is only so much a man can think before he has to either break or move.
fourteen
Nikolaj
Bythetimewereach the villa, dawn is still hours away. The property comes into view slowly, through skeletal trees and a narrow stone road that has existed longer than some governments.
