Page 100 of The Fire Beneath the Frost

Petyr

Ivan’s blue Lada rattled, the engine idling like it had fallen asleep with one eye open.We sat in the dark outside his apartment building.The light was on in the kitchen window.Dimitri was home, and he didn’t know I was coming.

Ivan shifted in his seat, sighed, and reached beneath the driver’s side.There was a hollow clunk, and then he straightened with a dusty bottle of red wine in his hand.It was cheap, probably Georgian, with a label that had been peeling off since Khrushchev was in office.

“Here,” he said, passing it over.“If you have to get my son a little drunk to say yes, do it.”

I took the bottle.My fingers curled around its neck like I was afraid it might run off if I didn’t hold tight.I wanted to say something like, I won’t need this, or He trusts me, or He loves me enough to listen, but none of it felt real in my mouth.

Ivan’s hand landed on my arm, steady and warm.

“I’m not a cruel man, Petyr,” he said.“I know this is your last night with him.”

I stared straight ahead at the building like it was a firing squad.

Ivan continued, voice low and final.“Make the best of it.”

My throat tightened.I opened my mouth, but no words came.There was nothing to say that didn’t sound like begging, or lying, or both.

He turned in his seat, locked eyes with me.“Make this the best night of my son’s life,” he said.“It’s what he’ll remember you by.”

I nodded once, like my head was the only part of me still capable of movement.Then I got out of the car and gently shut the door.

Ivan didn’t say goodbye.Just put the Lada in gear and rolled off into the dark like he hadn’t just put the weight of the world into my hands.

I stood on the sidewalk with the bottle cradled to my chest, then turned toward the building and started walking.

Pressure was already building behind my eyes, like the bones of my face were trying to hold back a flood.Fuck.No.Not now.If Dimitri saw me cry, he’d know.He’d know I wasn’t coming with him, that this was a goodbye.

I swallowed hard and took the stairs one at a time, slow and quiet, each footstep a countdown.In my head, Waltz No.2 by Shostakovich played—that dreamy, off-kilter melody that always filled my chest.It was there now, uninvited, beautiful, and so fucking cruel.It rose in my ribs like a tide.

I remembered asking Ivan, just twenty minutes ago, Aren’t you afraid of what they’ll do to you if they find out?What about your wife?

He’d sighed, lit a cigarette with steady hands.“If everything goes according to plan, no one will even notice he’s gone.Not for months.We’ll say he got work on the pipeline.Or ran off to Riga.Something.”

And if they did notice?

Ivan had shrugged.“Then I’ll survive.That’s what we do.”

But Dimitri wouldn’t.Not after what the police had already done to him.And I couldn’t let him go through that torture again.I had Vera and her family’s influence to save me, but Dimitri had nobody, just his parents.And despite Ivan’s self-assurance, I feared what the state would do to him and his wife if they discovered Ivan had engineered his son’s defection.

I wanted to ask Ivan how he’d come up with his plan.But then I remembered that the less I knew, the better.

My fingers tightened on the wine bottle as I reached the landing.It was the first time in all our months together that we were about to be truly alone.Free, in some cruel, fleeting way.

And of course, it was also the last.

I stood in front of the door for what felt like forever.My fist was raised to knock, but it just… hovered.I couldn’t move.

How am I supposed to lie to him?He’ll see right through me.

The music in my head swelled again.Strings, lilting and aching.My eyes burned.

If the shoe were on the other foot, he’d lie to me too.To save me.

I took a breath.Then another.

And I knocked.

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