Page 59 of Savage Reins
"Can it be done?"
Instead of answering, he pushes back from the table and walks to the old cabinet in the corner. The one I've never been allowed to touch. The one that's been locked for as long as I can remember.
He pulls out a small key from his pocket and opens the cabinet door.
Inside is a rusted lockbox, scarred by years and neglect. My father lifts it out with care, like he's handling a relic, sets it on the table between us, and opens the lid.
The smell hits me first. Old paper and metal polish and something else I can't identify. The scent of a past I never knew existed.
"Your grandfather wasn't always honest," my father says quietly. "Back when the ranch was successful, when we had connections and influence, sometimes races needed… adjusting."
I stare into the box, trying to make sense of what I'm seeing. Racing logs with entries in different handwriting. Expired permits bearing official seals. A small embossing press that looks like it could reproduce stamps. Replacement number tags in various colors and styles.
"Papa…"
"I never told you because I hoped you'd never need to know. Your grandfather, he did what he had to do to keep the ranch alive. And when times got hard, I put this away and tried to do things the honest way."
He picks up one of the number tags, turning it over in his weathered hands. "Look how that worked out."
I reach into the box and pull out a racing log from fifteen years ago. The entries are neat and official-looking, but when I look closer, I can see where corrections have been made. Where names have been changed. Where times have been adjusted.
"How does it work?" I ask, and I already know this is going to end badly.
We spend the next two hours planning. Going through the logistics. Identifying potential problems. Memorizing the layout of the registration area from old track diagrams my father pulls from the bottom of the box.
By the time we finish, the sun is setting outside the kitchen window, painting the walls in shades of amber and gold. The lockbox sits between us, no longer a relic of the past but a tool for survival.
"Four days," my father says.
"Four days," I agree.
Neither of us mentions the man who's still somewhere on the property. The man whose family expects results. The man whose hands have taken lives and whose eyes go soft when he looks at me.
Renat Vetrov thinks he's protecting me by keeping his distance today. He thinks he's saving me from something I can't handle.
He doesn't know that I've already fallen too far to save.
The race will decide everything. And now I have a plan that might actually work.
Even if it costs me my soul in the process.
23
RENAT
The dead man's blood has dried under my fingernails by the time I reach my truck. I pull on work gloves and pop the tailgate, revealing the blue water drum I loaded this morning. The kind used for livestock feed storage. Big enough. Deep enough. Anonymous enough to disappear into any industrial waste pile.
I roll the Karpin enforcer's body into the drum, arms folded across his chest, legs bent at the knees. Head tilted to fit the opening. I've done this before at least a few dozen times, none quite so difficult as the first. The geometry of death is always the same—reduce a man to his smallest possible space and seal him away from the world.
The feed tarps go in next, wrapped tightly around him until he looks like nothing more than bundled supplies. Industrial-grade duct tape seals the lid, layer after layer until no air can get in or out. When I'm finished, the drum could be full of grain or fertilizer or anything else you'd find behind a racetrack.
I should've done this days ago, but here I am, securing it in the truck bed with cargo straps and driving through the Moscow suburbs toward the dump site. The roads are empty at thishour, nothing but streetlights and the occasional delivery truck making early runs. My coat reeks of gunpowder and smoke, but I don't roll down the windows. The smell is honest. It matches what I've become.
The old burnt-out factory sits on the outskirts of Mytishchi, sprawling across forty hectares of what used to be farmland. I know the layout. Every blind spot. Every camera angle. Every place where security doesn't bother to look.
The back lot is where they store maintenance equipment and waste containers. Row after row of industrial drums, chemical tanks, and machinery that only gets used when something breaks. Perfect cover for one more container that nobody will question.
I back the truck up to the storage sheds and kill the engine. The silence greets me, broken only by the distant hum of highway traffic. No guards patrol this section. No cameras watch the maintenance area. Corporate oversight stops at the property line.
