Page 71 of The Pakhan's Bride
The Albani rep smiles, shows more gum than tooth. "You have the ships. We have the clients. You want stability. We want respect."
He nods at the folder. "Inside—proposed routes. New margins. And for your sons, autonomy. No more Moscow micromanagement. Baltic to Benelux, you call the shots."
This is the part where old loyalty is supposed to assert itself, where the patriarch laughs and asks if they take him for a fool. Instead, he opens the folder. He reads the first page. His pupils dilate, just a little.
The Albani man sips water, waiting for the offer to land. One son breaks the silence. "What's the split?"
The Albanian flicks to the second page. "Seventy-thirty. First year. Adjusted after proof of delivery."
"Adjusted how?"
The rep shrugs. "Depends on who is still standing."
The patriarch looks up. "You understand, if I do this, there is no going back."
The Albanian folds his hands. "We are men of the present, not the past."
He gestures at the view—the Spree, the city, the horizon. "History is dead. Let's bury it."
I catch the flicker in the patriarch's eye. He's not convinced, but he is tempted. More than that, he's tired. Tired of being called at odd hours to put out fires in cities he's never seen. Tired of waiting for Moscow to remember he exists. He leans back. "My loyalty has value."
The Albanian nods, respectful. "So does your time."
The two men sit, locked in a contest that predates the building by a century. The sons glance at each other, already doing the math. The patriarch taps the folder with a finger. "You think you can use us to break the Vetrov hold."
"I think we can build something new," the Albanian says softly.
It's a lie, but a beautiful one. A woman enters, iPad in hand, hair cropped to a helmet. She sets the tablet at the end of the table, flicks to a map with colored overlays. She's Swiss, by the badge. Neutral, but for sale.
She narrates the flow—containers from Klaipeda, trains to Düsseldorf, then across the Channel. The Albanis have every step costed, every risk assigned a percentile. On screen, red lines turn to green, then to gold. The patriarch's sons are hooked since they see their names in each new branch, their future in each data point.
The Albanian pushes the advantage. "You get out of the shadows. You own the vertical."
The sons talk, voices low. One is already plotting expansion, the other asking about the old guard in St. Petersburg. The patriarch says nothing. I stand, walk to the window, watch the Albani men step into the elevator.
I sit in the captain's chair, leather cracked, the back still scarred from the day Konstantin threw it at Orlov for being too slow with a war game scenario. My fingers hover over the keys, not because I'm nervous but because timing is everything. Today is about tempo.
The techs—one with an anarchist's tattoo under his cuff, the other barely old enough to shave—monitor news wires, banking feeds, the encrypted group chats that pretend to be secure. They glance at me, then at their screens, then back to me. No one speaks unless asked.
At exactly 10:17, the first alert pings on the air. It's a forward from Berlin—Albani offer is live, they've pitched the sons. I read it in five seconds. One of the techs—Pasha—turns, waiting for orders.
I nod. "Wake the lieutenant."
He leaves at a run, steps thudding on the marble. The other tech, Vera, taps her nails on the edge of the tablet. It's the only sign she's breathing. I scan the feeds. The patriarch is glancing at his sons, unsure, wounded by their eagerness. The Albani men look relaxed, but I can see the way they never rest both elbows on the table, the way their eyes sweep exits every four minutes. Pasha returns with the lieutenant. He's a slab of bone in a suit, tie crooked, hair still wet from the shower. He doesn't waste time. "They took the offer?" he asks, eyes on me.
"They considered it," I say. "Same thing."
He grunts. "When do we move?"
I flip open my laptop, ancient by now, but the encryption is custom, legacy code inherited from my father's old KGB associates. I enter the passphrase. The screen flickers, then displays the archive. The old Baranov files. Hundreds of pages, a cross-hatch of scans and photos, all tagged with Ekaterina's hand. She kept meticulous records, even when she was a ghost. I feel a pinch in my ribs, but I don't let it slow me.
I click through the folders. "The Albani play is soft. They're trying to absorb, not destroy."
The lieutenant frowns. "Weak?"
I shake my head. "No. Patient."
The techs are silent, watching the way my eyes track the file tree.
