Page 66 of The Pakhan's Bride
Konstantin watches, impassive, the color of his skin the only evidence he's still losing blood by the pint. He doesn't blink as Orlov yanks the man's head back, exposing the neck. If this were the old days, someone would already have a knife to his throat. Maybe that comes next.
"Name," Sokolov says.
The man spits blood on the floor, tries to look defiant. "You know who I am," he mutters, voice gummy.
Sokolov's hand closes around the man's jaw, thumb digging into the hinge. "Name," he repeats.
The man chokes, then, "Matvei. Matvei Gubanov. First Spetsnaz. Out of Chelyabinsk."
Sokolov glances at me, then at Konstantin. "He's not local," Sokolov says, as if I couldn't figure that out myself.
Konstantin cuts in. "Who hired you?"
Matvei tries for a smirk, but the blood makes it obscene. "You think I'll talk? You think this is my first?—"
He doesn't finish. Sokolov slaps him hard, open palm, a crack that snaps the air. "Try again," Sokolov says calmly.
Matvei sags. He looks at me, then at Konstantin, then at the ceiling. "Who hired you?" Konstantin asks again. Sokolov leans close, whispers in Matvei's ear. I can't hear the words, but I see the effect—Matvei's whole body trembles, then slumps. He mutters, "Baranov."
It's like a car crash, the way your body knows before your brain does. The name is a cold hand on my throat. Konstantin doesn't blink. He nods once, as if he saw it coming. Maybe he did. Sokolov asks, "Which one?" As if this needs to be asked, but I suspect he's pulling a blank, just like I am. Matvei coughs, spits again. "The one who still owes me." He looks at me, sneering through the blood. "Your sister says hello."
I want to lunge, to tear his head off with my teeth. Every muscle locks down, and I force myself not to look at anyone, not to show anything on my face. The room is silent. Konstantin breaks it. "Where is she?"
Matvei grins, or tries to. "Wouldn't you like to know," he says, but the bravado is gone. "She's far away by now. Too smart to stick around for the mess."
Orlov is already prepping the next move. He nods to the guards, who haul Matvei to his feet. "Take him to the pit," Sokolov orders. "We'll try again in an hour."
The guards drag him away, his boots scraping the tile. No one says a word. The only sound is Konstantin's breathing, thin and rasping. He looks at me, something unreadable in his eyes. I can't process the betrayal, not yet. It's like a toothache. The pain is there, but your mind doesn't let it through. I stare at the window, watch the frost collect at the corners, and imagine Ekaterina somewhere out there, smiling, waiting for me to make a move.
He reaches for my hand, finds it, takes it. I think of Lev, alone in the dark with strangers, and I want to scream. But I am already thinking of the next step, the way the blood will look on Ekaterina's perfect hands, how her voice will sound when I squeeze the life out of her.
The frost-demon is well and truly awake, and the betrayal is the cleanest it could be. I thought Katya meant it when she said she was the angel and Papa the devil.Fool me once, Katya, and the joke's yours. Fool me twice, and I'll bury you myself.
25
ZOYA
In the beginning there is only chaos. Then the order creeps in. We spend the night in the war room, all of us, even the men who can barely stand upright. Sokolov takes point, face set to killing, voice stripped to the bone. He has the sniper trussed up in a boiler room beneath the garage, and for four hours he lets the guards soften him. When the time is right, Orlov and I go down together. The man's face is purpled and misshapen, lips torn like he chewed through glass. He spits at my shoes anyway.
Sokolov is waiting for me to ask first. He wants to see what I'm made of. I step in, pick up the wrench, and slam it down on the table an inch from the man's ear. The noise is loud enough to shake dust from the ductwork. He flinches but doesn't break. I lean close.
"Where did she take him?" I ask, voice almost sweet. "If you talk now, you'll die faster."
He shakes his head, mumbles something about Baranov's orders. Sokolov snorts. "If you love her so much, maybe she'll send you a postcard."
The next hour is a blur of teeth and blood. The sniper holds out longer than I expect, but in the end, he breaks. He gives us a name, a region, a target—Tver oblast, rural, outside a dead orchard. Sokolov double-checks with a punch to the kidneys. The man vomits and whimpers, "She said you're a coward."
Orlov drags me upstairs before I can test the theory.
From there, the operation runs like a hangover in reverse—first pain, then confusion, then a window of bleak lucidity. For forty-eight hours, no one leaves the main building except to piss or smoke. The security team rakes through every byte of phone data, every digital crumb from the estate, every vehicle log from the last six months. Orlov works without blinking, juggling a half-dozen feeds and snapping at anyone who brings him bad coffee.
Galina stares at the map of Russia tacked to the wall, her thumb moving in tight, frantic circles over the region north of Moscow. Every time I pass the room, she is still there, eyes swimming, voice silent. I want to tell her it will be okay, but that would make me a liar. So I say nothing, just press her shoulder as I go by.
The guards are a skeleton crew, sleepwalking through their shifts, hands never far from their triggers. The only one who seems awake is the new hire, the one with the shrapnel scars who wears a rosary over his uniform. I catch him praying in the pantry. He sees me and doesn't stop.
By the second day, we have the car on satellite—a black van parked outside an old Baranov property, ten kilometers from anything with a living soul. The house itself is a prefab cube with white siding and a fence that sags under the weight of its own failure. There's a second structure behind it, long and low, the shape of a barn but wrapped in sheet metal. Orlov confirms it's a munitions dump—one of the last things my father stashed in country before he died.
Sokolov and the rest assemble on the tarmac before dawn. They dress for war but try to look like businessmen. Orlov runs through the approach a dozen times, every possible angle, every mistake that could turn us into corpses. I memorize the plan, then ignore it. In the end, these things always come down to a handful of seconds, a single bad choice or a single good one.
