No Mercy for Pakhan

So when Yuri set the photograph down on the desk between them, a grainy still pulled from a hospital security feed, and said the name Elena Marsh out lou

to stand in his presence, whether they respected him or feared him or, more often, both at once. "Visiting a sick

mitri said, though he already suspected the answer, already felt the old

y a man is careful walking near a dog that has bitten before. "Word tra

longer, her face turned half away from the camera as though some old instinct had warned her

e did the math without wanting to. Five years. A child who looked, even in a bad photograph, old enough to be

men had learned to fear more than shouting. "Where she is staying. Who she has spoke

al enough that Dmitri lifted his eyes

exactly how much of my life was stolen from me, and

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spent fifteen years bleeding to control. Five years ago, Elena had vanished from this city in the space of a single night, no note, no

all countries, and had come up with nothing, because Elena had learned enough from watching his world to disappear inside it as completely as any ghost he had ever made. He had

na at the stove making eggs she always burned a little on one side, laughing at something he had said, the winter light catching gold in her dark hair. He had thought, watching her that morning, that he had fi

blurred shape in her arms. He thought of his own father, a man who had never once told him he was loved, who had measured Dmitri's worth entirely in what he c

d spent five years converting that grief into the only currency his world respected, which was power, more o

o would use a Sokolov bloodline as a knife the second they discovered it existed, then every ounce of that power had a n

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in his hurry, an old habit of sloppiness Dmitri had tolerated for years because Viktor was blood, his f

m the desk without being invited, another old habit, one born of a familiarity Dmitri

y room, out of a discipline so old it no longer felt like effort. Viktor's expression flickere

ed slowly. "That's a name I

aid. "Old enough that the t

a moment too long. "Y

m going to find out, and that anyone in this family who already knows the answer and has

the vodka Dmitri had not touched. "Paranoid, even fo

something that might have been nerves, Dmitri stood alone at the window until the sky over the lake began to bruise gray with morning, and made himself a single promise. Whatever Elena had run from,

imself to sell it and could not bring himself to look at it either. He had told himself countless stories about that ring in the dark hours of countless nights. That she had b

something that felt, in the raw hour before dawn, unforgivable. She had not only left him. If the child was his, she had taken his son and raised him in anoth

something that would make him careless. He would need to be careful now. Petrov already knew, or suspected, and a man like Petrov did not need proof to turn a rumor into a weapon. Whatever Ele