Page 82 of The King's Pawn
My stomach sinks.
That… is not a good sign.
Nikolai does not frown like that unless something has already gone horribly wrong.
Volkov is seated to his right, lounging back in his chair with feigned ease, though the lazy confidence he usually radiates feels strained today. His gaze flicks to me for barely a second as I enter before returning forward, mouth pressed into a thin, thoughtful line. Aside from that, he’s eerily quiet.
Kuznetsov sits opposite him, shoulders squared and hands folded neatly on the table. His expression is guarded, eyes darting once between Nikolai and me before fixing ahead again.
No one speaks when I take my seat.
A file is placed on the table and slid toward me with deliberate slowness, stopping just short of my folded hands.
I don’t reach for it right away.
Instead, I lift my gaze and meet Nikolai’s eyes. He is watching me closely now, openly, with no pretense of disinterest. This is not a test. He wants to see what I do before I even read what he already knows I will find.
That alone tightens something in my chest.
I reach forward and flip the top page open. I expect the usual, surveillance summaries, informant reports, conjecture wrapped in cautious language. The kind of intelligence that leaves little room for deniability on what our next avenue will be.
That is not what greets me.
My fingers still as I see Viktor Morozov’s face staring back at me.
His name appears again and again, bolded, underlined, circled. Familiar account numbers leap out at me, ones I’ve seen before in other contexts and other negotiations. There is no ambiguity here, no room for interpretation for what I’ve been handed.
The more I move through the first page, then the second, then the third, the quicker the room around me begins to recede.
The clarity is brutal.
This isn’t suspicion or Nikolai circling a theory he has no proof to back up, waiting for me to confirm it. He knows what I’ve suspected since Alina was taken to me.
“According to our intel,” Nikolai murmurs, “the first bomb wasn’t to stir up trouble as we suspected. It was meant to take out his daughter.”
My fingers pinch the edge of the document hard enough that the paper creases beneath them. I welcome the small, biting pain. It anchors me, keeps my face smooth, my breathing even.
I lift my gaze slowly and meet Nikolai’s eyes, giving him nothing. No flare of anger, no flicker of horror or confirmation of what he is already probing for. I know exactly what he’s doing.
He’s watching me for a fracture. For the smallest tell that would betray the truth, that I suspected this and chose not to bring it to the table during our last meeting and I let my own personal judgment interfere with collective responsibility. That would be unforgivable.
It is one thing for all of us to be blind together. It is another entirely for one of us to see clearly and say nothing.
Especially about something like this.
The Pact does not tolerate personal agendas. It never has. That was the entire point of its creation nearly a century ago, four families agreeing to carve their ambitions down to size so Moscow wouldn’t cannibalize itself. Power shared, not hoarded. Decisions made collectively, not emotionally.
No sentiment. No favoritism. And absolutely no exceptions.
Yet here I am, sitting at this table with the knowledge that I broke the spirit of that agreement long before this meeting ever took place.
Nikolai speaks again. “Do you understand what this means?”
I do.
And I wish I did not.
It means Viktor Morozov crossed a line that cannot be uncrossed. It means the Pact will not allow a man who tried to murder his own blood in such a spectacularly public show to remain alive. Not when his recklessness threatens to drag all of us into the light. It means there is no version of this that ends quietly.
