Page 9 of The Pakhan's Captive
He went to a meeting. He went to a meeting this morning and kissed my mother’s photograph on his desk the way he does every morning and told me not to break anything expensive today and now he is?—
“Who?” The word comes out of me and I know who I sound like. The man my father trained me to be, the enforcer.
I can’t think straight, I can feel a stinging ring in my head that’s somehow linked to my eyes and threatens to blur my vision, but I hold myself.
Now is not the time for petty emotions, who the fuck killed my father?
Viktor’s face arranges itself. Grief and fury in careful proportion. “Pyotr Sokolova.”
The name lands like a stone in still water.
Sokolova.The Kaznachy.
The man who has managed this organization’s finances for twenty years, who I have sat across from at a dozen council tables, who has a careful handshake and clean shoes and the energy of a man who has never once considered violence as a solution to anything.
“That’s not possible.”
“I know what it sounds like.”
“Sokolova is an accountant. He moves numbers. He does not—” I stop. Breathe. “He does not have the capability for this.”
“He didn’t pull the trigger himself.” Viktor’s voice is patient. “He’s been feeding information to the Zolotov family for years, Razvan. I’ve suspected it for a long time. I never had evidence I could put in front of your father. I didn’t want to bring him an accusation I couldn’t prove.” A pause. “The Zolotovs paid very well. And Sokolova told them exactly where your father would be tonight.”
The fire pops. Nobody moves.
He sold him.
The man my father trusted with every number, every account, every financial nerve of this organization. He sold him to the Zolotovs for money.
He sat at our tables and smiled his careful smile and counted our money and sold my father’s location to the people who wanted him dead.
I put the glass down because if I hold it any longer it’s going to stop being a glass.
“I’m going to kill him.”
I am already moving toward the door.
“Razvan—”
“Right now. Tonight. I’m going to?—”
“I’ve already handled it.”
I stop.
Turn.
The room is very quiet.
“What did you just say to me?”
Viktor has the grace to look like he understands what he’s walked into. “He couldn’t be allowed to run. The moment I had confirmation, I had to move. If he’d gotten out of Moscow with what he knew?—”
“You killed him.” I can hear my own voice from very far away. “You killed the man who murdered my father and you did it without me.”
“I did what needed to?—”
“That wasmine,” I scream, more like a roar, it comes out enormous and I watch Viktor take a step back and I do not care, I do not care about anything except the fact that someone has reached into my chest and taken the one thing I had left tonight, the one thing that was going to make any of this survivable, the thing that was supposed to bemine. “He killed my father. My father. And you took that from me—you stood there and you made that decision and you?—”
