Page 221 of Sexting the Pakhan

“And if they don’t?”

“Then they kill me.”

I said nothing.

He shrugged once. “That’s not the worst outcome on the table.”

It should have sounded noble. It didn’t.

It sounded like Stepan. Practical, tired, already halfway inside the plan.

I hated the plan because it was good.

Ilya would want him. Of course he would. Every man who ever wanted my chair had first imagined taking the man who stood closest to it.

At first, Dima noticed. He was always the easiest. Big men who liked being feared were usually the first to smell weakness because they had spent their whole lives looking for it in others.

He cornered Stepan outside a warehouse and said, “He’s not the same.”

Stepan said, “No.”

One word. That was enough.

Kirill came next, sweating through his shirt, asking whether things could be fixed if he gave names. Stepan let him talk. Didn’t promise him safety. Didn’t threaten him either. He found out his plans with Lenkov, and the rest is history.

Stepan came by the safe house and we went over the plan two nights ago. I knew sooner or later Ilya would find me there. And I wanted them to. Stepan told me they were moving against me, that they knew about my children.

Stepan had let it slip that I had a daughter, just once. I didn’t tell Zoya this—I knew she would never forgive me—but I had used my daughter as bait to secure my enemies. And it had worked exactly how we planned. He had already secured a rope for me. All I had to do was fall.

“I put my life in your hands,” I tell him now.

“I’ll never betray your trust, boss. Not after you saved my life,” he says.

I look at him then. We haven’t talked about that night, ten years ago, when I saved him in that alley. He had been beaten up horribly. I had brought him into my fold.

“By tonight, most of the city will believe you went over the ledge and never came back up,” he tells me.

I look at him. “Most?”

“The smart ones will doubt it. You’re our leader, Ruslan. There are many still loyal to you,” he says.

“I can’t take the chance anymore,” I say. Not with my family. “That’s not enough.”

“No,” he says. “That’s why we fixed the rest.”

I wait.

Stepan pulls the chair closer to the bed and finally sits. He looks exhausted, which tells me more than his words do.

I say nothing.

“Ilya went over with you,” Stepan continues. “Half the men there saw it. None of them saw what happened after.”

I remember enough of the fall to feel sick. The ridge. The broken branch. Ilya’s hand on my throat. Rock against my back. The look on his face when he understood I wasn’t trying to survive the fall so much as survive long enough to finish him.

“I broke his neck on the way down,” I say.

Stepan nods. “I guessed.” There’s no surprise in his voice. No judgment either. Just acceptance, like he’s confirming the weather.