The feeling of Kato's hand in his was a point of unbearable warmth in the frozen machinery of his world. Jake pulled away—too sharply. She flinched, her eyes flickering with hurt.
"I have work to do," he said. The words came out harder than he intended, jagged and cold. "Stay here. Don't leave the house."
He turned before she could respond. Her gaze followed him like a weight pressing between his shoulders as he stepped back into the grey Tbilisi night. The chill bit into him, but it was a relief—something clean after the fever of her presence.
His mind was a battlefield. Guilt, longing, fear—they tore at him. And beneath it all, colder than the rest, his strategic mind whispered: She's a vulnerability. And… a potential asset.
The thought sickened him. He crushed it down, burying the shame beneath layers of ice. There was work to finish. One monster at a time.
When he returned to the safe house on Erevan Street, the silence felt like a tomb. Kamo stood guard at the door, his face unreadable. He nodded wordlessly as Jake passed.
Inside, Pyotr Dolidze looked up from his cot. In the dim light, Jake almost didn't recognize him. The transformation had gone beyond the surface. The broken drunkard was gone. In his place sat a man with calm, clear eyes—the haunted resolve of someone who believed his fate was already written. Luka Mikeladze was no longer an illusion. He existed.
"It's time," Jake said. His voice was stripped bare of everything human. "The final rehearsal."
He ran the session like a machine. Each line of the fabricated confession drilled into Pyotr with mechanical precision.
"I am Luka Mikeladze. I was a secret Menshevik sympathizer. The Bolsheviks discovered my dissent. I faked my death to escape them. I have been in hiding. I now seek protection from the state—from the executioner Kamo."
Every word was calibrated, designed to fit the Okhrana's image of the Bolsheviks: fanatics devouring their own.
When Pyotr stumbled, Jake corrected him. When he hesitated, Jake made him start again. By the tenth repetition, the lies rolled from Pyotr's tongue like prayer.
Finally, Jake took a small photograph from his pocket—a plain-faced woman holding two children. Luka's wife. His children. A fragment from another man's life.
"This is your family," Jake said quietly. "They think you're dead. You're doing this for them—for their future. For the comrades you'll save."
Pyotr stared at the photo. His hands were steady. His face crumpled, but the tears that fell weren't Pyotr's—they were Luka's. The man before Jake had become the role completely.
The actor was ready.
Jake returned to the main safe house just before midnight.
Kato was waiting.
She had found his room and tried, in her small way, to make it human again—a cloth on the table, a cup of tea steaming beside bread and cheese. A domestic peace that didn't belong in this world.
He stood in the doorway for a long moment, staring at her.
"You can't stay," he said finally, his voice softer but tired. "In two days, maybe less, this city will be dangerous. Too dangerous."
She looked up at him, eyes shining with quiet sorrow. "And you? You'll stay, of course."
"I have to," he said. "But I've arranged a place for you. A cottage in Borjomi. It's safe. Kamo will take you there tomorrow morning."
She hesitated, her voice small. "You'll send me away again?"
He met her eyes. For once, the mask faltered. In her face, he saw the only piece of himself that wasn't cold or corrupted. And he felt an ache so deep it frightened him.
"Yes," he said, forcing the lie past his throat. "For now. But when this is over, I'll come to you. I promise."
Her lips trembled, then curved into a faint, fragile smile. "I'll wait for you."
He nodded, unable to speak. He wasn't just sending her away for safety. He was building himself a reason to survive. A flicker of light beyond this darkness.
A thousand miles north, Pyotr Stolypin studied his own reports with quiet fascination.
"No movement?" he asked.
"None," Colonel Sazonov replied. "No rescue attempts. No communication with the prisoner. Their activity near the Citadel looks deliberate—meant to be seen. Beyond that, silence."
Stolypin's thin smile returned. "He's disciplined. Smarter than I expected. But pressure will do its work. Tomorrow, the indictment is read. He'll have to act. The question is when—and how."
He leaned back, eyes narrowing. "What game is he playing?"
At dawn, Tbilisi lay under a pale veil of mist. In the alley behind the Erevan Street safe house, the final act began.
Pyotr Dolidze—or the man who now was Luka Mikeladze—stood dressed in a worn coat. His face was calm. His eyes were clear.
Jake handed him a forged identity card.
"When you walk out that door," Jake said, his voice low, precise, "you are Luka Mikeladze. You're a husband and a father. You're a patriot seeking protection. Remember that."
Pyotr nodded once, the movement small but absolute.
Kamo watched from the shadows, silent. He understood now. The brilliance of it. The cruelty. The genius. It chilled him.
Pyotr turned and walked away, his figure swallowed by the morning fog.
Jake stood alone in the cold alley, the mist curling around him. He had just sent a man to his death in the service of a lie so vast it might rewrite the future.
He should have felt triumph. Instead, a prayer whispered up from somewhere long buried. Not to any god he still believed in, but to whatever remnant of grace might still exist in this world — for Pyotr's soul.
And, against all logic, for his own.
His eyes lifted toward the horizon — toward Borjomi, toward Kato — and for the first time, Jake Vance, the man who had made himself a monster, realized he had something to lose again.