The room was a cauldron of heat and tension. Steam clung to the walls, mixing with the metallic taste of danger. Timur's words still hung in the air like smoke—thick, heavy, and deadly.
But it wasn't the Chechen's fury that threatened Koba most. It was the woman.
Anya.
She sat behind Timur's hulking frame, calm, watchful, her gray eyes sharp as scalpels. While Timur bristled and growled, she studied Koba like a chemist watching a volatile experiment. It was she who had stopped Timur's hand with the smallest flicker of her head, not out of mercy, but curiosity. She wanted to see what he would do.
Koba met Timur's glare without blinking. His stillness was deliberate, his composure a weapon. He spoke not to defuse the rage in the room, but to redirect it—to turn a brute contest of strength into a battle of intellect, where he always held the higher ground.
"Your knife could kill me," he said quietly. His tone was even, unhurried, every word a scalpel cut. "You'd have my gold. A few hundred rubles. A week's expenses. Then what? You go back to being what you are—a big fish in a small, filthy pond. A thug chasing debts from drunks like Rykov."
The insult was surgical. It landed right where it hurt most—not in Timur's pride as a killer, but in his pride as a ruler. Koba watched the anger flare in the man's eyes, then fade into something more uncertain. He turned slightly, shifting his focus to Anya.
"Rykov's debt is pocket change," Koba said, voice gaining quiet force. "A few thousand rubles. But his real value—his true debt—is to the system that protects him. He's a captain, a quartermaster. He has keys. Access. You're bleeding him for coins when he's sitting on a treasury."
He leaned forward, hands flat on the table, voice low and precise. "The St. Petersburg garrison runs on supplies—vodka, boots, bread, bullets. Every transaction flows through men like Rykov. Weak men. Corrupt men. Men who can be owned."
Anya's eyes flickered. She saw it first. The scale. The ambition.
"You're thinking of extortion," Koba continued, his tone now conspiratorial, almost intimate. "I'm thinking of logistics. We won't take his money. We'll take his business. We'll control every wagon of grain, every crate of rifles, every drop of vodka that passes through the army's hands. We'll build something bigger than a racket." He looked back at Timur, unflinching. "Your muscle. My plan."
The silence that followed was alive.
Timur stared, the crude machinery of his mind grinding to catch up. Anya, meanwhile, had already moved beyond him. Koba could almost hear her thoughts—the calculations, the possibilities. She was already imagining the empire he'd just described.
For the first time, Timur hesitated. His hand loosened on the table's edge. His gaze shifted to Anya, searching her face. She gave a faint, nearly imperceptible nod.
It was enough.
Timur's voice, when it came, was lower, roughened not by anger but by pride. "You talk well, Caucasian," he said. "But talk is cheap. In this business, blood buys trust."
He snapped his fingers.
The two guards vanished into a side room. When they returned, they dragged a man between them.
Captain Dmitri Rykov.
He was a wreck—half drunk, uniform open at the collar, sweat shining on his pallid skin. The moment he saw Timur, his knees buckled.
"Timur, please," he stammered, collapsing. "Just one more week! I have a shipment coming in—I can pay double, I swear it!"
Timur ignored him. His eyes were fixed on Koba. With deliberate care, he drew a gleaming dagger from his sash and threw it to the floor at Koba's feet. The sound of steel on tile rang like a sentence being passed.
"This pig," Timur said, his voice a growl, "has been selling rifles to the Serbs. Traitor to his country. Traitor to me. If you want my trust, Caucasian…" He pointed at Rykov. "Kill him. Here. Now."
Rykov froze, eyes wide and glassy with terror. The room went silent except for the faint hiss of steam and the captain's trembling breath.
Anya leaned back in her chair, her expression unreadable. This was the test—the ritual, the initiation.
Koba bent down and picked up the dagger. The handle was carved bone, slick and cool in his palm. He felt Jake Vance—the man buried deep inside him—thrash against the walls of his mind, screaming. This is murder. You can't do this.
But Koba's hand didn't shake.
The thought came like ice: This is the cost. The tool must cut when commanded.
One life to buy legitimacy. One corpse to build an empire.
He stepped closer. Rykov whimpered, pressing back against the floor.
And then—
A sound split the air.
Faint, distant, but unmistakable.
A bird call. Three clear notes. The Nightingale.
Pavel's signal.
Okhrana.
The meaning slammed into him like a gunshot. The trap was sprung.
In an instant, Koba's mind flared into overdrive. If he killed Rykov, the scream would bring the Okhrana down on them. If he hesitated, Timur's men would cut him down where he stood. The exits were sealed. The air was poison.
Outside, the faint whistle echoed again—urgent, desperate.
Koba's pulse slowed to a deadly calm. Knife in hand, caught between two deaths, he stood motionless—calculating, improvising, searching for the one path, the single impossible move, that might let him walk out alive.