The air in the Geneva safe house froze solid.
Koba's final words—"This is a personal matter."—hung in the room like a loaded gun.
Lenin's expression shifted instantly. The calm strategist vanished, replaced by the fiery zealot whose words could bend armies. His fist slammed onto the table, the crack of wood sharp as a gunshot. Yagoda flinched by the door.
"Personal?" Lenin hissed. "There are no personal matters in the Revolution!"
His voice rose, sharp and furious. "There is only the struggle. There are no individuals—only classes! No feelings—only historical forces! The woman is a casualty of war. A captured soldier. Her fate is nothing next to the survival of the Party!"
He pointed at Koba, his eyes burning. "Your sentiment is weakness. Bourgeois weakness. It is a cancer! I command you to abandon this madness. The matter is closed."
The words hit like hammer blows.
For a moment, Jake's mind quaked under the sheer weight of Lenin's will. This was the man who would one day rule an empire with nothing but conviction and a pen. To defy him was suicide. The smart choice—the safe choice—was obedience.
Let her go. Save the cause.
But then the letter flashed in his mind.
The nightingale from Tbilisi sings for me now.
Kato, trapped in the dark. Stolypin's smug triumph.
Koba's mask slid back into place, not as pretense, but as armor. His voice was calm, precise, and colder than Lenin's rage.
"This is not about sentiment, Comrade Chairman," he said evenly. "It's about power. Your power. The Party's power."
Lenin's fury paused—just for a heartbeat.
Koba continued, his tone measured, surgical.
"Stolypin is not taking a hostage. He's testing you. Testing the strength of the new weapon you just forged. The Dagger. If he can break that weapon with one letter, then it's worthless. And if the Dagger is worthless, the world will know the Party is weak."
He leaned forward, eyes like steel. "If the Prime Minister of the Russian Empire can cripple your agents by dangling one prisoner, then every government in Europe will see you for what you are—a phantom. You can't let that happen. We cannot let this stand. We must strike back, brutally and publicly, or lose the aura of power we've worked so hard to build."
The argument cut through the air like a scalpel. Lenin blinked, taken off guard—not by emotion, but by logic sharper than his own.
Trotsky, watching in silence until now, saw his opening. The appeal to power had reached Lenin, but Koba's deeper pitch—the call to honor—spoke directly to him.
Koba turned his gaze toward the orator, voice softening just enough.
"Comrade Trotsky," he said, "you are to be the Voice. The conscience of the Revolution. What will your soldiers think if we abandon one of our own? If we prove that leadership in exile means safety while comrades die in cells? What kind of fire burns in a movement that sacrifices its own soldiers without a fight?"
Trotsky's expression hardened, his passion reigniting. "He's right, Vladimir Ilyich," he said, pacing the room like a preacher building momentum. "The perception of strength is strength itself! The morale of the masses is a weapon! We cannot look weak, not before the war begins."
Lenin's glare snapped toward him, then back to Koba. For a moment, the room trembled with unspoken fury.
But Lenin was, above all, a pragmatist. He knew when he'd lost a battle.
"Fine," he spat. "You'll handle your personal matter. But you'll do it alone. No Party funds. No network. No sanction. You're on your own. If you fail or are captured, we will deny everything. You'll be a rogue, a bandit. An embarrassment."
He stepped closer, his voice low and deadly. "You have thirty days. If you compromise the organization or lose the ledger, you'll have destroyed more than you could ever imagine. And you will answer to me. Personally."
The threat was clear. Failure meant not just death, but erasure.
Koba didn't blink. "Understood, Comrade Chairman," he said calmly. "Thank you for your trust."
Lenin glared at him—furious, yet unwilling to admit defeat. Trotsky stood beside him, radiant with conviction, his faith in the Party somehow reaffirmed by the illusion of moral victory.
Koba had won. He had turned the Voice and the Mind against each other and walked away with the freedom he needed.
Inside, Jake's thoughts whispered like static:
They think this is strategy. A question of morale and symbolism.
He looked past them, through the walls, through the city, to the prison far to the north.
They have no idea. This isn't for the Revolution. This isn't for ideology.
It's for her.
And I'll burn their Revolution to the ground to get her back.