Chapter 82 Nikolai
I sat at the kitchen table alone and watched the clock on the wall move from midnight to one to two to three in the morning, and I didn't move except to refill my glass of water from the pump at the sink.
I didn't try to go upstairs to Marlena because I knew when to give her space and when to push, and this was space time, this was the kind of hurt that needed distance before it could even begin to heal.
The ledger sat open in front of me and I'd been staring at the same page for an hour, the page with Marlena's name written three times in Viktor's careful handwriting, each entry documenting a different attempt to trade his own daughter like she was currency.
Marlena Rousseau, age sixteen, collateral for the Petrov deal.
I read the line over and over and tried to understand the kind of man who could write those words about his own child, who could look at his daughter and see a bargaining chip instead of a person, who could sleep at night knowing he'd offered her to criminals as part of a business negotiation.
Viktor Rousseau had been a monster in ways I was still discovering, and the fact that Marlena had come from him and still turned out soft and fierce and real felt like some kind of miracle I didn't understand.
She could have become hard and cold and calculating the way I had, could have let her father's cruelty turn her into someone who hurt people before they could hurt her, but instead she'd fought to stay human, to keep caring even when caring cost her everything.
I didn't deserve her and that wasn't a new thought, I'd been thinking it since the moment I realized I loved her, but tonight it settled heavier in my chest like a weight I couldn't lift.
I closed the ledger and pushed it away across the table and stood up to walk to the window, looking out at darkness that was just starting to lighten at the edges with the first hint of dawn.
Somewhere upstairs Marlena was lying awake or maybe sleeping finally, and either way she wasn't coming back down tonight, wasn't going to let me hold her or explain or apologize my way out of this.
She'd asked me to trust her and I'd failed, had kept the biggest secret I was carrying and justified it to myself as protection when really it was just cowardice, just the same old pattern of controlling information because information was the only power I'd ever really trusted.
I made a decision standing there at the window watching the sky turn from black to grey.
I was going to use the ledger, not the way Dorian wanted, not as something to trade or hide or leverage quietly, but offensively, as a weapon to burn down everything Viktor had built and everyone who'd helped him build it.
Every name in that ledger was a pressure point, a corrupt official who'd taken money to look the other way or actively help Viktor's operations, and if I exposed them one by one the entire network would collapse.
Judges would be impeached, prosecutors would be investigated, politicians would resign in disgrace, and the people who'd enabled Viktor for twenty years would finally face consequences for what they'd done.
It would also eliminate Dorian's reason for coming after us because the ledger would be worthless once it was public, the leverage would be gone, the secrets would be out, and there'd be no point in chasing us for information that everyone already had.
It was a dangerous plan and I knew it, exposing that many powerful people would make enemies faster than I could count them, would put targets on our backs from every direction, would probably get me killed if any of them found me before I finished.
But right now sitting alone in this kitchen at three in the morning with my wife upstairs refusing to look at me, I didn't feel like being careful.
I felt like burning things down.
I felt like taking every piece of Viktor's legacy and setting it on fire and watching it turn to ash, and if that made powerful people angry then good, they should be angry, they should face the consequences of taking blood money from a man who sold his own daughter.
I went back to the table and opened the ledger again and started making notes, organizing the names by country and position, figuring out which ones to expose first for maximum impact.
The French Interior Minister who'd taken three million euros to ignore weapons shipments through Marseille.
The German prosecutor who'd buried evidence against Viktor's associates in exchange for monthly payments.
The British judge who'd dismissed charges and sealed records and accepted half a million pounds for her cooperation.
The Italian police commissioner who'd protected Viktor's operations in Milan for a decade.
I would start with them, the highest profile names, the ones whose exposure would make headlines and force investigations, and once the first domino fell the rest would follow because that's how corruption worked, one exposed official led to another and another until the whole rotten structure collapsed.
It would take time to do it right, to gather supporting evidence and leak it to journalists who couldn't be bought and coordinate releases across multiple countries so the impact was maximum.
But I had time now, months probably before Dorian made another move, and I could use that time to dismantle Viktor's network piece by piece.
I pulled out my phone and started making encrypted notes, listing contacts I still had in various intelligence agencies and journalism outlets, people who would be interested in this kind of story and had the resources to verify it and protect their sources.
The sun was starting to come up properly now, orange light spreading across the fields outside the window, and I heard Elena wake up upstairs making the small sounds she made when she was hungry and ready to start her day.
I heard Marlena's footsteps moving across the floor above me and then her voice soft and gentle talking to our daughter, and I wanted to go up there and see them both but I knew better.
Space time meant staying away even when it hurt, meant letting Marlena come to me when she was ready instead of forcing myself into her presence when she'd made it clear she needed distance.
I closed the ledger and put it back in the box and carried it upstairs to my room, the room that used to be our room before last night, and I hid it under the mattress where it would be safe but accessible.
Then I went back downstairs and started making coffee because making coffee was something normal and routine and I needed normal right now even if everything else was falling apart.
The smell filled the kitchen and I heard Marlena come down with Elena, heard her pause at the bottom of the stairs when she saw me, and I didn't turn around because I didn't want to see her face and know that she was still angry, still hurt, still deciding whether to forgive me or leave.
"Good morning," I said to the coffee pot.
"Morning," she said back, and her voice was careful and distant, and she took Elena into the other room without saying anything else.
I poured two cups of coffee and left one on the table where she'd see it and took mine to the couch in the living room, and I lay down there with the cup on my chest and looked at the ceiling and waited for morning to really arrive.
The plaster above me was cracked in places and water-stained in others, and I traced the patterns with my eyes and thought about how everything breaks eventually, houses and people and relationships, everything breaks and you either fix it or you walk away.
I didn't know which one Marlena would choose.
He closes the ledger. He goes to the couch and lies down. He looks at the dark ceiling and waits for morning.