Chapter 12 - THE NIGHT NO ONE FIRED BACK
Viktor waited at the Riverbend gate under a streetlight that made him look older than his photographs. The warehouse had been gone for two decades, but the fence still carried scraps of windblown paper. He wore a dark overcoat and held a telephone in one gloved hand.
Maksim did not come.
Two unmarked police cars approached from the east. Officers moved into position while investigators at other locations entered storage units and corporate offices named in search warrants. A surveillance team had been monitoring Viktor's communications. When he saw the cars, he reached inside his coat. The officers ordered him to stop. He froze, then slowly lifted his empty hand.
"You think he can hide behind police?" Viktor shouted as they placed him in handcuffs.
"Tonight he didn't come," Bennett said. "That was his decision."
She said nothing else. An arrest was not a verdict, and her work was far from finished.
At a nearby storage facility, investigators recovered account ledgers, the full Riverbend recording, and correspondence linking the attempted attack on Galina to Viktor's associates. The recording required authentication, but its contents were devastating. Viktor's voice was clear enough to identify. He discussed removing records from the warehouse before a planned fire, then acknowledged that workers might still be inside. A second voice protested. The recording captured Viktor telling him to proceed anyway.
The documents also placed Maksim's father at the center of the scheme. They did not prove every detail Galina had feared; some actions remained contested. But the fire had not been a simple electrical accident, and for the families waiting two decades for answers, that discovery mattered more than the mythology surrounding the Voloshins.
Anton, facing serious charges for his role in the ambush, agreed to testify truthfully about the route disclosure and badge exchange. He did not expect the choice to erase Bree's injuries or absolve his own betrayal. His attorney negotiated terms that reflected both his cooperation and his responsibility.
When Maksim was told of the arrests, he was seated in Bree's small kitchen trying to fix the loose hinge on a cabinet. She had invited him to dinner as a friend, with Theo present, after weeks of cautious conversations. The screwdriver slipped from his hand.
"Are you okay?" Bree asked.
"They arrested Viktor."
Theo stopped stirring the sauce. "Are we safe now?"
Maksim considered the answer. "Safer, I think. The police still need to assess the risks."
"Good answer," Bree said softly.
They ate pasta at a table too small for three people and an open textbook. Maksim washed the dishes while Theo played a song badly enough to offend the neighbors. A year earlier Maksim would have thought the evening beneath him. Now he wanted it to last.
Bree watched him rinse plates. "You don't have to keep doing ordinary things to prove you're changing."
"Maybe I like ordinary things."
"Do you?"
He looked at the dish towel in his hands. "I never gave them much of a chance."
She moved closer, the motion still careful because of her healing shoulder. "I have been wanting to thank you for listening when I told you no."
"That's a low standard."
"It shouldn't be rare. But it has been."
He met her eyes. "I need to tell you something before we become anything else. The investigation isn't going to end with Viktor. I approved contracts I should have questioned. I let my father's reputation protect profits. I could face charges and lose the company."
"I know."
"You shouldn't have to wait around for that."
"I won't wait for a man to become innocent, Maksim. I want to know whether he can be honest. And I won't promise what our future looks like tonight."
"Neither will I."
There was a moment when he could have kissed her. He wanted to; the wanting frightened him more than a threat from Viktor. He did not move. Bree smiled as though she understood the restraint.
Later, alone in the kitchen, Maksim opened an old photograph of himself at nineteen beside Anton. They had looked invincible, leaning against a car neither had earned. Maksim did not erase the photograph. He wrote down the name of Anton's sister for the investigator who was still examining the Riverbend records. If Anton had been coerced as a boy, that fact deserved examination; if Anton had knowingly endangered Bree, that fact deserved accountability. Both could be true. Maksim was beginning to understand that justice did not need the comforting simplicity his father had always promised him.
The next morning, she attended physical therapy and managed to lift her arm higher than she had the previous week. She celebrated with a cinnamon roll and a phone call to Galina. The old woman cried, then blamed her tears on cutting onions though she wasn't cooking anything.
Lucia Rivera visited the prosecutor's office that afternoon. She was shown the outline of evidence concerning Riverbend and told what could be shared before trial. She called her brother, who lived in Arizona, and they spoke about their father for nearly an hour. Not about the fire alone. About his terrible dancing, his habit of bringing stray dogs home, and the time he'd taught Lucia to ride a bicycle along the river.
At the same time, lawyers informed Maksim that he was expected to attend a formal interview about historical financial misconduct. An indictment was possible. His legal team advised against further informal conversations and began arranging an orderly preservation of all company records.
He could have fled. He knew men who could provide new passports and a private plane. Those men had been calling for months, certain he would eventually return to the rules his father taught him.
Instead, Maksim looked at Bree's message about her latest therapy milestone and put his phone in his pocket.
He went to the federal building at the appointed hour.
May you like
At the entrance he saw a crowd of photographers waiting for him. He felt his heart begin to race, and for a second he remembered the night he had fallen to his knees in the hospital corridor.
He straightened his jacket and walked inside without an escort.
