“But only once. Here is what I offer you, Viktor Sergeyevich. You go home. Today. Right now. Return to your life and never come here again. I will transfer money to you every month, enough for you to live well. Travel, good food, medical care—whatever you want.”
“And if I refuse?”
Arkady shrugged.
“Then I will put Anya in a closed psychiatric clinic. I have all the necessary documents, medical reports, doctors’ signatures. The court will declare her incompetent in one day. And I will accuse you of trespassing and assaulting the homeowner. My godfather is a Supreme Court judge. How do you think this will end for you?”
Viktor was silent. Thoughts spun in his head at breakneck speed. Anya on the floor. Injection marks on her arms. Empty eyes. The words “are you alive.” And next to that—Arkady’s words about Lidia. About the wife crying in the bathroom. About control. About Anya choosing a similar man. And the terrible realization that there was truth in these words. Not the whole truth, but a part of it. The part Viktor had hidden from himself for twenty years.
“Think carefully,” Arkady said almost softly. “I’m not a monster. I’m just a pragmatist. I don’t need scandals, don’t need a war with relatives. I need peace. Leave, live well, and everyone will be happy.”
He stood up and headed for the door.
“Security will escort you to the exit, a car will be called. Think about my offer on the way. If you agree, call this number tomorrow.”
He put a business card on the edge of the desk and walked out.
The guards took Viktor by the elbows and led him to the exit. He didn’t resist. He walked through the corridors of the mansion, past rooms with expensive furniture, past paintings and sculptures, thinking about only one thing. Injection marks, dilated pupils, loss of coordination, slurred speech. He had seen this before. Not just once. During his service in the military hospital, when prisoners were brought in who had been interrogated using chemicals. Drugs that erase will. Drugs that cause hallucinations and paranoia. Drugs that make a healthy person look like a madman.
Anya wasn’t being treated. She was being poisoned.
The guards led him out through the main entrance and left him on the porch. A taxi was already waiting down on the driveway. Viktor walked down the steps, got into the car, gave the address of the train station. The taxi started moving, and the mansion began to shrink in the rear window. But Viktor didn’t look back. He looked at the business card he was still holding in his hand.
On the back of the card, under the printed phone number, someone had handwritten a few words: “Grekov. Today. Rechnaya Street, twelve. Waiting.” The handwriting was unfamiliar. Someone from the guests. Someone who saw how it all happened. Viktor put the card in his pocket and told the driver a new address.
The house on Rechnaya Street turned out to be an old mansion squeezed between modern office buildings, like a shard of the past century that the city forgot to demolish. The taxi stopped at the wrought-iron gates, behind which a neglected garden with bare trees and cracked stone paths was visible. Viktor paid and got out, feeling the night cold creeping under his coat.
The gates were slightly ajar, as if he were expected. He walked along the path to the massive wooden door and, before he could knock, saw the door swing open. Grekov stood on the threshold, already without his jacket, in a shirt unbuttoned at the collar. He looked like a man who hadn’t slept for several days and wasn’t planning to sleep for as many more.
“Come in,” he said quietly and stepped aside, letting Viktor inside.
The house smelled of old wood and book dust. Grekov led him through a dark corridor into the living room, where a fire was burning and two armchairs stood facing the fire. A decanter of cognac and two glasses were already prepared on the table between them.
“Sit down,” Grekov pointed to one of the chairs. “It’s going to be a long conversation.”
Viktor sat down but refused the cognac. Grekov poured some for himself, took a large gulp, and sank into the chair opposite. For a few minutes, they sat in silence, staring at the fire. Then Grekov spoke.
“Twenty years ago, you pulled me back from the other side,” he began. “I was dead, Viktor Sergeyevich. The ambulance doctors closed my eyes and told my wife to prepare for the funeral. And then you appeared. Four hours on the operating table. Forty-three stitches. Seven liters of donor blood. You reassembled me like a broken doll.”
He swirled the glass in his hand, watching the cognac reflect the light of the flame.
“When I woke up, the first thing I said was a promise. That I would repay this debt to you, whatever the cost. Whenever. I remember every word because I repeated them to myself every day all these years.”
“Then repay it,” Viktor said. “Tell me everything you know about Arkady.”
Grekov looked up at him, and in his eyes was the pain of a man preparing to confess something terrible.
“I must start with myself,” he said quietly. “Because without that, you won’t understand. Arkady is my sin. I created this monster.”
He set the glass down and clasped his hands in front of him.
“His father, Pavel Dmitrievich, was my business partner. We started together in the nineties when money was made in ways better not remembered. Pavel was a ruthless man, but I considered him a friend. When Arkady was fifteen, Pavel asked me to be his godfather. I agreed without hesitation.”
He stood up and walked to the fireplace, looking into the fire.
“Arkady grew up a strange boy. Smart, charming, but cold. He never cried, even when he scraped his knee or got bad grades. I thought it was strength of character. Now I understand it was the absence of something important inside. That which makes us human.”
“What happened to his wives?” Viktor asked.
Grekov turned, and his face twisted.
“The first, Marina, was a banker’s daughter. A beautiful girl, twenty-two years old, just graduated from university. They got married six years ago. A year later, she ended up in a psychiatric clinic in Switzerland. Official diagnosis—acute psychosis due to drug addiction. Her parents tried to take her from there, but Arkady managed to get her declared incompetent. He is now her legal guardian. All her property, and that was quite a lot, came under his control.”
He returned to the chair and sat down, leaning heavily on the armrests.
“The second wife, Olga, was the widow of an industrialist. Five years older than Arkady, a very wealthy woman. They were married for eleven months. Then she died of an overdose of sleeping pills. The investigation was closed in three weeks. Suicide due to depression, that’s what they said. Arkady inherited everything.”
“And you stayed silent?” Viktor’s voice sounded hollow.
“I didn’t know.” Grekov raised his hands in a defensive gesture. “I swear to you, I didn’t know. Pavel was still alive then. He covered for his son. And I didn’t want to see. Didn’t want to believe. Arkady was so charming, so convincing. He cried at Olga’s funeral. Real tears. I held his shoulder and comforted him.”
He covered his face with his hands.
“When he asked to introduce him to your daughter, I was happy to help. I thought I was doing a good deed, bringing two good people together. Anya was so bright, so alive. I thought she would change him.”
Viktor looked at this man, and two feelings fought within him. Rage at the one who led his daughter to the executioner. And the realization that Grekov himself had been deceived, just as he himself once was.
“When did you realize the truth?” he asked.
“Three months ago.” Grekov took his hands off his face. “Pavel was dying of cancer, and I visited him in the hospital. We were alone, and he started talking. Confessing, as dying people sometimes do. He told me about Marina. About Olga. About how he paid doctors for fake diagnoses. About how he bribed investigators and judges. He was proud of it, you understand? Proud of the son he raised.”
His voice trembled.
“He said Arkady is special. That he can see in women what they don’t know about themselves. Their weaknesses. Their fears. Their need for submission.”
Viktor felt the cold spreading down his spine.
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
Grekov gave a bitter chuckle.
“With what? The deathbed ravings of an old man? Without proof? By that time, Arkady had become too influential. Too protected. His connections stretch into offices I’m afraid to think about. And I have a family, children, grandchildren. I got scared, scared for myself and for them.”
He looked Viktor straight in the eye.
“But today, when I saw your daughter on the floor, when I saw you in the doorway, I realized I can no longer be silent, can’t live with this. You saved my life. And I gave your daughter to a murderer…”
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