Baskakov’s new statement was dismissed as the rambling of an unstable man. A week later, Sever and Neighbor were sent back. Back to their permanent prison.
When they were once again in their cell at Black Eagle, Sever took out his old worn beads. He broke them apart and dropped the black bread crumbs into the toilet bucket. “That’s it,” he said. “Debts paid.”
His revenge was over. Completely.
He had punished the killers.
He had brought down the man who gave the order. And he had honored his friend’s memory. He had done all he could.
Maybe more than he should have. Now he could simply live. Or rather, finish out his days inside those walls.
For the first time in years, he felt something close to peace. But it didn’t last. After the trip, Sever noticed that his neighbor, Dmitry Baskakov, had changed again.
The religious fervor had given way to a deep, silent apathy. He stopped praying. He just sat staring at one point, barely seeming to breathe.
Sever didn’t like it. The carefully built machine of his revenge—the living embodiment of permanent remorse—had gone off track. “What’s wrong with you, neighbor?” he asked one evening.
Baskakov slowly turned his head. His eyes were empty, but the fear was gone. In its place was something new.
Something Sever couldn’t read. “I spoke with him,” Baskakov said quietly. “With who?” “Mikhail,” he answered.
“In a dream. He came to me.” Sever tensed.
He assumed the man had finally lost his mind. “And what did your Mikhail say?” “He said he forgave me,” Baskakov whispered.
“He said hatred and revenge are sins too. He said your revenge, Alexander, is keeping his soul from resting. He said you have to let me go.”
Sever laughed. A dry, scraping laugh that would have chilled most men. “Forgave you? Let you go? You?”
“You think you can kill a man, dream about him, and that settles it? That’s not how the world works.”
But Baskakov looked at him with such calm—almost peaceful—that for the first time Sever felt uneasy. “It wasn’t just a dream,” the man said. “It was real.
I know it. And I’m not afraid of you anymore, Alexander. You can do whatever you want to me, but my soul… it’s free.”
It hit Sever harder than anything he had faced in years. His perfect instrument of revenge, his lifelong hell for the man who killed his friend—it all collapsed in an instant. Baskakov, his victim, his captive audience, had found a way out.
Not physically. Mentally. He had found forgiveness in his own mind, and that made all of Sever’s revenge feel pointless. Sever looked at the calm face of his cellmate, and anger began to eat at him.
He—Sasha Sever, the man who could shape lives from a prison cell, who had built a years-long chain of moves—had been defeated by simple human madness. Or faith. He jumped up and grabbed Baskakov by the shirt.
“You don’t get to be free,” he hissed. “I won’t allow it. You’re going to suffer.”
“You’re going to remember. You hear me?” But Baskakov only smiled…
