Moose tried to get up, tried to lunge.
But his legs were done. He was broken. Not in body yet, but in nerve.
“What do you want, money? I’ll give you everything,” he whined. “We don’t want anything from you,” Petrovich said, coming closer.
“But Sasha Sever does. He asked me to tell you this: when a man kills somebody who sang from the heart, he pays with whatever matters most to him.” He grabbed Moose’s good arm.
“These the hands you used to pull the trigger?” “Yeah.” Before Moose could react, Petrovich twisted hard, wrenching the joint out.
The scream that tore through the clearing hardly sounded human. Petrovich did the same to the other arm, the one already injured. There was a dry, ugly crack.
“There,” he said, looking down at Moose writhing in the dirt. “Now you’ll never hold a gun again.” But that wasn’t the end of it.
Petrovich dragged him to an old rusted bear trap that had been set there ahead of time. “Your name’s Moose, right? Well, this is how they catch big animals.”
He forced Moose’s leg into place, and the trap snapped shut with a brutal clang, crushing bone. The last thing Moose saw through the haze of pain was Petrovich walking away. They left him there alone.
In the woods. Both arms ruined, one leg caught in steel.
To die slowly. From pain, blood loss, hunger—or whatever else the woods decided to send. Back in White Swan, another note landed on Sasha Sever’s table. It had two words: Wolf caught.
He gave a small nod. He knew what that meant. Moose wasn’t coming back.
He took out his black beads again and added a third mark. One man left.
City Wolf. And for him, the story says, there would be no quick death and no drawn-out one in the woods. For him there would be life.
A life worse than death. City Wolf—real name Dmitry Baskakov—woke up in a familiar place. A holding cell in the city jail.
His head throbbed from the tranquilizer, but he was alive and unhurt. He couldn’t understand what had happened. Who were those men in camouflage?
Why hadn’t they killed him? Why turn him over to the police? The cell door opened and a detective walked in. Young. Tired-looking.
“Morning, Baskakov,” he said, sitting down. “Looks like they finally got you.” “Then charge me,” Wolf said with a crooked grin.
He still felt confident. His protection inside the department would get him out. A few months, maybe, and he’d walk.
“Charge you? Sure.” The detective laid a file on the table. “Murder of Mikhail Krug.”
The grin vanished. “I didn’t— I didn’t kill him. Moose did. I wasn’t even—”
“Right,” the detective said. “We know. We’ve got a statement from your associate known as Artist. He was found dead yesterday in an abandoned theater.”
“Accidental death, looks like. Fall-related. But before he died, he managed to leave a detailed recorded statement.” Wolf went cold.
He understood then that somebody had sold him out. And that this wasn’t just police work. It was something else. Something worse.
“I don’t know anything,” he shouted. “I want a lawyer.” “You’ll get one. You’ll get a trial too.”
“And if things go the way they look, you’ll never see the outside again.”
And in the legend, the trial came fast and mostly behind closed doors. Artist’s recorded statement, plus a handful of anonymous witnesses arranged by Petrovich, was enough to land Wolf a life sentence. His friends in the department suddenly vanished.
Nobody wanted to touch a case that, all at once, seemed to be under scrutiny from very high places. Sever’s web, the story says, reached that far too. Wolf rode in a prison transport to a facility for lifers.
He thought the worst was behind him. He was wrong. According to the legend, it was just beginning.
The prison they sent him to was known in criminal circles as Black Eagle. A place every bit as grim as White Swan. When they put him in his cell, he saw he wasn’t alone.
A man sat on the bunk. Old, gray-haired, with a face lined like old bark. In his hands he turned a set of beads black as midnight.
Wolf didn’t recognize him at first. He’d only seen photographs. Then it hit him.
And for the first time in his life, the story says, he felt real fear. It was Sasha Sever. “Hello, Dmitry,” Sever said quietly.
“Welcome. I’ve been expecting you.” Wolf couldn’t speak. “How… how are you here?” he finally managed.
“Asked for the transfer,” Sever said with a faint smile. “I’ve got a little standing around here. When I heard you were coming, I asked the administration to put us together.”
“For conversation. We’ve got things to discuss, don’t we?” The legend claims Sever used his influence to arrange a transfer from White Swan to Black Eagle.
All so he could meet Wolf in person. “You thought I’d kill you?”
