December nights in the city don’t have much mercy for anyone left out in them. My phone buzzed in my coat pocket, breaking the silence of the empty avenue. It was a text from Roman. Apparently my lack of a meltdown had annoyed him. “You turned out smarter than I expected, Morozov,” he wrote. “I want your resignation on my desk by 9:00 a.m. sharp.” Then came the second line: “And don’t expect a recommendation. Good luck out there.”
I read it once, then called Mike Volkov, a top corporate attorney and an old law school friend of mine. “Dmitry,” he said, voice thick with sleep, “it’s midnight. What happened?” “Mike, I need whistleblower protection,” I said. “And I need it fast.” There was a pause on the line. A long one. “You’re serious?” he asked, fully awake now. “After eight months of sitting on what you found?”
“I was scared,” I said. “He threatened me. My family too.” I looked out toward the dark river. “But tonight took care of that.” Mike let out a breath. “What happened?” “He slept with my wife in a storage room off the conference hall,” I said flatly. “In front of half the executive team. Then he threw me fifty bucks with ‘Rent’ written on it.”
Mike was quiet for a moment. “Be at my office at seven,” he said finally. “Not a minute later. And tell me one thing—do you actually have hard evidence on the offshore accounts?” “I have documentation on roughly forty-seven million dollars routed through shell consulting firms,” I said. “Account numbers, transaction chains, and most important, the decryption key for the whole system.”
Another silence. “How did you get that?” he asked. “Copied it from Roman’s tablet tonight while he was busy with my wife.” I could hear him sit up. “Dmitry, do you understand that from this moment on, you’re a target?” I pulled the fifty from my pocket and looked at the word again under the streetlight. “My lease is up, Mike,” I said. “Now it’s my turn to send the bill.” Then I ended the call.
By two in the morning I was standing outside my brother Art’s apartment in a working-class neighborhood across town. The heavy metal door opened with a scrape, and there he was in gym shorts, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Then he got a good look at my face and stepped back. “Come in,” he said quietly. “You look calm, but not in a good way.”
I walked into his small living room and sat down on the old couch. The place smelled like coffee and clean laundry—the familiar smell of a bachelor apartment that somebody actually lives in. Art went to the fridge, pulled out two cold bottles of craft beer, opened both, and handed one to me. I shook my head.
“I need a clear head tonight,” I said. “Tomorrow too.” He nodded, sat across from me, and waited. That’s one thing about my brother—when it matters, he knows how to keep his mouth shut and listen.
