The transition from the foyer to the private study felt like moving from a stage to the gallows. Yuri walked ahead of me, his shadow stretching long and thin across the polished floorboards. He didn't turn on the overhead lights; instead, he lit a single lamp on his desk, creating a small island of amber in a sea of darkness.
I stood by the door, the weight of the burner phone in one pocket and the brass key in the other feeling like lead weights. The "truth" he had just whispered in the foyer—that I was his attempt at salvation—clashed violently with the image of the Volkov-issued blade Viktor had described.
"Show me," I said, my voice cutting through the silence.
Yuri was pouring a drink, the amber liquid splashing into the crystal glass. He paused. "Show you what, Jessy?"
"The blade. The one Viktor said was used on my car."
He set the glass down with a controlled click. He walked to a display case against the far wall, a glass-fronted cabinet filled with historical relics of the Volkov line. He reached inside and pulled out a sleek, folding knife with a handle made of dark obsidian and a crest engraved on the bolster.
"This is a Volkov blade," he said, holding it out in the palm of his hand. "There are exactly twelve of them. They are given to the inner circle—to the brothers, and to the highest-ranking commanders."
I stepped closer, looking at the weapon. It was beautiful and terrifying. "Who has them, Yuri? Who besides you?"
"Mikhail has one," he said, his voice flat. "Our cousin, Miller, who leads the security detail, has another. Four are currently in the hands of my father's old guard." He closed his hand over the knife. "If a blade like this was used to cut your brakes, it wasn't a random act of violence. It was a signature. A message intended for me."
"Or a message from you," I whispered.
Yuri lunged forward, not with violence, but with a desperate, suffocating speed. He pinned me against the desk, his hands on either side of my hips. "If I wanted a ghost, Jessy, I wouldn't have spent the last three weeks watching you breathe. I wouldn't know that you bite your lip when you're looking for an exit, or that you smell like lavender and fear."
His face was inches from mine, his eyes dark with an emotion that looked painfully like love, or perhaps a very convincing obsession. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, silver thumb drive.
"This is the rest of the encryption data. I found it in my father's private safe after he died. It's the other half of the 'Ghost Code.' Without it, your biometrics are useless. Without you, this drive is just metal."
He pressed the drive into my hand, his fingers curling mine around it. "You think I'm the one holding the match? No, Jessy. We are both standing in the middle of a room soaked in gasoline, and the UNI is outside with the lighter. If you don't trust me, use that burner phone Viktor gave you. But know this: Viktor doesn't want to save you. He wants to use you to burn me, and he doesn't care if you're still inside the building when it goes up."
I looked down at the thumb drive in my palm, then up at the man who had pulled me from the wreckage. I could feel the heat of him, the sincerity in his voice, and the crushing weight of the choices ahead of me.
"Decrypt it," I said, my voice barely a breath. "Let's see what my father died to hide."
Yuri nodded, his jaw tight. He guided me to the chair at the terminal. I sat down, my fingers hovering over the glass interface. As the blue light of the scanner hit my eyes, the Ghost Code began to spiral on the screen—a digital DNA that matched my own.
But as the files began to unlock, the first thing that appeared wasn't a list of names. It was a video file, dated the night of my birth.