Chapter 4 - THE RULES OF VICTOR MALENKOV
Z
Victor Malenkov had seven rules inside his home.
Aliyah broke five of them before lunch.
Rule one: never enter his private study.
She entered because she needed a charger.
Rule two: never open a door without security clearance.
She opened three.
Rule three: never allow anyone into the penthouse without Victor’s personal approval.
Aliyah ordered Thai food.
Rule four: nobody touched the piano.
She dusted it because the amount of dust offended her.
Rule five: nobody entered Elena’s room.
Aliyah did not break that one.
Not intentionally.
She discovered it at midnight.
Victor had returned from a meeting with his men, his expression darker than usual. Aliyah had spent the day pretending she could study pharmacology while learning that her mother might have been murdered.
Sleep refused to come.
So she wandered.
At the end of the hallway, one door stood slightly open.
Inside was a bedroom preserved in time.
A blue dress hung on the closet door.
Books lined a shelf.
A bottle of perfume rested beside a silver hairbrush.
Aliyah stopped immediately.
She knew.
“Elena.”
Victor’s voice came from behind her.
“Get out.”
Aliyah turned.
She had never heard him sound like that.
Not angry.
Wounded.
“I’m sorry. The door was open.”
“Get out.”
She did.
Victor shut the door.
He remained in the hallway with one hand resting against the frame.
Aliyah should have walked away.
Instead she asked, “Do you come in here?”
“No.”
“Then why keep it?”
“Because I cannot remove it.”
“That’s not the same as keeping it.”
Victor turned.
“Do not analyze me.”
“I’m not.”
“You are a nursing student.”
“That doesn’t mean I diagnose strangers in hallways.”
“You diagnose everyone.”
Aliyah folded her arms.
“You haven’t slept more than four hours since I met you.”
“It has been three days.”
“You take antacids after coffee.”
Victor’s eyes narrowed.
“You noticed that?”
“You rub your left hand whenever somebody stands too close.”
His expression hardened.
“And you keep a dead woman’s room untouched for twelve years because changing it feels like admitting she won’t come back.”
Silence.
Aliyah immediately regretted the words.
“Victor—”
“Enough.”
He walked away.
The next morning, she found a note beneath her coffee.
CLASS AT 9. NIKOLAI WILL DRIVE.
Beneath it, Aliyah wrote:
BOSSY IS NOT A PERSONALITY.
When she returned that afternoon, Victor had written below her message.
NEITHER IS RECKLESSNESS.
She added:
I HAVE OTHER QUALITIES.
His response appeared twenty minutes later.
I AM STILL WAITING TO SEE THEM.
Aliyah laughed loudly enough that one of Victor’s guards glanced at her in alarm.
The absurd note exchange became the first normal thing between them.
Then normal disappeared again.
That evening, Victor’s longtime attorney, Gabriel Stone, arrived carrying documents.
He was older, elegant, silver-haired, and unlike everyone else around Victor, he appeared completely unafraid of him.
“So you’re Aliyah.”
She looked toward Victor.
“What have you told people?”
“Nothing interesting.”
Gabriel smiled.
“He has mentioned you eleven times in three days.”
Victor’s stare could have frozen boiling water.
Gabriel sat.
“We found something involving your mother.”
Aliyah’s humor disappeared.
He placed a bank record on the table.
Two months before Denise Brooks died, she had rented a safe-deposit box under Aliyah’s name.
Aliyah frowned.
“I was seventeen.”
“Which is why nobody connected it to her.”
“What bank?”
Gabriel told her.
The branch still existed downtown.
An hour later, they were standing inside a private viewing room while a bank employee placed a narrow metal box before Aliyah.
Her hands shook.
Victor remained near the wall.
He made no move to approach.
Aliyah inserted the key provided from the bank’s archive.
The box opened.
Inside sat a cassette tape.
Three photographs.
And a sealed envelope.
For Aliyah.
She knew her mother’s handwriting.
Her knees weakened.
Victor stepped forward, then stopped himself.
Aliyah noticed.
“You can come closer.”
He did.
She opened the envelope.
Baby,
If you ever receive this, something happened that I hoped never would.
I need you to know that none of this belongs to you. You are not responsible for what I saw or for the choices other people made.
A patient came into Saint Agnes after a shooting. Her name was Elena Malenkov.
Before she died, she told me the man responsible was not the enemy her husband suspected.
She said someone close to Victor had betrayed her.
Someone she called “the other Petrov.”
I saw Detective Reed outside her room afterward. He took Elena’s belongings before Victor returned.
One of them was a blue notebook.
I asked questions.
That was my mistake.
If I am gone, do not ask the same questions.
Live.
That is the only revenge worth having.
Love,
Mom
Aliyah lowered the letter.
Tears slipped silently down her cheeks.
Victor looked away, giving her privacy even while standing only feet from her.
“She knew.”
“Yes.”
“She knew somebody might kill her.”
Victor’s jaw clenched.
“Yes.”
Aliyah picked up the cassette.
“Do you have something that plays this?”
Victor looked toward Gabriel.
Thirty minutes later, they found an old cassette player in a storage room.
Static filled the office.
Then Denise Brooks’s voice.
Aliyah covered her mouth.
She had not heard her mother’s voice in nine years.
“If this recording is being played, then I was probably right to be afraid.”
Aliyah closed her eyes.
Denise continued.
“I overheard Detective Reed talking to a man named Anton. Reed said Elena had seen the financial ledgers. He said Victor could never be allowed to know the truth.”
Victor leaned forward.
Static cracked.
Then Denise said the sentence that changed everything.
“Anton Petrov wasn’t Victor Malenkov’s enemy.”
Pause.
“He was his business partner.”
Victor stood so suddenly his chair struck the wall.
Aliyah stared at him.
“You said Anton disappeared.”
“He did.”
“Could he still be alive?”
Victor’s face became stone.
Gabriel answered instead.
“If Anton is alive, twelve years of Victor’s organization may have been built on a lie.”
Victor paced toward the window.
Aliyah followed.
“Victor.”
“Not now.”
“You don’t get to disappear inside your own head every time something hurts.”
He turned sharply.
“This is not a nursing lecture.”
“No. It’s worse.”
“You do not understand what Anton was.”
“Then explain it.”
Victor’s restraint cracked.
“He was my brother.”
Aliyah froze.
Not biological.
She understood that immediately.
Something deeper.
Chosen.
Victor looked toward the city.
“Anton grew up beside me. Ate at my mother’s table. Stood beside me at my wedding.”
His voice turned hollow.
“Elena trusted him.”
Aliyah whispered, “And he had her killed.”
Victor’s eyes closed.
The truth was worse than losing an enemy.
It meant the enemy had once been family.
Then the lights went out.
Total darkness swallowed the room.
Nikolai shouted from the hallway.
A gunshot cracked from downstairs.
Victor reached Aliyah in one movement.
He pushed her behind the desk.
“Stay down.”
Another gunshot.
Glass shattered.
Aliyah grabbed Victor’s sleeve.
“Don’t leave.”
His eyes found hers in the emergency lights.
For twelve years, Victor had spent every dangerous moment moving toward violence.
Tonight, for the first time, someone was asking him to stay.
Another shot echoed.
Victor touched Aliyah’s cheek with trembling fingers.
It was the first touch between them that had not been an accident.
“I have to.”
Then he turned toward the gunfire.
May you like
And Aliyah realized the most frightening thing about Victor Malenkov was no longer that he might die.
It was how much she suddenly cared if he did.
