Viktor wasn't one to follow.
Not in his dimension.
He gave orders, took cities, broke numerous men with a glance. He did not chase nor did he question anything. If someone was able to slip away, it was because of his leniency—or because they'd never mattered to begin with.
But now, he is a backseat passenger in an unmarked car and his jaw is clenched, eyes hot on a certain sleek, black SUV that cuts through the night like it owns the place. Lila's bf SUV.
The same Lila who would ask for permission to breathe too loud. Who would stare at Viktor like a star while he moved about as though he were the sun, awkwardly shifting her orbit and questioning where she was allowed to go.
Now she does not repair.
She does not check in.
She didn't ask.
Because she didn't need to.
Not anymore.
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Kirill caught a glimpse from the rearview mirror. Losing a conversation for over an hour weighed like a ton of bricks, but he chose to stay silent until now.
"Boss, if you want to know where she's going… you could just ask her," was said in a careful tone.
Viktor didn't answer right away. He lit a cigarette—his fifth, maybe sixth of the night. The glow flared for a moment, then faded as he dragged in a slow breath.
"She wouldn't tell me," he said at last while still staring at the vehicle's tail lights.
Kirill raised an eyebrow. "Is that what you think? The woman is hiding something?"
Viktor expelled smoke slowly, gazing at it in the way one might see a question mark they were trying to defog. "No," he replied. "She hides nothing. She just… goes elsewhere."
Kirill frowned. "That sounds worse."
"It is."
A beat passed, heavy.
"And what if she told the truth?" Kirill asked.
He slouched in his seat, leaned back. "Then I'd have to accept that she's no longer mine to chase after," he muttered, a tired sad voice.
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They crossed the East Bridge ten minutes later, entering an area of the city that Viktor hadn't been to in a year. Once his territory, now the fragmented relic that was silently rumored behind smoke filled rooms where loyalty deemed currency, and Lila's name was swiftly printed on the dollars.
The SUV braked to a screeching halt.
A forgotten opera house stood directly in front of them, an architecture that still faintly remembered its former self. The skeleton still had an air of beauty, albet dusty and dilapidated, still a defeated monarch constructed of glass and stone. An abandoned opera house stood before them, the kind of building that remembered what it used to be. Its bones were still elegant, even under the dust and decay. A fallen queen of stone and glass.
She stepped out of the vehicle as if she owned it.
Defensively chic, incorruptibly elegant in the form of Pulled hair, bare skin, a long coat along with knee high boots.She resembled a warrior clad in blood memory silk.
And for his sake, oh God—she appeared as if she were in charge.
No, she didn't survey the area.
And why would she?
Determined is what she was.
No one in that room would be so foolish as to try and would dare touch her.
Not any longer.
Not any more.
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While she walked into the building, Viktor remained in his car, surveying the surroundings through binoculars. The way his stomach twisted unnerved him. He diod think of it as business. Not likke it's some sort of strategy.
He had folded inward hands for too long. No explanations would justify that.
Some figures began to move in the captaining darkness. Viktor was able to recognize most of them.
The Masters of the East Side. The arabs that had vaguely become quiet recently.
A blundering broker from the south. One that Viktor has cut off a long time ago for being a traitor.
And worse—one of Sergei's men.
Nothing too serious, but the type that will get you close enough to deliver a message.
There she is.
Lila.
Standing at the head of a broken stage, arms folded like she was born to give orders. Her voice was lost to him from this distance, but her presence screamed loud enough.
She wasn't asking.
She wasn't negotiating.
She was commanding.
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He watched her move with total ease.
A point of her finger.
A map laid flat.
Various regions of a map consolidated into rows, laid side by side.
A vow. A promise made by placing a hand not getting put on a shield is not out from weakness, but strength: "This is mine now, and if I have to, I will bleed for it."
One by one, each of the men nodded to the first woman.
"Even Sergei's man smiled," she recalled.
"And Lila, Lila didn't smile at all. But for her, she didn't need to."
"I've already won them," she said.
She'd already won them.
Not with promises.Not with bribes.With something rarer.
Belief.
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"Viktor didn't try to block her off three doors later," my intuition says, "not whilst she was walking towards a side exit in a white shirt. But waited, rather unclimbed until the building was empty."
After getting out of the car, he told himself to adjust a coat as tight as a straitjacket, then he walked with forced precision through the same doorway his almost lool alike ex-wife just clinched.
The opera house smelled of old velvet, crumbling plaster, and the ghosts of music long gone. Dust swirled under his boots. The stage creaked beneath his weight.
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My wife claimed, personified, his inner child heard.
The guts of voice turned to dust while reminiscing about music that had vanished were saying the decaying velvet opera house concealed, the crumbling sold.
Even she claimed the old memo.
Claiming the memo brought a grin from her ex-lover, who shivers the cop's tilt at him.
Dirt danced beneath my spouse's high heels. The stage cracked where my other ex genuinely wanted.
Claim Venice in Italy stood claim to screw London as a joke to my old-but-not-so-old caretaker 'successors brother.'
A new throne.
Not yet.
Locked in icy grasp as he claimed claim to the seat as a throne.
Whenever she bit her lip, it somehow always claimed my heart softened so heartbreakingly.
To see that chair she had distinctively called not dress, in denial.
In denial she wouldn't admit: no way she had surpasseds me.
She was walking toward something bigger.
And she hadn't invited him to follow.
Kirill's voice sliced through the quiet as he came from behind him.
"You were right," he said gently. "She's building something."
Viktor remained quiet.
"You want me to stop her?"
He didn't respond.
"You want to warn her?" Kirill tried once more.
Nothing still.
Then, at last—Viktor, his voice thick, soft, and trembling at the strained edges.
"No," he answered.
"But I need to know one thing."
"What's that?"
His eyes remained glued to the vacant seat. He swallowed hard, once.
"When she ultimately claims the crown… will there still be space for me next to her?"