The days that followed were torture.
The cellar, once a sanctuary, had turned into a pressure cooker—thick air, flickering lamplight, the stench of damp brick and fear. Above them, the city breathed and hunted. Below, they were ghosts waiting to be exorcised.
The sketch of Jake's face hung over them like a curse. Misha would return from the streets with fresh newspapers, and there it was again—his face staring up from the page. The reward was higher now. The description longer. "Pockmarks on the face… a withered left arm, often kept in his pocket…" Each detail drew him closer to the Stalin history remembered. The monster and the man were becoming one.
Jake threw himself into the only thing he could still control: the plan.
He spent hours hunched over the floor plan of Councillor Orlov's apartment, the one Malinovsky had sent. It was a perfect puzzle—locks, routes, timing. The intellectual precision of it numbed the panic. He questioned Pavel's men like a professor grilling students. "Any locksmith experience? Window cleaner? Delivery driver in the wealthy districts?" He wasn't building a gang. He was assembling a crew for a surgical strike.
But the air was thick with tension. Pavel's men weren't thinkers. They were doers, growing restless in the dark. Arguments flared over cigarettes, over bread, over nothing. Kamo barely spoke, sitting like a carved idol—watchful, disapproving. His silence was a judgment heavier than any accusation.
Their only link to the outside world was the tavern upstairs, through the barman, Ivan. A decent man caught in the jaws of something far larger than himself. Jake had promised him payment—a small fortune for his silence—but fear had already hollowed him out. Every patrol that stopped for a drink drove another crack through his composure.
On the third day, the cracks shattered.
Ivan came down the stairs, his face gray and slick with sweat. "They're up there," he whispered. "Two of them. Not drinking. Watching. Showing your picture around. They're going door to door on this block." His hands twisted together. "Five hundred rubles now. More than I make in a year. Men are starting to talk. Men who owe me money…"
And then came the voice.
"Papa! Papa, look!"
A child's voice. Bright. Innocent.
Ivan froze. His eyes went wide with horror. "Mitya…" he breathed. His son. Eight years old. Curious, cheerful—and he'd brought food down to the cellar twice. He'd seen Jake.
"I know him!" Mitya's voice rang out, closer now. "The man in the picture! I've seen him!"
The world in the cellar stopped.
No one moved. No one breathed. From above came the slow, deliberate tread of boots. A policeman's voice followed, casual but interested.
"What's that, boy? You've seen this man?"
"Yes!" Mitya said proudly. "He's got a sore arm, just like the paper says! He's in our cellar!"
It was over.
The cellar had one door. No escape. Kamo was already moving, his revolver appearing as if conjured. His face was grim, ready to take as many as he could. Pavel drew his own pistol, his voice low. "We're finished."
Jake's mind didn't stop. It accelerated.
Fighting was suicide. Surrender was death. There was no third way. No clever gambit. Only one move left—and it was monstrous.
He lunged, grabbing Ivan from behind. One arm locked around his neck, the other pressing the cold muzzle of his Browning under the man's chin.
Ivan gasped, frozen with shock.
Jake's voice was quiet—measured, deadly calm. "Your son is about to get every one of us killed," he whispered, his words razor-sharp. "You're going to go upstairs. You're going to laugh. Do you understand me? Laugh, like it's the funniest thing you've ever heard."
Ivan trembled violently.
"You'll tell them your boy has an imagination," Jake continued, voice low enough that only Ivan could hear. "Say he's been pointing at every man with a moustache all week, shouting that he's found the revolutionary. You'll ruffle his hair. You'll apologize. You'll give the officers your best bottle of Armenian brandy—for their trouble. You'll make them believe it was all a joke."
Ivan's voice cracked. "They won't believe me. He… he saw you."
Jake pressed the gun harder under his jaw.
"They will," he said softly. "Because if they don't—if they take one step down those stairs—it won't be me they drag out. It'll be Kamo. And his last act before he dies will be to visit this tavern again. To find your boy. And then you'll have nothing left. Do you understand?"
It was the ugliest truth of Jake's new world—how easily love could become leverage.
A heavy fist pounded on the cellar door. "Everything alright down there, Ivan?" the officer called, suspicion edging his tone.
Jake met Ivan's eyes. The man was crying, his face collapsing under the weight of an impossible choice. What Jake saw reflected there wasn't fear anymore—it was recognition. The moment a man realizes the devil in the room isn't metaphor.
Ivan nodded.
Jake let him go.
The barman climbed the stairs, trembling. Each creak of the wood above was a countdown. The men below stood frozen, pistols in hand, waiting for the sound that would decide their fate—laughter or gunfire.
Jake didn't look at the door. He looked at Kamo.
Kamo stared back, eyes wide with horror. In them, Jake saw judgment—saw the moment something inside his oldest ally broke.
He had saved them all. But something far more important had just died.