Chapter 6: The Architect of Memory

Chapter 6: The Architect of Memory

The sleek, obsidian expanse of the boardroom table in Aleksandr Sokolov’s London office reflected the city’s grey skyline like a dark mirror. Twenty-four hours had passed since he’d stood in the mud of Lastochka, and the grime was gone, scrubbed away by a valet, but the stain on his soul remained. The rusted tin box sat on the corner of his desk, a crude, alien artifact amidst the minimalist perfection of his corporate empire. Inside his jacket, the folded letter and the tarnished locket were a constant, physical pressure against his chest.

“I want everything on him,” Alex’s voice was devoid of emotion, a flat, cold command delivered into the secure speakerphone. Across the desk, his head of security, a former MI6 agent with eyes that had seen too much, took meticulous notes. “Leonid Tarasenko. He’s a bureaucrat in the Kharkiv Oblast Department for Historical and Cultural Preservation. I want his career history, his family, his finances, his vices. I want to know where he buys his bread. I want to know what he fears. Find me a lever.”

“Consider it done, Mr. Sokolov.”

Alex ended the call. For a moment, he pictured it: the utter, systematic ruin of Leonid Tarasenko. It would be easy. A whisper in the right political ear, a carefully orchestrated financial scandal, a quiet threat to a loved one. He had dismantled men far more powerful for far less. The thought of bringing that immense, crushing weight down on the man who had stolen his past brought a flicker of savage satisfaction. But it felt… incomplete. Destroying Leonid wouldn’t bring Dima back. It would only be vengeance, not restoration. First, he had to find Dima.

His search for Dima was a separate, more delicate operation. He’d assumed Dima was still in Kharkiv, living a quiet life, perhaps as a teacher or an engineer like his parents. A man haunted by a memory, waiting for a promise to be fulfilled. Alex’s investigators were discreetly searching records, looking for a Dimitri Volkov, born around 1967, with ties to the old Komsomol youth programs. It was a common name. The search was proving slow.

Three days later, two files landed on his desk. The first was the preliminary dossier on Leonid. As expected, he was a man of small ambitions and petty corruptions, living in a modest apartment, terrified of losing his minor government pension. A fly waiting to be swatted. Alex set it aside.

The second file was from his acquisitions team, a routine update on the Lastochka purchase. The title read: “Competing Interests & Potential Obstructions.” He opened it with disinterest. Local preservation groups were a standard nuisance in these kinds of deals.

But this was different. A respected Kyiv-based architectural firm, "Volkov & Partners," had recently submitted a formal petition to have the entire Lastochka site designated a state-protected historical landmark. Their proposal argued for a sensitive, state-funded restoration project that would turn the camp into a museum and memorial dedicated to the last generation of Soviet children.

The name, Volkov, snagged his attention. His heart gave a painful, stupid lurch. It had to be a coincidence. A common name. Still, a cold dread snaked its way up his spine.

“Get me the file on the lead architect of this firm,” he commanded his assistant through the intercom, his voice sharper than intended. “Now.”

Minutes later, the file appeared on his screen. He clicked it open.

The world tilted on its axis.

It was a professional headshot. A man in his early forties, dressed in a sharp, dark grey jacket over a crisp white shirt. He was handsome, his features matured into a quiet dignity. His hair was still dark, though threaded with hints of silver at the temples. He was looking directly at the camera, a faint, professional smile on his lips. But his eyes… Alex would have known those eyes in the dark, in the depths of hell. They were the same deep, intelligent brown, still holding a universe of thought and feeling, though now shadowed by a sorrow that twenty-two years of life had etched there.

The name beneath the photograph was a gut punch. Dimitri ‘Dima’ Volkov. Founder and Lead Architect.

Alex stared, his blood turning to ice. The entire narrative he had built—of a lost love, a victim waiting to be found, a promise waiting to be fulfilled—evaporated in the cold light of the computer screen.

Dima wasn’t lost. Dima wasn’t waiting.

Dima was a competitor. He was the primary obstacle standing between Alex and the ownership of their past. He had built his own life, a successful one, and was now moving to claim Lastochka for his own reasons, under his own name. The thought was a betrayal sharper than any blade. Had he forgotten? Or had he simply moved on so completely that their secret clearing was now just another project, a line item on a proposal?

The cold rage that had been simmering for Leonid now found a new, more complex target. Alex’s plan shifted in an instant. The hunter’s instinct, the one that had made him a billionaire, took over. If Dima wanted to meet on a battlefield, so be it.

“Arrange a meeting,” he told his assistant, his voice deadly calm. “With Volkov & Partners. In Kyiv. Tomorrow. The agenda is a potential joint venture regarding the Lastochka site. Tell them my investment firm is prepared to make a significant offer.”

The next day, Alex sat in a glass-walled boardroom on the 20th floor of a Kyiv skyscraper. The city sprawled below him, a mix of Soviet-era concrete and modern glass, a perfect reflection of the conflict raging within him. He had chosen the venue. He had set the time. He was in control. He repeated it to himself like a mantra.

He heard voices in the hall, muffled by the heavy door. One of them was a low, melodic baritone, explaining a technical detail about load-bearing walls. The sound, so achingly familiar, sent a tremor through him.

The door swung open.

Three men entered. Alex’s eyes saw only one. Dima. He looked even more striking in person, carrying himself with a quiet confidence that filled the room. He was holding a roll of blueprints, his focus on his partner beside him.

“…and if we reinforce the original foundation, we can preserve the entire facade of the main hall,” Dima was saying. He gestured with the blueprints, his passion for his work evident in every line of his body.

Then he looked up, his gaze sweeping towards the head of the table where the prospective investor sat.

His eyes met Alex’s.

For a single, silent heartbeat, the world stopped. The professional architect vanished. The confident businessman disappeared. Dima froze, the blueprints slipping slightly in his grasp. Recognition hit him like a physical blow, a wave of pure, unadulterated shock that washed the colour from his face. The "kind, intelligent eyes" widened, and in their depths, Alex saw the ghost of a nineteen-year-old boy in a forest clearing.

Then, just as quickly, the shock was consumed by something else. A storm of emotions swirled in his eyes: confusion, disbelief, and then a profound, gathering anger. The softness in his face hardened into a mask of cold fury. The past two decades of pain, of believing he had been utterly and completely forgotten by the one person who had promised not to, coalesced into a single, sharp point of betrayal.

Alex stood slowly, the predator in his own sterile habitat, his own shock perfectly concealed behind a facade of icy corporate aggression. He had come to find a ghost, to save a memory. Instead, he had found his match. His rival. His enemy.

The silence stretched, thick and unbearable. Dima’s partners looked back and forth between the two men, sensing the sudden, violent shift in the room's atmosphere.

Dima found his voice first. It was not the soft, whispering tone of the boy in the woods. It was the voice of a man carved from disappointment and steel.

"Sokolov," he bit out the name as if it were poison on his tongue. He looked at Alex, the boy from the camp who had vanished without a trace, now sitting here in a suit that cost a fortune, trying to buy the last sacred piece of his past. "What in God's name are you doing here?"