VOICEMAIL: "German. Six weeks she is missing. If I trace this back to your people, I will dismantle your organization piece by piece, but only after I personally rip you apart joint by joint. She has not meddled in your affairs." (it took him two weeks to find this phone number. TROL has upped their game. there is a pause.) "If you are not involved, I will alert you to the resolution of this matter." (a nice code for 'I will let you know if she is dead.')
The man who has hated him ever since he learned She didn’t (and with good reason. look at the ruins his machinery leaves behind) leaves him a voicemail in the middle of the night, in the middle of a job. He is expecting vitriol, he is expecting the anger he missed out on the first time. ( In some ways, that silence, this calm accusation is worse than everything TROL has asked of him. )
He left her bleeding behind him when he went to a doom that didn’t come. He left. The Russian is to be commended for including him at all even if it crushes what is left of his heart, even if it rips the breath from his lungs
Most people who are not found in 48 hours are not found at all, you know. The leeway for operatives can be a little longer but–
(but, he is reminded of how many operatives he must have vanished in his own career)
This is not a message that needs his reply; but he is a fool and the brother of a traitor under all that stone.
[Text: Nikolai] I understand[message unsent] Thank you
