The Last Romanov (Under Editing)

The Meeting

With the chairs retrieved and tea poured for everybody, they all sat around the crate that was to serve as their table. And, frankly, Sasha couldn't remember the last time he'd been in a room with so much tension.

Actually... that was a lie. Frankly, he'd been in a hell of a lot of tense rooms over the past few months. But, this one was different. Everybody in that room knew each other, and all of them, he assumed had the same goal: get Anastasia off the throne. At least nobody in that room, as far as he knew, was out to kill anybody else who happened to be sitting at that table. The tension was a different kind, altogether. Virtanen couldn't seem to look Maria in the eye, and Maria couldn't seem to look Nadezhda in the eye. And Sasha couldn't seem to meet anybody's eyes. Meanwhile, poor Kominski just looked over the sad, awkward group with a frown, trying to figure out what the hell was their problem.

What was their problem? Sasha couldn't seem to figure it out, either.

"So... I suppose we should... begin," Virtanen said, as if testing the waters to see what everybody else thought of it.

"We should, yes," Maria agreed. She looked across the table at Sasha and Nadezhda. "What do the two of you know about what's going on outside this church?"

"Not much," Nadezhda admitted. "I haven't been out of here since Pushkin's Palace went down."

Sasha frowned. "Pushkin's Palace? As in the bar, Pushkin's Palace?"

Virtanen nodded. "Pushkin's Palace wasn't just a bar: it was also a front for our operations. But, of course, our illustrious Czarina was able to find the place and took a bunch of our people. Including Nadia's cousin, Nikola."

Nikola. He'd almost forgotten about him.

"Do we know what happened to him?" he asked.

"Executed, along with all the others," Maria said. "Right about the time Arttüri and his gang were able to get you and the girl out of prison."

Dead? It made Sasha feel sick to his stomach. Nikola didn't deserve to die like that. He didn't deserve to be tortured and starved just so they could execute him.

"Does Nadia know?" Sasha asked, doing his best to keep his voice even.

Once again, Virtanen nodded. "She was upset, to say the least."

She had every right to be.

"Why?" Sasha asked. "Why the hell did you guys come after me and Nadia and not after Nikola and the others?"

"It was too late for them by the time we had our plans set," Virtanen said. "Believe me: we were going to go for them, too. Right up until the moment Maria told us what she'd heard from her grapevine at Peter and Paul's."

Sasha cursed, running a hand through his hair. He couldn't believe this. He didn't want to believe this!

"I promise you: we're going to do something about this," Virtanen said. "If everything goes to plan, nobody else is going to have to die."

"Someone always has to die in plans like these ones," Nadezhda said bluntly. "It's just a matter of who and when."

Guess she would know something about that: this was, after all, her second revolution.

"Believe me: we know that," Maria said. "That being said, we'd like to think that this will minimize the casualties."

"And what is this, exactly?" Sasha asked.

"Well, we're going to overthrow the Czarina," Maria said. "And we're going to try to get her to do it of her own accord."

Sasha couldn't help it: he laughed.