About The Author

ILYA KROMOV, head lawyer at a struggling defense plant on the Volga, has spent years playing the game—giving bribes, cutting corners, keeping the raiders at bay. He’s no hero. He’s just better at the game than most.

But when police ambush him at a meeting with a bank representative, Ilya realizes he’s been outplayed. The ambush was a setup. And the man pulling the strings—a corporate raider named Lazarev—has already seized the plant’s subsidiary and is now coming for the rest.

Fired, disgraced, and abandoned by a wife who suspects him of worse than he’s willing to admit, Ilya has nothing left but his legal skills and a corrosive pride. He joins forces with a shadowy Moscow firm staffed by ex-KGB operatives—not because he trusts them, but because in a city where courts are bought and officials have prices, they’re the only allies left.

Set against the haunting industrial landscape of Ulyanovsk—where Soviet ghosts watch from crumbling monuments, Orthodox domes rise beside Tatar mosques, and the Volga wind carries whispers of betrayal—this is not just a legal thriller. It’s a story of survival in a world where the law is just another weapon and no one walks away clean.