Chapter 7
The Architect's Design
Viktoras Kairys, a charismatic politician, oversees the scheme. He views the pension reform as a means to power and wealth, dismissing Agnė as a minor obstacle.
The polished oak desk, a monument to Viktoras Kairys’s ascent, gleamed under the soft glow of his desk lamp. Outside, the Vilnius night was a velvet cloak, studded with the nascent stars of a nation finding its footing. Inside, however, the air was thick with a different kind of light, the calculated brilliance of ambition. Viktoras traced the edge of a blueprint, not for a building, but for something far more intricate, a structure built of numbers and promises, of trust and betrayal. Sodra’s proposed reforms, a symphony of carefully chosen words, were his masterpiece, a grand design meant to reshape not just pensions, but the very landscape of power. He saw it all with a clarity that bordered on prescience: the hushed approvals, the swift transfers, the quiet enrichment of those who understood the true currency of this new Lithuania.
He took a slow sip of his cognac, the amber liquid a mirror to the wealth he was carefully cultivating. The whispers of dissent, the persistent hum of public unease, were mere static to him, easily drowned out by the swell of his own influence. A certain tenacious journalist, a young woman named Agnė Petrauskaitė, had flickered across his radar. He’d seen her name attached to a few articles, sharp enough to be noticed, but ultimately insignificant. A fly buzzing at the edges of his grand vision. She was an inconvenient detail, nothing more. He dismissed her with a wave of his hand, a gesture as dismissive as swatting away a bothersome insect. Let her dig. Let her chase phantoms. The foundations of his plan were laid with stone, not flimsy paper.
His gaze drifted to a framed photograph on his desk: a younger Viktoras, beaming, flanked by figures of authority, their smiles as broad and hollow as the promises they’d made. He remembered that day, the heady scent of victory, the intoxicating promise of a nation reborn. He had been a fervent believer then, a builder of futures. Now, the future he built was for himself, a gleaming edifice of personal gain, propped up by the fading hopes of those who had placed their trust in him. He believed he was merely adapting, evolving with the times, finding the most efficient path to progress. And progress, in his lexicon, was synonymous with power and prosperity, a prosperity he intended to hoard.
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