Chapter 8 - Misha
The security footage plays on a loop on my monitor.
Bianca walking the grounds this morning, her arms wrapped around herself against the cold. Bianca pausing at the perimeter wall, close enough to touch, testing how far she can go before someone stops her. Bianca disappearing into the greenhouse and not coming out for over an hour.
I should stop watching. There's work to be done—threat assessments, security protocols, contingency plans. But my eyes keep drifting back to the screen, to the small figure moving through my family's forgotten spaces like she's looking for something she lost.
Or something she might find.
My phone buzzes. Alexei.
"What do you have?" I answer.
"Two updates. First—Sergei Morozov left Los Angeles this morning."
I straighten in my chair. "Destination?"
"Las Vegas, initially. He's meeting with someone—we're still working on identifying who. From there, our sources say he's heading to Seattle."
Seattle. The Belov family operates out of Seattle—smaller than the Morozovs, but vicious. If Sergei is meeting with them, he's building a coalition.
"He's not coming directly," I say, thinking out loud.
"No. He's gathering allies first. Making sure that when he moves, he moves with enough force that you can't push back."
It's what I would do in his position. Smart. Patient. Dangerous.
"Keep tracking him. I want to know every meeting he takes, every hand he shakes, every meal he eats. If he books a flight to San Francisco, I want to know before he reaches the airport."
"Understood." Alexei pauses. "There's something else."
"The woman. Mirella."
"Yes. I found her."
I lean back in my chair, waiting.
"She was sold to a man named Howard Crane. He owns a ranch outside Reno—cattle operation, officially. Unofficially, he's connected to several trafficking networks up and down the West Coast. Uses the ranch as a... holding facility."
The words settle into my stomach like stones.
"What's her condition?"
"Alive, as far as we can tell. But Crane has a reputation. The women who go to his ranch don't usually leave." Another pause. "What do you want me to do with this information?"
I stare at the security footage, at Bianca emerging from the greenhouse with dirt on her hands. She asked about the other women. Asked if there was anything she could do.
This isn't our business. We don't rescue trafficking victims. We're not heroes.
But Bianca asked.
"Keep digging," I say. "I want to know everything about Crane's operation. Security, staffing, routines. How many women he has, where he keeps them, what the extraction options look like."
Silence on the line. I can feel Alexei's surprise.
"You're thinking about going in?"
"I'm thinking about options. Just get me the intelligence."
"Understood."
I end the call and sit with the weight of what I've just set in motion. An extraction operation in Nevada would be complicated, risky, potentially costly. It could draw attention we don't need, resources we can't spare. All for women I've never met, who mean nothing to me or my family.
But Bianca's face when she asked about them—the way she pushed past her own terror to think about someone else's suffering. That meant something.
I don't examine what.
***
The call from Dmitri comes an hour later.
"Brother." His voice is calm, measured—the voice he uses when he's assessing a situation before committing to a response. "I've heard interesting things about Sergei Morozov's travel itinerary."
"What have you heard?"
"My sources have been tracking the Morozovs for years. Sergei's sudden interest in coalition-building didn't go unnoticed." A pause. "Las Vegas. Seattle. Possibly Portland after that. He's making the rounds."
"Building an army."
"Building something. The question is what he plans to do with it."
I already know the answer. So does Dmitri. But we circle it anyway, the way we always do—approaching the truth from multiple angles, testing its weight before we commit to carrying it.
"He wants her," I say finally. "Bianca. This isn't about money or territory or business. He was promised a bride, and I took her. He won't stop until he gets her back or I'm dead."
"Or both."
"Or both."
Dmitri is quiet for a moment. I hear movement on his end—pacing, probably. He paces when he thinks.
"This is my fault," I say. "I acted without thinking about the consequences for the family. If you want me to handle it alone—"
"Don't be stupid." His voice sharpens. "You're my brother.
Whatever enemies you make are my enemies.
Whatever wars you start, I fight beside you.
" A pause. "That said, I'd prefer to avoid a war if possible.
The Morozovs are not the Ivanovs. Viktor is a man of honor compared to Anatoly or Sergei. These people are rabid dogs."
"I know."
"Do you have a plan?"
"I'm working on one."
"Work faster. Sergei isn't going to give you time to find your footing." More pacing. "I'm sending you men. Twelve of my best, plus additional surveillance equipment. They'll arrive tomorrow."
"Dmitri—"
"This isn't a request. You're under-resourced for a siege, and that estate has weak points you haven't addressed. The north wall, the east gate—I've seen the schematics. You need more bodies."
He's right. I hate that he's right.
"Fine. Send them."
"Good." His tone shifts, becomes something closer to curiosity. "How is she? The girl."
"Bianca."
"Yes. Bianca. How is she adjusting?"
I think about her in the greenhouse, surrounded by dead things, looking for something worth saving. "She's adapting."
"Is she going to be a problem?"
"No."
"You sound very certain."
"She's stronger than she looks. Smarter than anyone gives her credit for." I pause, aware that I'm revealing more than I intend. "She'll survive this."
Dmitri is quiet for a moment. When he speaks again, his voice is softer.
"Kira wants to meet her. She remembers what it was like to be thrown into this world without warning. She thinks she might be able to help."
Kira. My brother's wife, who started as a captive and became something else entirely. Who found her footing in our bloody world and built a life that actually looks like happiness.
"Maybe," I say. "When things are more stable."
"Things may never be more stable. That's the nature of our lives." A pause. "Don't isolate her, Misha. Whatever you're feeling—guilt, responsibility, something else—don't let it convince you that distance is protection. It isn't. Take it from someone who learned that lesson the hard way."
I don't have a response to that. Dmitri doesn't seem to expect one.
"I'll be in touch," he says. "Stay sharp, brother."
"Always."
The line goes dead. I set the phone down and stare at the wall, my brother's words echoing in my mind.
Don't isolate her. Distance isn't protection.
He's right about that too. But I don't know how to be close to her without wanting things I have no right to want. Without remembering what it felt like to hold her, dance with her, watch her fall asleep in my arms.
That man is gone. The man who bought her at an auction, who threatens dismemberment, who has killed people—that's who I am now. That's who she sees when she looks at me.
I can't blame her for flinching.
***
Dusk comes slowly, the gray light fading to purple and then to black.
I tell myself I'm walking the perimeter for security reasons. Checking sight lines, evaluating the new camera positions, making sure the guards are alert at their posts. It's what I would normally do—what I should be doing, with Sergei Morozov circling like a shark.
But my path takes me past the greenhouse, and I find myself slowing.
There's light inside. A lantern, flickering behind the grimy glass. She's in there again—or still. I can see her silhouette moving among the dead plants, bending to examine something, straightening to move to the next row.
I should keep walking. Give her space. Let her have this one thing that isn't about me.
Instead, I stop. Watch.
She's touching the leaves of a fern—one of the few things still alive in there. Her fingers are gentle, careful, the hands of someone trained to heal. She leans closer, examining the fronds, probably assessing whether it can be saved.
The image hits me somewhere I wasn't expecting.
My mother used to do the same thing. Stand in that exact spot, her dark hair pinned up against the humidity, her fingers moving over leaves and stems with the same focused attention.
I was seven the first time she brought me in there, showed me how to repot a seedling, explained how roots needed room to grow.
Everything alive needs space to become what it's meant to be, she told me. You can't force growth. You can only create the conditions for it.
I didn't understand then. I was a child, more interested in the earthworms I found in the soil than in philosophical lessons about nurturing.
I understand now.
My mother has been dead for seventeen years. The greenhouse has been abandoned almost as long—a mausoleum for her memory, too painful to tend but impossible to tear down. I haven't set foot inside it in over a decade.
But I gave it to Bianca without thinking. Offered it up like a gift, not realizing until this moment what I was actually giving away.
She moves to another plant, this one clearly dead, and begins pulling the withered stalks from the pot. Making room for something new. Creating conditions for growth.
I watch until the cold seeps through my jacket, until my fingers go numb in my pockets. Then I force myself to turn away, to continue my circuit of the perimeter.
Distance isn't protection, Dmitri said.
Maybe not. But it's all I have.
***
I'm back in my office, reviewing the files Alexei sent on Sergei's known associates, when my phone buzzes.
Unknown number. No caller ID.
I answer anyway. "Yes."
Nothing. Dead air.
Then the line goes dead.
A moment later, a text arrives from the same number. An image file.
I open it.
The photo is from the auction. Bianca on the stage, bathed in spotlights, her black dress stark against the red velvet curtain behind her. Her face is caught in a moment of raw terror—the instant before she raised her chin, before she found her defiance.
Below the image, four words:
She belongs to me.
My blood goes cold.
Then hot.
I stare at the message, reading it again and again, each repetition stoking the fire in my chest. Sergei. It has to be Sergei. The arrogance of it, the possessiveness—sending me a photo of the moment he thought he'd won, reminding me that in his mind, she was already his.
She belongs to me.
No. She doesn't. She never did. She never will.
I pocket the phone and stride out of the office, my mind already racing through responses. I could trace the number—Alexei has the resources. I could send a message back, something equally provocative, let Sergei know that I'm not intimidated.
Or I could do nothing. Let him wonder. Let him stew in his own obsession while I fortify my defenses and prepare for whatever he's planning.
The rational choice is obvious. Don't engage. Don't give him the satisfaction of a reaction. Play the long game, the way I've always played it.
But the rational part of my brain has gone quiet, drowned out by something older and more dangerous.
She belongs to me.
I find myself climbing the stairs, moving toward her room without conscious decision. I need to see her. Need to confirm that she's still here, still safe, still—
I stop outside her door. Force myself to breathe.
She's fine. The guards would have alerted me if anything was wrong. Sergei is in Las Vegas or Seattle or wherever the hell he's slithering tonight—nowhere near San Francisco, nowhere near her.
The photo was a provocation. Nothing more.
But my hand is shaking as I lower it from the door I was about to knock on.
I stand there for a long moment, listening. Silence from inside. She's probably asleep, exhausted from another day of processing the wreckage of her life.
She belongs to me, Sergei wrote.
The words echo in my head, twisting into something else.
She doesn't belong to anyone. Not to Sergei. Not to her father. Not to me.
But I will burn this city to the ground before I let anyone take her.
I turn away from her door and head back downstairs, pulling out my phone as I go.
Alexei answers on the first ring.
"I need you to trace a number," I say. "And I need the files on Howard Crane's ranch moved up. I want extraction options on my desk by morning."
"Both?"
"Both."
If Sergei wants a war, he'll get one. And when it's over, he'll understand exactly what it costs to threaten what's mine.