Chapter 7 Ivan
IVAN
The restaurant has been emptied for us.
Tables are dressed in heavy white linen, with place settings laid out in crystal and silver that will never touch food.
The staff has been dismissed, sent home with envelopes of cash and instructions to forget they were ever scheduled for a Tuesday night.
Candles have been spaced with deliberate intention along the perimeter, their flames casting long, nervous shadows that dance across the wainscoting.
Heavy velvet curtains smother the windows, sealing off the street and the eyes that might be watching from the pavement.
The air inside carries a faint, stagnant mix of beeswax, old mahogany, and the ghost of a kitchen that went cold hours ago. It smells like a church before a funeral.
Everyone is gone except for the manager.
He stands near the service entrance, trying desperately to occupy no space at all.
His hands are folded tightly in front of him, knuckles white.
His eyes flit from the floor to the velvet drapes to the ceiling, never lingering too long.
He looks like a man who has been paid well to be forgettable, fully aware that the terms of his payment include both silence and the preservation of his life.
Neutral ground.
That's what rooms like this are supposed to be—a demilitarized zone where men like Lorenzo Rosetti can sit down with men like me and pretend the world runs on etiquette and handshakes.
A place where nothing is recorded, no one wears a wire, and no one repeats what they hear.
I've been in rooms like this a hundred times. I know what's expected.
I also know what happens when someone decides the expectations are optional.
Maksim stands behind my chair.
I don't turn to confirm it. I don't need to.
I feel him the way I've learned to feel him over the past week—a change in the room's density, a gravitational pull at my back.
He's dressed in the dark tactical gear we've both stopped pretending is temporary.
I know he's armed. I know exactly where the weight of the SIG Sauer rests on his hip and where the knife presses against his ribs.
I notice the way his stance shifts, microscopic adjustments, every time the front door rattles in the wind.
I should be nervous.
Lorenzo Rosetti is a calm man, and calm men do not respond well to threats.
I am here to drag a threat across the table and make him stare at it until he blinks.
This meeting has two purposes: to force a confirmation about Boris's dealings with the Italians, and to establish—violently if necessary—that any deal made over my head comes with a price tag no one can afford.
But my nerves don't show up.
I am sitting with my back to the door in an empty restaurant, exposed, and I feel steadier than I have in days.
Because Maksim is behind me.
And the part of me that keeps a running tally of survival probabilities knows exactly what that means.
The front entrance opens.
The heavy oak door swings inward. Lorenzo Rosetti walks in, flanked by two bodyguards—large men in expensive suits who move with the heavy, deliberate gait of professionals. They scan the room before stepping onto the carpet, eyes cutting left and right.
Lorenzo is smaller than I expected—compact, with sharp features. He wears a charcoal suit tailored to the millimeter, and his dark hair is threaded with silver at the temples. His smile is polite in the way a scalpel is polite: clean, cold, and ready to cut.
"Ivan Baranov." He spreads his hands as he approaches, projecting a warmth that doesn't reach his eyes. "I was surprised to receive your invitation. The Baranovs don't usually seek conversation with families outside their... cultural comfort zone."
"The Baranovs adjust when circumstances demand it." I gesture to the chair across from me. "Sit."
He hesitates, his eyes flicking toward Maksim before returning to me. It's a quick threat assessment masked by politeness. Whatever conclusion he reaches, he pulls out the chair and sits with the ease of a man who has navigated dangerous rooms before and learned how to pretend he isn't impressed.
His guards drift to the far wall, attempting to look relaxed by folding their hands and leaning slightly. They fail. Their hands betray them, hovering too close to the waistbands of their jackets, while their attention frequently shifts toward Maksim.
Everyone is watching Maksim.
"Your man," Lorenzo says, tilting his head slightly as if discussing a vintage wine instead of a weapon. "He has a reputation. They call him the Rabid Dog. I'm told he killed three men during that border dispute a few years back—with his hands."
"Some," I reply. "Others were gunshots."
Lorenzo's smile twitches. "Still, it's an interesting choice to bring a creature like that to a peaceful negotiation. It sends a message."
"This isn't a negotiation." I lean back in my chair, keeping my hands visible on the table. "It's a chance for you to tell me what my uncle has been offering you, and a chance for me to explain why taking it would be a mistake."
The air changes instantly.
Lorenzo's smile vanishes. The friendliness drains from his face like water from a cracked glass, revealing something sharper and uglier beneath.
"I don't know what you're referring to."
"Boris Baranov has met with your people multiple times," I state, maintaining a flat tone. "He's been offering concessions—access to the docks, pieces of territory that aren't his to give. In exchange for what? Muscle? Information? A neat little accident that removes the heir from the board?"
Lorenzo remains still long enough for me to hear the candle flames flicker in the drafts.
His guards stop pretending. Their hands settle fully on their weapons as they watch Maksim, calculating the distance between life and death.
"You're very direct," Lorenzo says at last. "That's either brave or stupid. I haven't decided which."
"My uncle is a traitor," I reply. "He's been feeding information through intermediaries, pushing federal pressure onto our logistics, and arranging attempts on my life that have already cost loyal men.
" I let the silence stretch for a beat. "He thinks that removing me clears his path to the chair. He's wrong."
Lorenzo's expression remains unchanged. If anything, he looks more alert, calculating the angles.
"I'm giving you a choice," I continue. "You can keep doing business with a man whose ambitions will get him buried, or you can accept that the Baranov organization stays under my control and adjust your expectations accordingly."
Lorenzo laughs—it's a short, ugly sound, dragged from him rather than offered.
"You're confident for a man sitting alone in a room with my people behind him." His eyes slide toward Maksim. "Well, almost alone."
"My confidence isn't based on headcount."
"No?" Lorenzo leans forward, planting his elbows on the linen. His eyes gleam with something that could be amusement or threat. "Then what is it based on, young Baranov? Your father's name? Your blood? The bedtime story that the Bratva can't be touched in this city?"
I keep my gaze locked on his. I don't blink.
"My confidence is based on the fact that the man behind me will kill everyone in this room before your guards finish clearing their holsters." I let the words land heavy. "Including you."
For a long moment, nobody moves.
I hear my own heartbeat—slow and steady.
Behind me, Maksim's breathing remains even and rhythmic, as if he's listening to a radio broadcast rather than sitting in the center of a kill box.
Lorenzo's eyes shift. He looks at Maksim again, this time studying him longer, as if the story he's heard and the man he's seeing are finally aligning in his mind.
"Your uncle offered us a great deal," Lorenzo says slowly. "Territory. Access. A seat at tables we've been kept away from for a decade."
"And in exchange?"
Lorenzo shrugs slightly, elegant even now. "Pressure. At critical moments. Nothing direct. Nothing with a clean line back to us." He raises his brows. "A car that runs a red light. A gas leak in the wrong building. The sort of accidents that happen in a city like this."
The safehouse. The hit shipment. The convoy being guided into emptier streets.
It all fits without needing a diagram.
"All of that ends," I say. "Whatever Boris promised you dies with his little plan. If you want business with the Baranovs, you do it through me."
Lorenzo opens his mouth to respond—
And the lights go out.
Not a gentle dimming, but a hard cut, as if someone had taken a fist to the building's throat.
I don't move because I don't have to.
Maksim's hand clamps down on my shoulder and drives me under the table in one clean, violent shove. My chair scrapes against the hardwood, and my knee bangs against the floor. I hear the first gunshot before my body finishes dropping—a deafening crack in the enclosed space.
Glass shatters.
The candles still burn, scattered points of light transforming the room into a kaleidoscope of shadows and fragments.
One of Lorenzo's guards jerks backward, a dark spray hitting the wall behind him. The other lunges toward Lorenzo but goes down in a heap before he can reach him.
Shapes slam into each other. Muzzle flashes punch brief white holes into the dark, illuminating snapshots of chaos. Lorenzo's men fire toward the entrance, where more bodies pour in through a door that should have stayed locked.
Somewhere near the kitchen, the manager drops out of sight—either flat on the floor or gone through whatever back door he was paid to keep quiet about.
Then I see Maksim.
He moves into the violence as if it belongs to him. His gun is in his hand without any dramatic reach, and the first attacker folds before my brain processes the sound. Another figure swings a weapon toward him—
The gun vanishes.
The knife appears.
Close enough now that bullets feel clumsy.