Chapter 25 - Zara
Mikhail says no with his whole body.
The set of his shoulders, the angle he turns toward me when I tell him I am coming—all of it means no.
I don’t really care about how he feels though.
“My parents are in that compound,” I iterate, standing in the doorway of the room where Nikolai has the satellite images spread across the table.
“I have been chasing this for three months and I have been shot at and ambushed and misdirected. I have crossed two oceans and you will not stop me from being in that building when we open the door.”
His jaw clenches as he glares at me.
“I don’t want to stop you, and you know that,” he grits.
“Great, so we’re on the same team then.”
“You know we aren’t. Your safety matters the most to me.”
“My safety,” I repeat flatly. “Mikhail. I am the one who knew Timur was acting weird. I am the one who found the earrings. I am the one who narrowed the Ionian range from forty-three photographs while running on four hours of sleep and nearly overdosed on fucking caffeine. Do not tell me what I can and cannot handle.”
Nikolai, to his credit, finds something extremely interesting to study on the satellite image, pretending we aren’t having a couple’s spat right in front of him.
Mikhail looks frustrated with his arms crossed until they drop by his sides as weariness appears on his face.
“You stay within my perimeter at all times,” he orders. “You do not move independently. If I tell you to get down, you get down stat.”
“Agreed,” I say nonchalantly.
“And you tell no one about any of this when it is over.”
“Well… I am a journalist…”
“Zara.”
“Fine.”
The drive to the compound takes forty minutes, too short to undo anything, too long to stop thinking about everything that could go wrong.
I sit in the back of the lead vehicle between Mikhail and the window, the operation's layout on a tablet in my lap.
My eyes dart to and from the satellite image and the dark road unspooling ahead of us.
We’re accompanied by eight personnel, including Nikolai running coordination from a secondary vehicle. Mikhail leads the entry team with four operatives and I’m positioned inside his perimeter, which is approximately two feet from him at all times.
“The northeastern corner gap. Fifteen meters by the border, where the sight line’s obstructed by the building's roofline. That is the entry point,” Mikhail mutters lowly beside me, his voice directed at the tablet as his finger moves across the screen.
“The approach from the eastern service road gives us the most cover. We move in two teams: primary entry through the northeastern corner, the other holds the southern exit to prevent extraction.”
“If they have my father inside,” I interrupt, “they will have him in the interior rooms, away from the exterior walls. Standard containment logic.” Seeing the look he gives me, I scoff, “I have been reporting on criminal organizations for five years. I know how this works.”
The corner of his mouth curves for a moment. “Interior rooms, north side of the compound. The satellite thermal imaging shows consistent heat signatures in that section over the last six hours.”
“That's them,” I blurt out, the certainty shooting warmth up my spine.
“Probably,” Mikhail agrees.
Our car slows down when we are a kilometer from the compound, close enough that the building’s lighting is visible in the distance—a low amber glowing through the trees that line the northern access road. The team deploys from their vehicles silently and tactically, trained for this night.
Mikhail checks my vest without asking, two quick adjustments to the side panels, and while the contact is brief, it still does something to my heartbeat anyway. I know he notices it too because he pauses for half a second longer than needed before he steps back.
“Stay close,” he instructs lowly.
“Heard you the first time, love,” I wink at him.
He exhales, exasperated, and we move.
The northeastern approach is not lit by the compound's exterior system, a band of shadow between the service road and the boundary wall that helps us immensely.
I stay by Mikhail, matching his pace exactly, reading his body for the signals he gives without giving them—the slight shift before he changes direction, the raised fist that means stop, the flat palm that means stay.
I have been learning him for months, after all.
The shadowed gap is exactly where the satellite indicated. Fifteen meters of unobserved wall, the guard position on the inside blind to this section for a forty-second window in their rotation pattern.
Mikhail's team moves through it smoothly in less than twenty.
I am through with them, inside the compound's outer perimeter before the adrenaline has even taken control of my body, before the colors become brighter and sounds more distinct, my body feeling simultaneously lighter and more capable than it usually does.
The compound interior opens in front of us.
Just like the coastal road in Greece, something tingles up my spine, signaling that something is deeply wrong.
The compound is too quiet. It’s an eerie kind.
“Mikhail,” I breathe.
“I think so to—”
The lights come on before he’s even completed replying.
I bring my arm up to shield my eyes, squinting against the sharp, directed beams of light positioned along the compound's interior walls, designed to disorient intruders, nothing like the amber exterior lighting.
Through the flare of white, I hear the compound doors opening from multiple points, completely coordinated.
We fucking walked into it.
“Secondary, seal the southern exit now,” Mikhail barks into the comm, authoritative and sharp. “Primary, collapse to the interior structure. Move.”
Little did I know the next ninety seconds of my life would put every action movie I’ve ever watched to shame.
We pull back to the cover of the interior, which is a concrete outbuilding that offers protection. The syndicate's personnel emerges from their prepared positions around the compound’s boundary walls.
The number is not as many as I feared and more than I hoped; twelve, maybe fourteen masked men in gear moving into us aggressively, like they already have us beaten.
They are not wrong, and they are not entirely right, because they did not prepare for Mikhail Korovin in a situation where something he needs to protect is on the other side of the compound wall.
“The north interior rooms,” I pant, pressed against the concrete beside him while the ambush terrorizes us. “We need to get to the north interior rooms.”
“Already on it,” he grunts back calmly, even though sweat has bead at his collar, where only the smallest hint of his tattoo peeks through. Somehow, watching him stay cool helps me keep my cool too.
My fingers fold around his bicep on their own, and he looks at my hand on his arm, then at my face. The look he gives me brightens up everything more than those stupid fucking floodlights ever could.
He blinks reassuringly.
“On my count,” he starts lowly, crouching, and I follow his stance. “One… two…”
I swallow roughly, the sounds of gunshots drawing closer.
“Three!”
We dart from the spot into the building, a sprint that has to be the longest twelve meters I have ever run. Every step, my shoulder nearly collides against his, the squeak and groan of a blade driven through flesh at our backs pushing us forward.
The fucking door turns out to be locked.
We get in within four seconds, all thanks to Mikhail, ending up in the dim interior corridor of the compound’s main building. The corridor seems to inhale around us.
Concrete walls swallow the sounds from outside until the gunfire becomes something distant and muffled, like thunder trapped beneath the ocean. Every fluorescent light fixed to the ceiling hums with mechanical indifference, illuminating pale walls scarred by old impacts and hurried repairs.
The air smells of damp cement, machine oil, and disinfectant strong enough to disguise blood. My pulse continues hammering against my ribs, each beat arriving faster than the last, but somewhere beneath the adrenaline another instinct steadies itself.
Panic has never solved anything.
Mikhail pauses only long enough to scan the intersecting corridor ahead, his shoulders remaining impossibly loose despite the tension vibrating beneath the surface.
Watching him move always reminds me of predators in wildlife documentaries.
Every motion serves a purpose, every glance measures distance.
Nothing is wasted. Every breath anticipates consequence.
“The northern wing branches twice,” he says quietly, his attention fixed ahead. “Stay behind my right shoulder.”
“I already am.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I.”
His eyes flick toward me for the briefest fraction of a second, irritation clear in them. We move again without another word.
The corridor stretches ahead in two directions before opening into a wider intersection lined with heavy steel doors.
One hangs partially open, swaying almost imperceptibly as though someone disappeared through it moments ago.
Another bears fresh scrape marks around the handle, bright silver cutting through chipped black paint.
“They moved recently,” I murmur.
“Must be clearing evidence.”
“No.”
He glances toward me.
“If by evidence you mean people, then yes.”.
My stomach clenches anxiously.
The compound feels abandoned on purpose.
A burst of hurried footsteps echoes somewhere above us, crossing from one side of the building to the other before disappearing entirely. Every instinct inside me screams upward, but Mikhail's hand closes gently around my forearm before I can move.
“Not there.”
“You heard them.”
“I heard a distraction.”
His certainty pulls me back half a step.
Then I notice that the footsteps stop too perfectly. No swinging of doors or voices.
Someone wanted us looking toward the stairs.
“They're buying time,” I whisper.
We turn left instead.