Chapter 21
Sergei
"You need to learn to fieldstrip a Glock."
Izzy looks up from the financial records she's been staring at for the past two hours, eyes slightly glazed. "I need to what?"
"Fieldstrip. Disassemble, clean, reassemble." I set the gun on the kitchen table between us, along with the cleaning kit. "If you're going to carry, you need to maintain it. Can't have your weapon jam when Matthew's men come calling."
She blinks. Processing. "You want to teach me gun maintenance? Right now? At eleven at night? While I'm going through my mother's offshore accounts?"
"You've been staring at the same spreadsheet for twenty minutes." I tap the laptop screen. "You're not processing anymore. You're spiraling."
"I'm not—" She stops. Looks at the screen. Her mother's signature next to Matthew's, over and over, bleeding Dad's fortune. "Fuck. You're right."
"Spiral later. Learn this now." I push the Glock toward her. "Could save your life tomorrow."
"Tomorrow." She laughs, sharp and bitter. "You mean when Matthew sends more people to kill me? That tomorrow?"
"That's the one."
She closes the laptop with more force than necessary. "Fine. Teach me to take apart a gun. Why the hell not? It's been that kind of week."
Twenty minutes later, she's got the Glock in pieces across the table—slide, barrel, recoil spring, frame—and she's learning the rhythm. Remove magazine. Check chamber. Lock slide back. Push takedown lever.
Her hands are steadier than they were with the spreadsheets. Steadier than they were when she came home from confronting her mother this afternoon, shaking and pale and trying to pretend she wasn't on the verge of breaking.
I'd pulled her against my chest. Let her shake. Didn't make her talk about it until she was ready.
When she finally told me—Mother's evasions, the guilt written across her face, the non-confession that confirmed everything—I'd wanted to drive to that townhouse and make Catherine Davenport tell me the truth.
Izzy had stopped me with one sentence: "She's mine. When the time comes, I handle her."
And I'd let it go. Because she was right. Catherine Davenport chose her lover over her daughter. That's Izzy's vengeance to take. I'm just here to make sure she survives long enough to collect it.
"Like this?" Izzy holds up the reassembled Glock, checking her work.
"Pull the slide. Check the action."
She does. Smooth. No catching.
"Good. Now do it again. Faster."
She groans but starts over. Muscle memory building. The same way I taught her to shoot, to fight, to survive.
The same way I'm teaching her to be dangerous.
"Why do you do this?" she asks, hands moving through the disassembly rhythm. "Train me, I mean. You could just... protect me. Keep me in the house, hire more security, handle everything yourself."
"I could." I watch her fingers work. Confident now. "But I've seen what happens to people who depend entirely on someone else for their survival. They don't survive long once that person's gone."
Her hands still. "You're planning to be gone?"
"I'm planning for every contingency, including the one when I take a bullet and you're alone." I meet her eyes across the table. "If that happens, you need to be able to protect yourself. Protect Mila. Get somewhere safe. Not fall apart because The Wolf isn't there to do it for you."
She's quiet for a beat. Then: "That's the most depressing pep talk I've ever heard."
"It's realistic."
"It's fatalistic."
"It's what keeps people alive." I lean back, studying her.
Dark hair falling out of the knot she'd twisted it into hours ago.
My shirt hanging off one shoulder. Bare feet tucked under her on the chair.
She looks young. Vulnerable. Nothing like the woman who confronted her potentially murderous mother this afternoon without flinching.
But she is that woman.
Both versions. Simultaneously.
And somewhere between teaching her to shoot and watching her help me hide a body, I stopped seeing her as a problem to solve and started seeing her as—
What?
My partner. My equal. My—
The thought cuts off when I hear footsteps on the stairs.
Mila.
I'm moving before conscious thought, sliding the Glock pieces into the cleaning kit, out of sight. Izzy doesn't need the prompt—she's already closing the laptop, stacking the financial records, creating a barrier between evidence of murder and my eight-year-old daughter.
We work in sync. Unspoken. Like we've done this a hundred times.
Mila appears in the doorway, clutching her stuffed wolf, hair sticking up on one side. "Papa?"
"Hey, ptichka. Bad dream?"
She nods, padding over. Her eyes land on Izzy, widen slightly. "Izzy's still up?"
"Couldn't sleep either," Izzy says, voice softening in that way it does around Mila. "Want some warm milk? Your papa makes it better than anyone."
"With honey?"
"With honey."
Izzy stands, moving to the stove, and I watch my daughter follow her. Chattering about the dream—something about wolves and labyrinths, her subconscious processing the divorce in eight-year-old metaphor.
Izzy listens. Responds. Makes the milk exactly how Mila likes it.
And I sit at this table, gun cleaning kit hidden under financial records documenting conspiracy to murder, watching my fake wife mothering my daughter, like it's the most natural thing in the world.
This isn't fake anymore.
Hasn't been for a while.
I don't know when it shifted. When Izzy stopped being the Davenport heiress I married for mutual protection and started being the woman I can't imagine losing. Maybe when she stood in my kitchen meeting my daughter, bare-legged in my shirt, and didn't run.
Maybe the moment she said, "I do" in front of that bored judge and looked at me like she meant it.
Doesn't matter when.
Matters that it happened.
And tomorrow, when Matthew makes his move—because he will make a move, desperate men always do—I need to make sure both of them survive it.
Mila and Izzy.
My daughter and my—
Wife. Not fake. Just... wife.
"Papa, Izzy says you're teaching her about guns," Mila says, climbing onto my lap with her milk. "Why?"
I glance at Izzy, who freezes mid-sip of her own tea. We didn't discuss what to tell Mila about the training. The weapons. The very real danger circling us.
But Izzy recovers fast. "Because your papa wants to make sure I can protect myself. And you, if I ever need to."
"From what?"
"From anything." I press a kiss to her hair, breathing in strawberry shampoo and innocence I'm trying desperately to preserve. "But that's my job. And Izzy's learning to be backup, just in case."
"Like a team."
"Exactly like a team."
Mila seems satisfied with this. Drinks her milk. Yawns. "Can I sleep with you tonight? The dream was really scary."
Izzy's eyes meet mine over Mila's head. Question. Permission.
I nod.
"Of course, sweetheart," Izzy says. "Come on. Let's get you settled."
They head upstairs, Mila's small hand in Izzy's, chattering about the wolf in her dream who protected her from bad guys.
Symbolic much, ptichka?
I clean up the kitchen. Hide the gun kit. Lock the financial records in my safe. Check the perimeter cameras one more time.
Everything's quiet. But quiet doesn't mean safe. Matthew knows we're coming. He's preparing. Hiring professionals. Buying weapons. Planning his countermove. I need to be ready.
Need to make sure when it comes—and it will come—I'm faster.
Better.
More ruthless.
Because I'm not just protecting myself anymore.
Upstairs, I find them in our bed—Mila curled in the middle, like a small buffer, already asleep, wolf clutched to her chest. Izzy's on the far side, eyes closed, but her breathing's wrong. Not asleep, just pretending.
I slide in carefully. Mila doesn't wake.
Izzy's eyes open. Meet mine across our daughter.
Our daughter.
Not mine. Not hers. Ours.
When did that happen?
Her hand reaches across Mila, fingers brushing mine.
I thread our fingers together.
And we lie there in the darkness—The Wolf, the heiress, and the little bird between us—pretending we're not all terrified of what tomorrow will bring.
Pretending this arrangement isn't the realest thing any of us have had in years.
I don't sleep.
But I watch them both breathe. Safe. Together.
And decide that whatever Matthew throws at us, whatever violence comes next, this—right here—is worth burning the whole world down to protect.
The Wolf hunts alone.
Until he doesn't.