Chapter 15
LUKA
After tucking Leo into bed, Cindy and I make our way back to my room.
I have to tell her. She trusts me. Trust is a two-way street, and if I expect her to stand with me in this war, she needs to understand exactly what we're facing.
“Tell me,” she whispers.
“Are you sure you want to know?”
“I think I have to know. Something happened the other night. Something that’s shaken you. You believe I’m in danger. Why? What happened?”
The only way to tell her is to show her.
I pull my phone from my pocket and open up the gallery.
“One of my operations was attacked.”
“And that doesn’t happen very often?”
“No. Not like this.”
I show her the photograph of Tommy. It’s gruesome, and I know it will shock her.
I've been debating whether to show her, whether she can handle seeing her name written in someone else's death. In my experience, bad news doesn't get better with packaging.
She takes it with steady hands, her face composed as she studies the image. But I watch her closely, cataloging every micro-expression, every tell that might indicate how she's processing this new reality.
“Slide to the next one,” I tell her.
She does, and that’s when I see her react.
“My name is written in that man's blood. I'm a target. So, you're going to tell me everything. All of it."
She should be terrified. Screaming. Running.
But looking at her now—shoulders squared and chin raised—I realize she's not asking for information.
She's demanding it. As an equal.
"There's a contract," I say finally. "Someone wants Drew dead, and they're using you to pressure me into taking the job."
Her face goes still. "Drew. My brother."
“The one who allowed me to take you without a single word? The brother who has treated you like a problem to be solved?”
I don’t like him. Drew is a piece of shit.
"Do you think I want revenge?"
I consider the question, weighing what I know about her character against the pragmatic realities of my business. Cindy is many things, but vindictive isn't one of them. She tolerated him for fifteen years. She could have walked away a long time ago.
"No," I say finally. "I don't think you give a damn about revenge."
"You're right. I don't. That gives him the power. I don’t care about Drew."
"So you're going to kill him." It's not a question.
"I'm going to eliminate a threat to you."
"If you kill him," she says, her voice deadly quiet, "I walk."
"Why?" I demand. "Why would you care what happens to a man who threw you under the bus the second things got complicated?"
"Because killing him won't solve anything.
It'll just create new problems." She crosses her arms, and I can see her mind working, analyzing angles I haven't considered.
"If there's a contract on Drew, that means someone else is pulling the strings.
Someone who wants you to take this job for reasons that have nothing to do with him. "
She's right, of course. The contract itself is suspect. Someone wants to manipulate me. I’m not stupid.
“I don’t like him,” I say. “I don’t like the way he treated you.”
"He's bait." Her voice carries absolute conviction. "And you're too smart to take it."
“I wouldn’t kill him for the contract. I would kill him for you.”
“No. Luka. Promise me. Promise me you'll take him alive if you can."
"If I can." The words taste like compromise in my mouth, foreign and uncomfortable.
In my world, "if I can" is the difference between a clean operation and unnecessary complications.
But looking at her now, seeing the way she's willing to fight for principles even when they might get her killed, I find myself nodding.
"If I can," I repeat.
Relief flickers across her features, replaced by concern. "You’re leaving.”
I sigh. “I have a meeting.”
“With Drew?”
“Someone who has promised to bring Drew to me.”
“Luka…”
“To talk.”
She rolls her eyes. “Talk.”
“Cindy, you don’t know this world. I am going to do what I can to keep you alive.”
“Will you tell me how you know Charles? Drew?”
I shouldn’t.
I've been dreading this moment, knowing eventually she'd piece together the connections that brought her to me. Cindy is too smart to accept coincidences and too observant to miss the patterns that tie her past to my present.
I pour myself three fingers of vodka from the bottle on my nightstand, buying time while I decide how much truth I can afford to give her. The alcohol burns, but it's nothing compared to the fire building in my chest.
“Charles is not who he says he is,” I say.
I look at Cindy, gauging her reaction. “Okay. Who is he?”
“Sasha Fedorov.”
She frowns. “What?”
I watch her absorb this information and see the moment when her world shifts beneath her feet. The man she's called father for fifteen years, the one who took her in when she had nowhere else to go, isn't even real.
"Thirty years ago, Sasha Fedorov worked for my father's organization in Moscow," I begin, settling into the chair across from her. "He was trusted. Family, almost. And he stole two million dollars before disappearing into the night."
I take another sip of vodka, letting the burn ground me in the present while I dig up ghosts from the past.
"My father sent me to find him. That was four years ago." I meet her eyes, watching for any flicker of understanding. "Charles has been paying the family back up until a few months ago; the payments stopped.”
She nods. “The shop… we’ve been struggling.”
"I suspect he is working with the Romanov Bratva. They have connections, resources, and reasons to want my family's money to stay lost."
"So when you took me—"
"I thought you were his daughter. I thought leverage would make him pay." The admission tastes bitter. "I was wrong about the relationship, but not about the result.”
She laughs. “Joke’s on you. I’m worthless.”
“You are not worthless. He’s a fool.”
“I have no value to Charles. I told you how he ended up stuck with me. If he won’t pay, what next? Does your family need the money that bad? You seem to be doing alright for yourself.”
“It’s not about the money. It’s respect.”
She rolls her eyes. “Men.”
I down the last of my drink and get to my feet. “I’ll be back.”
“I’m not going to ask you now, but when you get back, I need to know about Leo’s mother.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I want to know.”
“We’ll see,” I mutter.
I walk to the door, and just before I step out, I hear her move behind me.
"Be careful," she says.
The words are simple, but they carry weight. Not just concern for my safety, but something deeper. Something that sounds suspiciously like care.
"I'll be fine," I tell her.
"See that you are. Leo needs you. I need you."
She's just told me that my survival matters to her.
Two hours later, I'm standing on Pier 47 watching fog roll in off the Atlantic like a funeral shroud.
The location makes my teeth itch. Too many angles. Too many shadows where shooters could hide. The abandoned warehouses create a maze of kill boxes, and the water blocks our retreat to the east. My men feel it too—Viktor keeps touching his weapon, and Mark's eyes never stop moving.
"I don't like this," Viktor mutters in Russian. "Smells like a setup."
He's right. Everything about this screams trap. The anonymous tip about Drew being delivered here. The insistence on this specific location. The convenient fog that cuts visibility to thirty feet.
But I'm here anyway, because they wrote Cindy's name in a dead man's blood. Because they know exactly how to make me dance to their tune.
"Stay sharp," I order. "First sign of trouble, we're gone."
Mark snorts. "We're already neck-deep in trouble, boss."
True. The question is whether we're walking into an ambush or something worse—a distraction.
"Movement," Viktor reports through my earpiece. "Single individual, approaching from the south."
I adjust my position behind a shipping container, weapon ready, every sense on high alert. But as the figure comes into view, I realize we're not dealing with Charles or Drew.
It's a homeless man, clearly strung out. He’s rifling through the trash with the unsteady gait of someone deep in withdrawal. He stops about fifty feet from our position and sets something down on the concrete. It’s a small package wrapped in brown paper.
Then he walks away, disappearing into the maze of containers as quickly as he appeared.
"Sir?" Viktor's voice crackles through the comm.
"Hold position." I study the package looking for any sign of movement. I looked for any indication that it might be booby-trapped. But it sits there innocently, just brown paper and tape in the pale moonlight.
After ten minutes of watching, I give the all-clear and approach carefully. I open the bag and find a burner phone wrapped in newspaper.
I power it on, and immediately the screen fills with video. Security footage, crystal clear and perfectly framed. It takes me a moment to recognize what I'm looking at, and when I do, ice water floods my veins.
Our kitchen. Shot from an angle that shouldn't be possible unless someone had access to the compound's interior. I watch myself moving through the frame, making coffee, and checking reports. Then Leo appears.
I realize the camera is moving. The view is odd.
The timestamp shows this was recorded yesterday. While the compound was on lockdown. While my security teams were sweeping every inch of the property for threats.
Someone has been watching us from inside our own walls.
Not just watching.
They’re inside my home.
I'm moving before the video ends, barking orders to my men as we race back to the cars.
I replay the video again, studying every angle, every shadow. The perspective is wrong—too low for a ceiling mount, too steady for a hidden body cam. Then I see it: the slight fish-eye distortion at the edges, the way the view shifts almost imperceptibly when someone moves past.
It's not a fixed camera. It's mobile. Personal.
My blood turns to ice as understanding dawns. There's only one item in that kitchen that moves through the space at exactly the height that would capture these precise angles. Something Cindy wears every day, never removes, and treats as sacred.
The necklace.
The fucking necklace I gave her to replace the one I destroyed. Someone got to it before I did. Modified it. Which means they've been watching everything—every conversation, every intimate moment, every vulnerability she's shown me.
They've seen her with Leo. They know his routines, his habits, which rooms he considers safe.
I'm moving before the thought completes, my legs carrying me through the compound on autopilot.
I check Leo's room first—the boy sleeps soundly, one arm flung over his stuffed tiger.
The relief is sharp but temporary. They haven't taken him because they don't need to.
They have something better: complete surveillance of our lives.
My heart stills when I see him sleeping soundly.
I walk down the hall to my bedroom. The bathroom light is on. I can hear the shower running.
I walk into the bathroom and see it.
The necklace I gave her as an apology for breaking hers. I crack it open with a jeweler's tool and find what I suspected. It’s a transmitter so small it's almost invisible, sophisticated enough to relay real-time video and audio.
It’s not one of mine.
My tracking devices are larger, cruder, and designed for reliability over subtlety. This is something else entirely. It’s professional grade, military spec, the kind of equipment that costs six figures and is extremely difficult to get your hands on.
The water shuts off. Through the frosted glass, I watch her silhouette—unaware, vulnerable, believing she's safe in my home. The necklace sits in my palm like a poisonous snake, its betrayal burning my skin.
The shower door opens. She steps out, water streaming down her body, and freezes when she sees me.
"Luka!"
The gasp of surprise shifts to something else when she reads my expression. I've been told my face looks like death when I'm truly angry. She's seeing it now—the face my enemies see before I end them.
I force myself to reach for the towel, to hand it to her with steady hands when every instinct screams to break something. To rage. To demand answers with violence until the truth bleeds out.
She wraps herself quickly, eyes never leaving mine. Smart girl. She knows something's very wrong.
"Are you working for him?" The question tears from my throat, raw and jagged. "Look me in the eyes and tell me the truth. Are you still working for Charles?"
Because if she lies to me now, if I see even a flicker of deception in those blue eyes I've grown to trust, I'll have to do something that will destroy what's left of my soul.
Cindy looks at me with shock, clearly startled by the violence in my voice. "What?"
“Are you working for your father? Charles. Are you still in fucking contact with him?!”
She wraps the towel around herself. “No! Why would you think that? Luka—I haven’t seen him since you dragged me out of there. I called him, but only that once.”
“Who touched you?”
She frowns. “What the hell are you talking about?”
I might be naive. Maybe I’m being played, but I believe she’s innocent in this.
I hold up the necklace. "There’s a camera in your necklace. Not one of mine. So, I'll ask again—who touched you?"
Understanding dawns in her eyes, followed quickly by fear.
Not fear of me, but fear of the implications.
Because if someone else has been tracking her movements, listening to our conversations, and watching our most intimate moments, then our security has been compromised in ways I'm only beginning to understand.
"I don't know," she whispers. "Luka, I swear I don't know."
But even as she says it, I can see her mind working, replaying every interaction, every moment when a stranger might have gotten close enough to plant surveillance equipment.
“Smash it!” She pulls the towel tighter around her.
In my rage, I forgot the damn thing is a live feed.
They watched her. I put the necklace on the counter and smash it with the heel of my palm.
“Out,” I point to the bedroom.
“Luka, I swear—”
“Go. Now.”