36. Chapter 28
Z asha
The door shuts with a soft thud behind us as Viktor tosses the Panama files onto the table. Lev stretches in his chair, looking bored. I stand at the whiteboard, dragging a marker across the timeline of near-compromises on the South American route.
"One of the contractors was swapped last-minute, and the new guy was later found dead," I say, my voice clipped. "That’s where the hole opened up. Someone on the inside made it happen—but they were sloppy."
Lev scoffs. “If they were smart, we’d be mourning a seized shipment right now.”
I don’t respond. My eyes stay locked on the board, scanning names and dates with the precision I’ve trained into myself—always looking for the flaw, the crack in the foundation, the blood hiding beneath clean floors.
Viktor nods slowly, arms folded. “So, we’re looking at a mole.”
I cap the marker. “Or a ghost. Someone who knows how to walk through walls.”
We fall silent, the kind that is heavy yet focused. The air feels tight around us. Just as Viktor reaches for the file again, his phone buzzes.
He glances down at the screen and frowns.
“Thiago,” he mutters, stepping away from the table.
My eyes track him, something tightening low in my gut.
Viktor answers. “Hello Thiago.”
Thiago’s voice comes through rough and thin, and tired, like gravel dragged across rusted metal. “Viktor.”
Something’s off. His tone is clipped and heavy. Weighted with something more than illness.
“You’re still not getting better?” Viktor asks, quieter now.
We all know the answer. We’ve seen Thiago lying in that bed, pride bleeding through pain, eyes still sharp, his body weakening day by day. Yet he continues to command his sinking empire with his jaw clenched tightly against the agony. He has more steel than most men, even while falling apart.
“No,” Thiago says. “But that’s not why I’m calling.”
I stiffen at his next word.
“I’m calling about my daughter Xiomara.”
The name hits like a sucker punch.
Viktor glances back at us. I already feel the change in the room—the way everything suddenly narrows to a single point. Lev stops fiddling with his pen, and I stop breathing.
“What about her?” Viktor asks.
There’s a silence and heavy breathing on the other side. Then he speaks up again. “She was coming home,” Thiago says. “After all these years. She finally wanted to come back.”
My lungs burn, but still, I don’t move.
“And?” Viktor asks.
“She never showed up. She and my grandson landed in JFK last night.” His voice fractures. “And then they vanished.”
I go still. Completely, and absolutely still.
“She has a… son?” Viktor asks slowly. Looking at me.
“Two years old,” Thiago rasps breathlessly. “My first and only grandchild.”
His words rip through me like a blade between the ribs, and my hands curl. My chest starts to cave in around a pressure I don’t have words for.
Lev shifts slightly beside me, glancing my way.
He feels it too.
“I’ve called in favors,” Thiago says. “I’ve moved money. Men. I’ve pulled strings I shouldn’t even still have. And yet nothing.”
Viktor’s face hardens. “She’s been gone a long time, Thiago. She kept herself off the grid for a reason.”
“I know,” Thiago snaps. “And I respected it. I gave her space. But now she’s gone again. And this time, it’s not her choice.”
There is another pause before Thiago speaks again.
“You remember when Scarlett was taken? And even when your sister was taken?”
I look at Viktor.
“I remember,” he says.
“You needed a lead. I gave it to you. And also gave you my men. I didn’t blink. I made it happen.”
“I know.”
“Well, I’m calling those in,” Thiago says, voice trembling in a way that makes my stomach twist. “The favor. I need someone who can find a ghost in a hurricane. I know you and your men will.”
“We’ll handle it.”
“Thank you.” He says, and the line goes dead.
Viktor stands there for a moment, still holding the phone, staring at the floor like he’s trying to will it into giving him some information.
Then he turns to us.
Lev is already moving, fingers flying over his phone, murmuring commands into the receiver. “I want every scrap of airport surveillance from JFK. Start with the international arrivals from yesterday evening. Consult anyone with eyes on the ground, tap in. Now.”
I don’t move.
I just… stand there. Frozen. Breathing through clenched teeth. The room feels colder now, like someone cracked a window I can’t see.
After what feels like ages, I speak for the first time, my voice low and cold. “She has a son?”
My throat burns just saying it.
Viktor’s mouth tightens. “Yeah,” he says slowly. “And I’m as shocked as you two.”
They may be shocked, but I am beyond shock. My mind has already spiraled off the edge as I suppress the fury and disgust rising in my chest.
She left me in a mess, and while I sat here fighting to survive without her, she was out there starting a family. Loving someone else. Giving someone else what I would’ve died for.
She told me she wanted her freedom, but in reality, she already had another man waiting, waiting for them to start what I would have crawled and begged her to give to me.
I stare past Viktor, my pulse a slow drumbeat of disbelief and something worse.
Jealousy.
Why couldn’t you love me, Mara? Why couldn’t I be enough?
I am the man who would have loved her even if it cost me my soul. The man who almost paid with his sanity as he watched her walk away, letting her go because she asked. I’m the man who still dreams of her voice as if it’s laced into the walls of his goddamn house.
I grit my teeth and force myself to keep breathing. She didn’t even give me a chance. Never gave us space to fight, or fall apart, or even fail.
Part of me wants to move, wants to do something, break something, find someone to hit until the blood convinces me it’s real. But I don’t. I can’t afford to lose control. At least not yet, because I am going to find her and make her tell me why I was never enough.
I look at Viktor. He’s still speaking, I think—something about timelines and securing footage, but I barely register it.
I’m not concerned about the favor Thiago has called in. I’m not worried about the political repercussions of having a mafia princess go missing. Hell, I’m even indifferent to the debt that Thiago thinks the bratva owes him.
However, what I care about is that she’s gone, because I am going to find her and ask her if those nights she moaned my name were all lies.
I need to look her in the eye and ask why I was never enough. Why she disappeared without a word. Why she trusted someone else with her future, her body, her child—everything I would’ve protected with my life.
After all these years, the questions I attempted to drown resurface.
Why not me, Mara? Why not us?
I walk to the window; the glass is cold under my palm, yet I barely feel it because something is burning inside my chest, and I can’t put it out. My fists clench at my sides, knuckles tight with heat. I breathe through my teeth, but it does nothing to calm the pressure rising within my spine.
I turn away from the window, walking back toward them—toward Lev and Viktor, who are still talking like this is just another operation to be solved.
I pause at the table and announce that “I’m leading this.”
Viktor studies me. “Zasha—”
“No one but me will be leading this operation,” I say, looking at the two men who have become like brothers to me. “You both know she is still my wife.”
Viktor says nothing because they have both experienced my situation in the past. They can both recall the devastating pain of having someone you love taken away. The only difference is that, in their cases, the women involved had loved them back.
Viktor nods his agreement, knowing that I would not be led into this operation.
Lev leans back in his chair. “We’d need to put together some enemy names?”
“I already have names.” I say, “And also names of anyone who looks like they may succeed Thiago.”
Viktor looks up from his phone. “You are right.” He says, “This may not just be an enemy trying to pay back Thiago now that he is too weak to fight back. It may be someone wanting to use her as leverage.”
Lev whistles low under his breath. “That narrows it down to a hundred enemies or so.”
The three of us sit with serious expressions, making calls and pulling in favors, our initial worry about the shipment leak forgotten. After an hour of numerous phone calls, we decide to each go get ready to hit the streets.
There's always word on the street if you know the right people to ask.
I move through my house without turning on a single light, because I don’t need them. I know this place like I know my own mind—every corridor, every creak, every secret it keeps.
Down the back stairs. Through the reinforced door beneath the kitchen. Past the wine racks and into the wall panel behind the old freezer, the biometric lock clicks open under my thumbprint.
And I walk into my weapon room.
It’s illuminated only by the low blue glow of the perimeter sensors, humming like a living thing. I move without pausing, pull open a drawer, and begin assembling what I need.
Two pistols. Tactical knives. Spare mags.
Silencers. A reinforced Kevlar vest. Gloves. Boots.
By the time I’m strapping my thigh holster in place, my hands are steady, and my pulse is calm. When I’ve checked the last chamber and stowed everything in the duffel, I turn to another drawer. One I haven’t opened for ages, and pull out our wedding picture. I trace my hands across her lips.
“I’m coming to find you,” I whisper. “And not even all the demons in hell can stop me.”