Chapter 9 - Damian
“Iosif,” I breathe into the phone, “you need to get to my office as soon as possible.”
Harper’s discovery spreads across my desk like a wound that refuses to close, each one a thread leading back to Anton, woven into a tapestry of calculated betrayal.
“Kiro,” I grunt into the phone as I peer over the ledger, “my office. Now.”
When the stakes rise, the Ignatovs become a hive. Everyone becomes more alert, everyone armed. And tonight, the hive hums with the knowledge that Anton has moved his pieces faster than anticipated.
Iosif arrives first, composed as always, coat still buttoned despite the heat of the office. He carries himself calmly, but ready to break open the moment something tilts the wrong way. His gaze sweeps the room, lands on the files, narrowing.
Kiro slips in behind him, lighter on his feet, eyes darting to the screens Harper left open. He’s a nervous instrument—tense strings, precise when plucked, but always vibrating with some internal rhythm I can’t hear. He mutters a greeting, already halfway into the data.
“Anton is back,” I tell the two of them. If Iosif has a reaction, he doesn’t let it show. Kiro’s face remains as grim as it was when he walked in. “And he’s reviving Velvet Blade.”
That gets a reaction out of Kiro. Iosif? Not so much.
“We have to act now. I’m assigning European assets to you,” I tell Iosif, handing him the encrypted tablet. “Malta, Cyprus, the southern relay points. Everything east of Geneva.”
He doesn’t flinch as he replies, “You expect Anton’s network to shift offshore?”
“I expect him to leverage the accounts tied to the first-generation syndicate,” I answer. “Your experience abroad makes you the best match to cut them off.”
There’s the slightest shine of respect in his eyes, acknowledgment that the Ignatov family is once again being pulled toward old ghosts. It disappears in a minute.
Beside him, Kiro whistles under his breath. “These breach logs… this isn’t random noise. Someone internally opened the channel from the inside. Someone with access high enough to bypass your security layers.”
The statement hangs heavy, like the first crack in a dam.
“So we have a mole,” Iosif says. “Probably more than one.”
I nod, jaw tightening. Somewhere in this tightening web, Harper is the one holding the only key we have left.
I dismiss them with further instructions, but the weight in the room stays behind, thickening the air even after they leave.
When, hours later, Harper is back in my office, I stand behind her chair, hands on the edge of the desk, watching the data cascade across the screens.
Both of us are running on caffeine, adrenaline, and the brittle edge of dread. She works without looking up, fingers gliding across the keyboard with precision. There is now a single-minded focus in her spine that shakes me.
It’s strategic to keep her this close, I lie to myself for the nth time, nothing more. No strings attached.
But the taste of longing is stronger than ever in my mouth.
“Abilities like yours shouldn’t exist in a place like this,” I say quietly.
She huffs a tired laugh.
“Abilities like mine are the reason your house hasn’t already burned down.”
The retort is sharp, accurate, and it lands low in my chest. I deserve it.
“You’re not wrong,” I admit.
She pauses, surprised. I rarely offer honesty so plainly. The moment passes, but her eyes linger on mine for a heartbeat too long.
Kiro returns with updates sporadically, bringing Iosif with him. Three lieutenants have gone silent, disappearing in the span of seventy minutes. A coded message arrives minutes later, routed through abandoned channels last used by my father’s generation.
The message contains four words: “the inheritance of blood.”
Iosif leans against the edge of the table.
“He’s not just sabotaging operations. He’s digging up history.”
“Anton wants to expose the purge,” I mutter. “The elders, the takeover… everything.”
Harper stills beside me. She doesn’t know the details, but she understands enough. That incident is the greatest fracture line in the Ignatov dynasty. The kind of truth that could collapse our influence in a single blow.
“And the files are real?” she asks softly.
“Real enough that if they hit the wrong hands, we’re finished,” I say.
Harper swallows.
“Then we find the final layer of his code before he does.”
“You mean before he leaks it,” Kiro corrects.
Iosif crosses his arms, his jaw tight. “Either way, the window is closing.”
The room falls into a quiet that feels like the space between gunshots.
Harper moves first. She pulls the keyboard toward her again, jaw set, eyes locked on the encrypted directory we haven’t cracked.
“Then we work until it breaks.”
Her determination steadies something in me. We dive deeper.
Hours stretch, the world narrowing to lines of code, red-lit security alerts, and the hum of tension that grows thicker with each discovery. Harper sits so close our shoulders brush when one of us shifts. Shared danger draws us into the same gravitational pull.
She breaks silence only when necessary.
“I need your keychain for this part.”
“Done.”
“Move the firewall to the third node or the packet loop will choke.”
“Already did.”
“Damian?”
“Yes.”
“You’re pacing.”
I stop. I hadn’t realized I was moving.
Her lips almost—almost—curve. “Sit before you wear a hole in the floor.”
I obey, settling beside her again. Our elbows touch this time. Neither of us pulls away.
Sometime past midnight, exhaustion begins stripping away the last layers of pretense.
Harper rubs her temples, sighing softly. “I keep thinking about last night.”
Her admission offers an olive branch that I grasp tentatively.
I keep my voice neutral. “Last night was…”
She lowers her hands, gaze steady. “It was—”
It was heat and clarity and a crack in the walls we’ve both built. It was a moment where danger made honesty easier than lies.
But I can’t say that aloud.
“I need you focused,” I tell her instead.
“I am focused.”
“On the operation,” I clarify.
Hurt comes alive in her eyes, but she masks it almost instantly. Months in the Bratva orbit have taught her how to bury what she feels.
She faces the screen stonily again.
“Then let’s finish what we started.”
I nod and force myself to stay professional. Damian Ignatov doesn’t make mistakes over women—especially not the one woman capable of tearing down everything I’ve built.
But awareness has weight, and it settles thick between us.
When she leans closer to point at a fragment of code, her shoulder brushes mine again. This time the contact sends a pulse through me, sharp and unwelcome.
Harper exhales slowly.
“Damian… we’re running out of time.”
“I know.”
“And out of people we can trust.”
“I know.”
“And out of—”
She stops. She doesn’t finish the thought. But I hear the end of the sentence anyway.
Out of room. Out of excuses.
We work in silence again, but it’s not the same silence as before. It stretches like a drawn bowstring, ready to snap. When the next layer of Anton’s code finally cracks, I feel the return of a familiar spark between us.
Her shoulders loosen, like a bowstring that has retired after a long war.
She turns to me, her voice fierce and determined. “We can do this.”
With a clarity that feels like being punched, I realize that I trust her more than I trust anyone else in this house. Her hurt face appears behind my eyes, and guilt begins to churn in my gut, rotten and green.
There’s been countless times that I have shut her out like this. It’s for a valid reason, of course, but I can’t stop myself from wanting to hear her voice, even if it’s to say something to spite me.
I lean back, the leather chair creaking beneath me. It’s a small sound, swallowed almost instantly by the electronic drone. In here, time seems suspended, like we are frozen in a space of our own making. It’s hedonistic and the most stupid thing I could be doing with a woman like her.
She looks up, too tired to guard whatever expression rises first. Her voice is hoarse.
“What?”
The words just push up, scraping like something long buried and jagged. “There’s something I haven’t told you.”
Harper sets her tablet down slowly, as if any sudden movement might send me retreating back behind my armor.
“Okay.”
My chest feels too tight.
“You know my father died the night Anton disappeared,” I say, keeping my tone even, a surgeon’s blade held still. “But I’ve never told anyone what I walked into that night.”
Her lips part, but she doesn’t interrupt. If she did, I might stop.
“The office was torn apart,” I continue. “Drawers emptied, desk overturned, blood on the floor—just a smear at the edge of the carpet. His chair was still spinning when I got there.”
The memory spikes through me with brutal, unwelcome clarity. It’s as if I’m back there again, stepping into that room with the carpet fibers lifting under my shoes.
Harper doesn’t look away. Her stillness makes the words easier to spill.
“One drive was missing,” I say. “Just one. And the lockbox it was kept in was open, like someone had ripped it apart instead of picking it.” My throat feels scraped raw. “I knew instantly it was Anton. No one else had the codes. Only family.”
The word family tastes like lead on my tongue.
She leans forward, hands clasped between her knees, a faint crease forming between her brows. Concern carves itself across her expression.
“I’ve been searching for that drive ever since,” I admit. It’s the one truth I’ve never spoken aloud, not to Iosif, not to Kiro, not to anyone in the organization. Saying it now feels like dropping a confession onto holy ground.
I don’t know why I’m telling her this. There is no point in letting her know the softest part of me so casually, but—
There is quite nothing else I can offer her.
Her voice is barely above a whisper.
“And Anton’s last layer of code… you think it leads to it.”
“I don’t think.” I hold her gaze. “I know.”
She draws a slow breath, the kind that signals resolve rather than fear.