Chapter 18 - Harper
The city feels different when you’re no longer yourself.
The moment you walk Moscow’s streets under a borrowed name, something changes. Every streetlight becomes a spotlight, every passing glance feels too sharp, every reflection in a window looks like it’s judging you.
We’ve been here five days.
Five days of pretending to be a woman who doesn’t flinch at shadows or scan every room twice, a woman who doesn’t wake up drenched in sweat, a woman who didn’t emerge from the shallow husk of an innocent girl.
Damian says it wasn’t my fault, but guilt doesn’t listen to logic.
Our apartment is a fourth-floor walk-up in a building older than the Soviet Union, the kind where stairwells echo and the pipes complain about existing. Perfect for people who need to disappear but still keep an eye on the street.
Damian insisted we take the side facing the courtyard as it’ll be “less exposure,” then installed alarms I haven’t seen outside a Special Forces manual.
Now he stands at the kitchen counter eating an apple, all casual.
“Your shift starts in an hour,” he says without looking up, trying to conceal the tension behind his voice with neutrality.
“I know.”
“You didn’t sleep.”
“I did.”
I can almost hear his eyebrow rising.
I pull on my coat. The same one I’ve worn for days because my alias, Eva Vetrova, is a creature of habit. She smokes, drinks cheap vodka, works nights, and talks to no one except the men she’s infiltrating.
She is everything I’m not. Maybe she’s exactly what I’m becoming.
“Eat something first,” Damian says quietly.
“I’m not hungry.”
He puts the apple down.
“Harper.”
That’s the problem with him using my real name. I don’t hear it from anyone but him.
For a moment, I think he’s going to push and ask about the nightmares, the way I’ve been drifting through the days in that numb, weightless state, but he doesn’t.
Instead, he steps towards me..
“You can’t keep running on fumes,” he murmurs. “You’re going to burn out.”
“You burned out years ago,” I say, deflecting. “You’re fine.”
“That’s not the compliment you think it is.”
I stare at him. He stares back.
Five days in this city and he still hasn’t shaved. The stubble suits him too much. He knows it. I know it. The entire criminal underworld probably knows it.
And that’s part of the problem—nothing about him is inconspicuous.
He has a presence.
People feel him when he enters a room. They look up, try to make sense of the restraint coiled under his stillness. Even when he wears the identity of an unemployed, disgruntled veteran named Aleksandr Vanyev, he carries himself like a weapon.
It’s why the underworld bosses trust and fear him. It’s why they talk to him.
And it’s why every time someone stares too long at me, Damian positions himself slightly between us, even when they don’t realize he’s doing it.
“Eat,” he repeats softly.
“No.”
His jaw flexes.
“You don’t get to throw yourself into danger on an empty stomach.”
“I’m not throwing myself anywhere,” I mutter.
“You’re going to a place full of men who would slit your throat if they figured out what you really are.” His voice stays low, calm. “That counts as danger.”
A tense beat passes between us.
This is our rhythm now. Me pushing, him absorbing, both of us circling something neither of us names.
Finally he sighs and reaches for the apple again.
“Fine. At least take this.”
“I don’t—”
“It’s not optional.”
I take it, because fighting him over an apple is ridiculous. The second I do, his shoulders loosen.
Damn him for being right.
Infiltrating the underworld isn’t as glamorous as you would think it is. It’s smoke-filled rooms and men who laugh too loudly, back rooms where money exchanges hands, coded phrases slip between drinks, pretending to be someone unimportant until they forget you’re listening.
Tonight my job is simple: sit at the bar of the club we’ve been frequenting, listen for the right names, pass the information to Damian when I get out.
I’m too far in this shit to know that nothing is ever that simple in the underworld.
Moscow feels colder after midnight, as if the darkness pulls the temperature down with it. I’m halfway down the block when I sense someone following.
It’s not the footsteps that give it away, but my instincts.
I pivot to see Damian standing at the base of the stairwell, hands in his pockets, expression flat.
“You’re following me,” I say.
“No.”
He walks past me, down the sidewalk. “I happen to be going in a similar direction.”
“Coincidence,” I utter sardonically.
He has the gall to look at me, straight-faced. “Exactly.”
“You’re terrible at pretending.”
“You’re terrible at walking alone in the dark in a city full of people who want to kill you.”
“And you’re supposed to be staying off the radar.”
His expression is flat. “I am off the radar.”
“You’re six foot three. You have cheekbones that could start a dictatorship. You are not off anything.”
His mouth twitches. “Did you just compliment my cheekbones?”
Great fucking going, Harper.
I ignore him and walk faster. He stays a few paces behind—close enough to intervene, far enough not to compromise my cover.
Fuck this stupid, overprotective man. And fuck me for feeling safer with him.
My pulse beats steady, familiar now, almost calm. Maybe that should terrify me more than the danger itself.
The data center appears ahead of us, an old concrete cube sagging under decades of neglect. The last lead we got was of this center. Anton’s former front company logo still clings to the wall, half peeled, like it’s ashamed to stay attached.
“Clear?” Damian murmurs as he returns from his scan of the right perimeter of the center. He meets me where we entered, the exact point I return to after inspecting the left.
“As it’s going to be.”
He nods, and we slip inside through a cracked vent that Damian bashes in with his foot.
The air is colder than outside, dense with dust that rises in lazy spirals when we step over fallen cables. Rows of servers tower into the darkness, sleeping giants waiting for a command.
My fingers hover over the old circuitry, and for a moment I feel the strange déjà vu of touching an old wound. This is the place that used to be alive with illegal activity. Anton’s secrets were stored in these machines long before he ever set his sights on me.
The main control port is only a few steps away from where we got in. I drop to one knee.
“Give me thirty seconds.”
Damian stands behind me, keeping watch. Power hums through the servers as I bridge the circuits. One by one, the towers glow. Blue LED lights flicker in hesitant breaths, then steadying as though recognizing an old friend.
The interface boots up.
Directory after directory unfolds. Hidden sectors surface and encrypted partitions blink.
There it is.
A repository labeled under Anton’s signature encryption. Even as my heart climbs up my throat, my hands are stable as I click on it.
Inside the files, there’s blackmail archives, financial coercions, message chains between Anton and Orlov.
Then the fucking video logs.
I click the most damning one: the footage of me signing fabricated documents.
The angle, the lighting, the digital fingerprinting… this is all Orlov’s work. My stomach tightens with the sting of betrayal. I start downloading everything onto the drive.
Behind me, Damian whistles quietly. “You found it.”
“Yes.” My voice feels distant to my own ears. “And more.”
The progress bar crawls forward to thirty percent, then forty. All the while, my pulse is vibrating in my throat like a hummingbird’s.
Isn’t all this a bit too easy?
Just as I’m about to voice this to Damian, the squeaking of a shoe echoes through the towers.
He stiffens instantly, hand going to his holster. I stand slowly, clutching the drive cord without disconnecting it. The server lights reflect against metal in the darkness—guns.
Inessa Markova steps into the glow.
She wears a fur-collared coat, flawless lipstick, eyes sharp as cut glass. Two armed men flank her, rifles lifted with bored confidence.
“Well,” she purrs, “look who we have here.”
Damian and I stand frozen. She tilts her head, studying us like curated art.
“Hand over the files, and I’ll let you leave Moscow. Walk away free. Consider it… a mercy.”
Damian laughs, a sound stripped of warmth, metal scraping concrete.
“Markova,” he spits, voice cold enough to frost glass, “I don’t negotiate with ghosts.”
Her smile thins. The stale air becomes electric, vibrating like a live wire. Her guards cock their rifles, the sound speaking for itself.
“You always preferred the dramatic line,” she says. Then her gaze slides to me, dripping with contempt. “And you—tell me, Harper, how does it feel? Being the one that ruined the Blade? Did you think you could change him?”
I don’t rise to the bait. I don’t let the insult land anywhere but the floor. Instead, I press the small transmitter clipped inside my sleeve.
The signal light blinks green.
“I wouldn’t worry about my effect on him,” I answer, voice calm, almost bored. “I’d worry about yours. Because this conversation? It’s being streamed to multiple secure channels.”
Inessa freezes.
For the first time, her perfect mask cracks—a small fracture, but unmistakable. Hard to tell with women like her.
“You little—”
Gunfire erupts outside the building, followed by shouting and boots skidding across marble and pavement alike.
Inessa’s men shift, their guns lowering slightly. Damian sees his chance and darts to stand between me and their guns.
“Kiro’s early,” Damian mutters.
The facility shakes with the impact of an explosion, ceiling dust raining down. One of Inessa’s men curses and fires blindly toward the hallway.
Damian grabs my wrist.
“Harper—go!”
I yank the drive free mid-download, gripping it tight. Not everything transferred, but it should be enough to expose Orlov and tear Anton’s network open.
Inessa lunges at us with a scream, whipping her gun out from her coat. A stray burst of gunfire from outside slices across her arm before her thumb can push off the safety, and she falls back with a snarl, clutching the wound. Unfortunately, it wasn’t fatal, but it’ll do for now.
Bye bye, asshole.
Damian and I sprint down the corridor, past server racks that flicker violently. Sirens wail in the distance, growing louder. I hear Kiro’s shouts somewhere in the chaos—an order, a location call-out—but my heartbeat drowns the words.
Damian kicks open a maintenance hatch. Cold air billows up from the tunnel below.
“Move,” he urges.
I drop into the darkness, landing on damp concrete. He follows instantly, sealing the hatch above us just as bullets slam into the metal.
The tunnels twist ahead of us, water dripping down the walls. Our breaths echo in ragged bursts. Every footstep feels amplified, every shadow alive with threat.
We run without looking back.
When we reach the exit grate, my hands shake from adrenaline. Damian lifts the rusted bars with a grunt and helps me crawl out into the night.
Snow hits my face in cold, sharp flakes. I inhale deeply, finally feeling like I can breathe. I didn’t realize how long I’d been holding my breath.
Sirens swirl faintly, far away as the horizon burns from Kiro’s diversion explosives.
Damian is breathing hard, coal-black hair dusted with ash, blood streaking across his temple—but alive.
The drive is still in my grip. My fingers tighten around it like it might vanish if I blink. He pulls me into him without hesitation, his arms firm and unyielding.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs into my hair like a vow. “This time, I won’t let the world take you from me.”
My body warms from the inside out. His breath is warm against my ear. The world feels frozen around us, but for the first time since this nightmare began, I feel the faintest edge of safety.
Even if danger hunts me down, even if Anton has me tied upside-down in a warehouse somewhere, Damian has me. He’s holding me like he truly has me.