Chapter 2
DMITRI VOLKOV
Iwas in Albania, seated in a closed-door meeting with the seven most dangerous mafia families.
I had been sent alone—trusted to represent Lake Como on behalf of the four ruling families.
The meeting dragged on longer than I’d anticipated.
What began as diplomacy dissolved into boredom: forced smiles, carefully measured insults, and threats disguised in the polite language of “cooperation.”
The Albanians excelled at that particular art.
Every compliment carried a threat. Every handshake was a reminder that they believed themselves untouchable on Italian soil.
They were wrong.
The Albanian presence on Lake Como was never hospitality.
It was leverage.
A calculated concession on our part—mid-level bosses housed in villas we owned, protected by our security, breathing air that remained in their lungs only because we allowed it.
All of this stemmed from the recent agreement Lake Como signed with the Albanians—an alliance that allowed us to do business together and enter each other’s territory for specific, agreed purposes.
The understanding was unspoken but absolute.
Even though I had been sent here alone, they wouldn’t dare touch me.
If anything happened to me—or to anyone connected to me—a war would erupt. And the benefits of our present alignment far outweighed whatever blood such a war would cost.
That knowledge kept conversations civil.
It kept knives sheathed.
When the meeting finally ended, I stood and walked out before anyone could corner me with polite farewells disguised as veiled threats.
Outside, I stepped into the open air with my son, Vanya.
I was already halfway to the car, my patience spent, when Vanya’s voice cut through the night.
“Dad... there’s blood.”
The word snapped my focus sharp.
He stood frozen beside the rear passenger door, small fingers clenched at his sides, eyes locked on the ground.
Under the weak spill of the sodium lamps, a dark smear glistened against the white gravel—too dark, too fresh to be anything else.
My pulse kicked once, hard.
I moved instantly, sliding an arm around his shoulders and guiding him back, positioning my body between him and the car without conscious thought.
“Stay close,” I said quietly.
My Glock was in my hand before the sentence finished, drawn from the shoulder holster in one smooth motion.
Thumb off the safety.
The parking area outside the Albanian safehouse was poorly lit—sodium lamps throwing weak orange halos over cracked asphalt and parked vehicles.
No movement.
No raised voices.
Just the cicadas and the faint echo of my own breathing.
I scanned left. Right. Rooflines. Windows. Reflections in windshields. I didn’t miss details; I’d survived too long for that.
Then I stepped closer to the blood.
It wasn’t a single drop. It was a trail.
Uneven. Dragged. Leading from the darkness beyond the lot straight to my car.
My gaze lifted to the door handle.
A handprint—full palm, fingers wrapped around the chrome. Bloody. Sloppy. The mark of someone who’d barely stayed upright long enough to reach it.
Someone badly hurt.
“Vanya. Back up. Now.”
He didn’t argue. Took five steps back exactly, eyes still wide but face composed. He trusted me. That trust was a responsibility I never forgot.
I angled my body to keep him shielded, left hand hovering over the handle, right steady on the pistol.
Partnership with the Albanians did not equal trust. It never had.
A car bomb would have been crude for them—but crude still killed. Or this could be bait. A provocation. A corpse meant to send a message.
I twisted the handle.
The door opened smoothly.
No resistance.
No blast.
The interior light snapped on, harsh and unforgiving.
And for a fraction of a second, my brain refused to process what I was seeing.
A woman.
Curled on her side across the backseat, body folded inward as if trying to make herself smaller.
Bare skin everywhere the light touched—pale beneath layers of grime, streaked with drying blood.
What little clothing remained was barely more than a torn strip knotted around her waist, soaked through, clinging darkly to her hips.
She was breathing.
Shallow. Uneven. But unmistakably alive.
The injuries were immediate and impossible to ignore.
Cuts and bruises mapped her body in brutal detail—old and new overlapping in a way that made my jaw tighten. The worst was a long, vicious slash running vertically between her chest, the edges ragged, swollen, still seeping sluggishly despite how much blood she’d already lost.
Her dark hair was matted against her cheek.
Her lips were parted, breath catching faintly on the exhale, like her body was struggling to remember how to keep going.
This wasn’t a message.
This was a survivor.
Something cold and dangerous shifted in my chest.
She looked like she’d been dragged through hell and discarded here as an afterthought.
For a split second, instinct overrode reason.
My mind went where it always went first—with enemies, leverage, intent. The Albanians had left a body in my car. A message. A provocation wrapped in blood and humiliation. Something meant to test boundaries, to see how far they could push before consequences followed.
I shut the door again, making sure it latched without a sound. The last thing I needed was Vanya seeing more than he already had.
I stepped away from the vehicle and pulled out my phone, fingers already dialing the number of one of the men I’d just spent three hours negotiating with over wine and thinly veiled threats.
He answered on the second ring.
“Mr. Volkov—”
“Are you fucking with me?” I cut in, voice flat, lethal.
Silence stretched on the line. Not shock—calculation.
“I don’t understand,” he said carefully. “What’s the problem?”
“There’s a woman bleeding out in the backseat of my car,” I said. I kept my tone even, because men like him heard emotion as weakness. “Half-dead. Half-naked. Carved up like an animal. Did you put her there? Because if this is a statement, it’s a very expensive one.”
Another pause. This one longer. When he spoke again, there was something close to genuine confusion threading his words.
“A dead body?” he repeated. “In your car? No, Dmitri. We would never be so... disrespectful. Especially not after tonight.”
“Don’t insult my intelligence,” I said coldly. “Come get your trash out of my vehicle. Now. Then we’ll discuss whether your men continue breathing Italian air by morning.”
“Dmitri—”
I ended the call.
I slipped the phone back into my pocket and turned—only to find Vanya had crept closer again.
He stood on his toes, small hands pressed to the tinted glass of the rear window, his breath fogging a pale oval as he strained to see inside.
“Dad...” he said softly.
“She’s not your concern,” I replied, sharper than I intended. “Step back.”
He didn’t.
“She’s breathing,” he whispered. Not fear in his voice—certainty.
I closed my eyes for a brief second and exhaled through my nose. “I know she’s breathing. Barely. That doesn’t make this your problem.”
He turned to face me, blue eyes—my eyes—wide and earnest in that infuriating, disarming way children have.
The way they look at the world like it can still be fixed if the right person just does the right thing.
“She’s hurt,” he said. “Really hurt.”
“Vanya—”
“She’s suffering,” he pressed, voice cracking just slightly on the last word. “I saw the blood. She didn’t do anything wrong. Even if she belongs to them... no one deserves that. Please.”
Please.
The word landed harder than any threat the Albanians had thrown at me all night.
I looked down at him—six years old, stubborn as hell, too perceptive for his own good.
He was already learning the shape of my world, the rules I lived by. And here he was, standing between pragmatism and something dangerously close to mercy.
I rubbed a hand over my jaw and glanced back at the building. Still no movement. No men spilling out in apology or outrage.
Either they were stalling, or they genuinely had no idea who the woman was—or how she’d ended up in my car.
If she was theirs, keeping her alive gave me leverage. Information. A name. A reason someone had abandoned her instead of finishing the job. If she wasn’t theirs...
Then someone else had access to my vehicle.
That was unacceptable.
And Vanya was still watching me, eyes locked on my face, waiting.
He wouldn’t forget what I chose next.
“Fine,” I muttered at last. “Get in.”
His relief was immediate, bright and dangerous.
He nodded quickly and ran for the passenger side without another word.
I turned back to the rear door and opened it again.
The woman hadn’t moved. Her breathing was still shallow, uneven. Up close, she looked worse—skin too pale, lips tinged faintly blue, lashes fluttering as if she were fighting the dark with everything she had left.
I leaned in, voice low but firm. “Listen to me. You’re safe. Do you understand?”
No response.
I slid an arm beneath her shoulders, careful of the wound, and lifted her just enough to reposition her properly on the seat. She let out a faint sound—pain, fear, instinct—and my grip tightened automatically, protective despite myself.
Whoever had done this to her hadn’t expected her to survive.
That was their first mistake.
I shut the door, circled the car, and got behind the wheel.
Whatever lay bleeding in my backseat was no longer a problem I could set down and walk away from.
Vanya sat rigid afterward, shoulders drawn up, as if bracing for impact.
I turned the key.
The V8 roared to life, smooth and powerful, its familiar growl usually a comfort.
Tonight, it did nothing to steady me.
As soon as the cabin sealed shut, the smell hit—thick, metallic, invasive. Copper and sweat and something sour beneath it, something that spoke of fear and infection and wounds left too long untreated. Blood. Enough of it to soak into leather, to linger no matter how expensive the car.
I cracked the windows halfway down, cold night air rushing in, but it barely cut through the stench. It clung to the back of my throat, crawled under my skin.
Vanya twisted in his seat again, stretching his neck to look past the headrest.
His voice came out small. “Is she going to make it?”
I didn’t soften the truth. He deserved better than lies. “I don’t know,” I said. “She’s lost a lot of blood. If she dies before we reach Como, there’s nothing we can do.”
His fingers tightened around the edge of his seat. For a moment, I thought he might cry. Instead, he swallowed hard, jaw setting with a stubbornness that was painfully familiar.
“She’s going to be okay,” he whispered. Not to me—to himself. Like saying it out loud might force the world to listen. “She has to be.”
I didn’t answer. I eased the car out of the lot, tires crunching over gravel darkened by blood, and pointed the nose toward the highway.
The Albanian safehouse shrank behind us in the mirror, its lights dull and indifferent, as if it hadn’t nearly spilled a war into my lap.
The road ahead was empty—no traffic, no headlights, just a ribbon of asphalt cutting through darkness.
The night pressed in from all sides, thick and watchful.
I accelerated, the engine responding instantly, speed climbing fast. Too fast for comfort. Not fast enough for my nerves.
Behind me, the woman’s breathing rasped—short, uneven pulls of air that sounded like they hurt.
Each one seemed weaker than the last. I kept checking the rearview mirror, half expecting to see her chest stop moving altogether.
The other half of my attention strained for danger.
Every pair of headlights in the distance set my pulse ticking faster. Every shadow on the roadside looked like a place someone could be waiting.
The Albanians might claim ignorance, but ignorance didn’t mean innocence. If they realized she was gone—if she mattered to them—this road could turn into a kill zone very quickly.
Nothing happened.
No pursuit. No gunfire. No sudden flash of headlights closing fast.
Just the steady hum of the engine and the sound of a woman bleeding out in my backseat.
Minutes stretched. Miles disappeared under the tires. Vanya fell silent, eyes fixed forward now, hands clenched in his lap. I could feel the tension radiating off him like heat. He was listening too, counting breaths that weren’t his own.
“She’s still breathing,” he said suddenly, like a report.
“Yes,” I replied. “For now.”
I pushed the speedometer higher. The car ate the road, suspension hugging every curve.
Lake Como was still hours away—too far, considering her condition—but it was the closest place with doctors I trusted and walls thick enough to keep enemies out.
If she survived the drive, she would answer questions.
Who she was.
Who had done this to her.
And why someone thought leaving her in my car was a good idea.
I tightened my grip on the wheel, jaw set.
Because if this was a gift, wrapped in violence and blood—
Then someone had badly misjudged how I handled gifts.