Chapter 14 #2
"The same apartment the Morozovs now have under surveillance."
"Yes."
Ivan looked up from his laptop, those cold eyes studying me with unusual interest. "What's the endgame here, Dmitry?
We can't hide her forever. Even if we eliminate the Morozov threat, she's undocumented in our world.
No identity we can verify, no family to negotiate with, no leverage except what she stole. What exactly is your plan?"
This was it. The moment where I had to say the words that would change how my brothers saw me forever.
"She's mine," I said simply. "My Little. We signed a contract five days ago."
The silence that followed was deafening. Ivan's fingers froze over his keyboard, suspended mid-typing like someone had hit pause on his entire existence. Alexei's expression shifted through several emotions too quickly to catalog before settling into something unreadable.
"The homeless woman who robbed the Morozovs is your submissive?"
"She's more than that," I said, defensive instinct flaring.
"She's—Christ, I don't know how to explain it.
She's brilliant and broken and brave. She fights everything but wants structure so desperately she shakes with it.
She needs what I can give her, and I need to give it to her.
It's not just kink or convenience. It's . . ."
"It's what Clara and I have," Alexei said quietly, understanding dawning in his eyes. "That recognition. That knowing."
"Yes," I said, relief flooding through me that he understood.
"You've been structuring her," he continued, and it wasn't accusation but observation. "Teaching her to submit, giving her rules, building trust."
"She needs it. Needs boundaries and consequences and care. She's been in survival mode so long she doesn't know how to exist without chaos, but the chaos is killing her. With me, she can let go. Be little. Be safe."
Ivan had returned to his typing, pulling up something new. "Does she understand what you are? What we are? The violence that comes with being a Volkov?"
"She knows enough. She's seen the guns, the security systems. She's not naive about what kind of man keeps military-grade surveillance in his apartment. But she hasn't been exposed to the full reality yet."
"And now she will be," Alexei said grimly. "Whether we want it or not. The Morozovs have her face, her location. She's a target now."
"I know," I admitted, the weight of that failure crushing. "I thought I was being careful. I thought a bookstore and food market were safe enough. I didn't know they were watching me specifically."
"You couldn't have known," Alexei said, surprising me with the absolution. "We had no intelligence suggesting they were tracking individual members. This is targeted, specific. They want what she has, and they know you have her."
He moved to the window, looking out at the Brooklyn skyline, and I recognized his processing stance—the way he stood when working through complex problems.
"She's at your apartment right now?" he asked without turning around.
"Yes."
"Alone?"
The word hit like a punch to the solar plexus. "Yes. With Bear—our dog—but yes, essentially alone."
Alexei turned sharply, and the look on his face made my blood run cold. "The apartment they've been watching. The apartment they have photos of her entering and leaving. She's there alone while we're here discussing her safety?"
The realization crashed over me like ice water. If the Morozovs knew I was here, at our compound for our weekly meeting—a schedule that never changed, that anyone watching us would know—then they knew Eva was unprotected.
"Fuck," I breathed, already reaching for my phone. "Fuck, I have to—"
That's when the security notifications started cascading across my screen. My hands shook as I tried to access the internal camera feeds, but the app kept timing out, spinning uselessly before displaying "Connection Failed."
"Get me eyes on my building," I barked at Ivan, who was already pulling up his laptop, fingers flying across multiple keyboards simultaneously.
"External cameras coming up," he said, his voice tight with concentration. "But your internal system's not responding. Could be jammed, could be destroyed."
Alexei had his phone out, his Pakhan voice cutting through my panic. "I need eight soldiers at Dmitry's address now. Full tactical. Possible Morozov incursion." He paused, listening. "I don't care where they are. Get them there."
My phone rang—the building's front desk. I answered before the first ring finished, "Hello? Is everything—"
Silence. Then a click. The line went dead.
The implications hit me like a physical blow. Someone at the front desk, calling but unable to speak. Either threatened or already neutralized. Eva up there, twelve floors up, with only Bear's tiny body between her and whatever was happening.
"Twenty minutes," Alexei said. "Minimum twenty minutes before our people arrive."
Twenty minutes might as well have been twenty hours. Eva could be gone in twenty minutes. Hurt in twenty minutes. Dead in—
I was already moving, sprinting for the door, car keys in my hand before conscious thought caught up. The conference room blurred past, then the hallway, then the exterior door crashing open hard enough to crack the reinforced glass.
"Dmitry, wait—" Alexei called, but I was already at my car, yanking the door open.
Ivan appeared in my passenger seat somehow, laptop balanced on his knees, still typing furiously. "Go," he said. "I'll work while you drive."
The engine roared to life, tires screaming as I floored it out of the compound. The security gate seemed to open in slow motion, every second stretching like torture. Then we were on the street, and I drove like the devil himself was chasing us.
"Red light," Ivan said calmly as I blazed through an intersection, horns blaring around us.
"Don't care."
"NYPD camera caught that."
"Don't fucking care."
Brooklyn streets blurred past, my brain calculating the fastest route while my hands wrestled the wheel through turns that had Ivan gripping his laptop with white knuckles.
Fifteen minutes to my apartment if I obeyed traffic laws.
Eight if I didn't. Physics and probability became my only concerns—how fast could I take this turn without flipping, what were the odds that delivery truck would move before I reached it.
"Your system's completely dark," Ivan reported, still typing one-handed while bracing himself with the other. "But I'm accessing neighboring buildings' external cameras. Maybe I can see—"
"Just tell me if you see Morozov soldiers," I cut him off, swerving around a taxi that had stopped for no apparent reason.
Eva in the apartment, maybe hiding in the bedroom closet where I'd shown her the panic button. But she wouldn't hide, not my fighter. She'd try to protect Bear, try to be brave, not knowing that brave would get her killed against professional soldiers.
The FDR Drive opened before us, and I pushed the speedometer past ninety, weaving between lanes like the car was an extension of my will.
The East River flashed by in a blur of sunlight on water, the city's skyline mocking me with its normalcy.
Somewhere up there, in one of those thousands of windows, Eva was facing God knew what because I'd left her alone.
"Building's exterior looks normal," Ivan reported, squinting at his screen. "No unusual vehicles, no—wait." His fingers paused. "Dmitry, I'm seeing movement in your apartment window. Multiple figures."
My foot pressed harder on the accelerator, engine screaming in protest. Ninety-five. Hundred. The car shook with the speed, but I needed more, needed to be there now, needed to rewind time to this morning when I should have brought her with me, should have never left her unprotected.
"How many?" I managed to ask through clenched teeth.
"Can't tell. The angle's bad and—shit, someone just walked past the window carrying something. Or someone. I can't—the resolution isn't good enough."
Carrying someone. Carrying Eva. My vision tunneled, the world narrowing to just the road ahead and the horrible images my mind conjured. Eva unconscious. Eva hurt. Eva's distinctive eyes closed forever because I'd failed to protect her.
I'd promised her safety. Sworn she'd never be vulnerable again. Given her rules and structure and told her Daddy would always keep her protected. The bitter taste of that broken promise mixed with adrenaline and rage into something toxic.
"Take the next exit," Ivan said urgently. "Surface streets will be faster from here, there's construction ahead on the FDR."
I yanked the wheel right, tires screaming as we flew up the exit ramp at sixty miles per hour. A pedestrian dove out of the way, and I didn't even slow down. Nothing mattered except getting to Eva. Laws, safety, sanity—all secondary to the desperate need to reach her.
"Three minutes," Ivan said, and I couldn't tell if he was calculating our arrival or trying to calm me down.
Three minutes to determine if I'd lost everything that mattered.
Three minutes to find out if my weakness for normalcy—bookstores and food markets and pretending we were just another couple—had cost Eva her life.
Three minutes that stretched like elastic, each second an eternity of imagining what I'd find.
The building appeared ahead, looking deceptively normal in the afternoon sun. No broken windows visible, no signs of forced entry, no bodies on the sidewalk. But that meant nothing. Professional hits were clean, quiet, invisible until you found the blood.
I slammed the brakes in front of the building, leaving the car diagonal across two handicapped spaces. Let them tow it. Let them arrest me. None of it mattered if Eva was gone.
The doorman's desk was empty, no sign of struggle but no sign of the doorman either. The elevator waited with doors open like a mouth, but elevators were death traps and would take too long anyway.