24. NIKOLAI
Chapter twenty-four
F inally—after more than forty-eight hours—I got a hit. The app I’d been using to hunt for Lyla’s phone chimed loudly.
I bolted upright, the adrenaline hitting faster than any alarm ever could.
Nearly two full days had passed without much sleep.
I’d finally lay down for a brief nap—just enough to keep my brain from combusting.
The moment the notification blared, I threw off the covers and jogged barefoot to the IT room.
With my fingers flying across the keyboard, I reviewed the data coming in as it traced her digital signature.
She’d been keeping all her location services disabled. Smart. That left me tracking her phone by its serial number through her wireless carrier—a much more difficult proposition.
My app had picked up her trail when her phone powered on, but it hadn’t been on long enough to allow the program to lock in on a precise location. And just like that, she was gone again.
Still, the path it had followed confirmed something important: her phone was functioning, and it was in Manhattan, in the area of the Theater District and Hell’s Kitchen—which made sense.
At this point, I had no reason to believe the person operating that phone was anyone other than Lyla herself.
When I’d called Carmine several days ago, all he’d been able to tell me was that Lyla said she was going back to Tennessee, but I hadn’t believed it for a second.
Earlier, I’d checked every flight, train, and bus out of the city—searching the logs for both of her aliases—to no avail. The girl hadn’t gone anywhere.
She’d also left a note for her roommates, and they’d both texted her multiple times since. The program indicated she’d opened those texts only minutes ago.
I pivoted fast, analyzing Nat and Jae’s metadata trails, checking for read receipts or any digital fingerprints I could trace back to Lyla. Still nothing. She’d turned her phone on just long enough to check the messages, then shut it off before my system could bite down.
If she was still in Manhattan, it meant she hadn’t let go of the one thing she’d come here for: the damn show she’d gotten hired to work for.
I texted Henri and the team—told them to return to Playwrights Haven and sweep it all again.
Meanwhile, I reviewed everything I had yet again. I couldn’t explain the compulsion to keep going over the data—not in a way that made sense.
I’d tried to push her away. To convince her that returning to her tiny town in the Tennessee hills would be the best thing for her.
But she hadn’t listened.
And now, she was in more danger than ever before.
God, she’d awakened something in me. There was something about her I couldn’t pin down.
Her natural sunshine, the baby-pink sweaters, the way she’d called me out with a smirk and fire in her eyes… She was too sincere, too trusting for a man like me.
But under the surface lurked something darker—a curiosity she herself didn’t even understand yet, the kind that made it clear she wanted to be taken , not asked by a man she should fear. She wanted to be thoroughly ruined, like in those dark romance books she read.
For me, the question was: would she be my virtue or my vice?
I’d never wanted anything to do with a relationship that required commitment.
Couldn’t imagine trusting a woman enough to share my true nature, let alone a sliver of the world I actually lived in.
I’d stayed a recluse to survive, working clandestinely for years to build a different life for myself and my twin sister.
The irony of that ambition wasn’t lost on me when she’d found a way out on her own.
Ana had found something idyllic—a man who treated her like a queen and helped her heal the scars she carried.
I had everything money could buy—power to move the world, no borders, no rules.
For most men, that would’ve been the ultimate success.
For me? Not so much.
While I waited for Henri’s update, the silence pressed in, pulling me inward to the part I kept carefully guarded.
The whispers had begun when I was still a child. People had noticed something different about me.
“ Too smart for his own good ,” they had murmured, often casting me wary glances, as if my intellect itself was a loaded weapon.
And in a way, it was.
When I’d been growing up under Viktor’s iron fist, I’d found the blatant stupidity I witnessed daily irritating—but I’d also realized it was a strategic weakness I could instinctively exploit.
Soon, it became second nature to see the world not as it was presented to me but as it truly was at its core.
It wasn’t arrogance to recognize the disparity between my own mind and the minds of those around me. It was simply an observation.
That clarity, coupled with the ingrained violence of my upbringing, created a potent—and often tedious—reality for me. The predictable reactions of thugs, the transparent motivations of the bratva—it all became a monotonous script.
And the boredom…that was the real catalyst for who I’d become.
When the world around me moved in slow motion, mired in its own predictable patterns, the urge to introduce a little chaos—a novel variable—became almost unbearable.
Manipulation wasn’t deliberate malice. It was often just the most efficient way to alleviate a problem.
A nudge here, a carefully worded suggestion there, and suddenly the stagnant pond of a person’s existence would ripple with unexpected consequences.
It was…diverting.
And in a world painted in shades of brutal simplicity, diversion was a rare and valuable commodity.
Lyla was my diversion.
Was I willing to slaughter the lamb…consume her soul, forever redirecting her life?
Perhaps I was.
But first, I had to find her before Delgado did.
It was simple really.
At this point, she either belonged to him or to me.
I learned forward, frowning at the screen. I had pored over the video feeds, one after the other, and come up empty-handed. Then, it occurred to me that I should review her banking activity.
Sure enough, I found something new. Around the same time she’d turned her phone on, there was a charge at a burger joint only a half block away from the theater where she was working.
There you are, my darling.
She was cleverer than I’d ever given her credit for, but now the jig was up. It was time to get some coffee and take a trip to West 42nd Street.
It was three in the morning by the time Rory pulled the SUV up to the front of Playwrights Haven. Two of my newly initiated men were already there along with Henri. Lucian approached me first, shaking his head as Julian and Henri secured their weapons beside a parked car down the block.
“The theater’s locked up,” Lucian said. “Most of the businesses around here are shut for the night, and no one remembers seeing a girl who looks anything like Lyla.”
I scrubbed a hand over my chin. “Yeah, well, I picked her up her trail when she swiped her card at a burger joint just down the street. But the camera angles are shit—half of them are blocked by construction scaffolding, and the rest are too low-res to help. No idea where she went after she left.”
I glanced toward the dark building, irritation clawing at the inside of my chest. Then I dragged my hand through my hair and exhaled hard.
“She’s holed up somewhere in there. I can feel it.”
What I couldn’t understand was how the hell she’d slipped past both Henri and Delgado’s men and managed to stay out of sight this long. That kind of evasion took more than luck. It took instinct. And maybe desperation.
I reached into the SUV and pulled out my tool bag.
“Security’s weak here. Shouldn’t take me long to get us in.”
Within seconds, I was at the front doors, crouched low, tools in hand. It took less than two minutes to disable the building’s cheap security system and trip the magnetic lock.
I stood and handed the tool bag to Lucian, who caught the bag one-handed, annoyed but silent.
“You stay put,” I told him. “Eyes on the street. Let us know if anything moves.”
Rory tossed him the SUV keys as he stepped up beside me, glancing inside the door.
“Everyone else,” I said quietly, “let’s break this building down by teams.”
As we entered, I gave a curt nod to the others and slipped in a slim earpiece with a built-in mic. It was secure, discreet, and clear enough for low-voiced communication.
“Turn your comms on,” I said softly. “I don’t want to miss an important piece of information because your’re fumbling to press a fucking button.”
Henri gave a silent thumbs-up. Julian tapped his mic twice in acknowledgment, shifting toward the corridor that branched right. Rory stayed close by my side.
“We split up,” I directed. “Julian and Rory, take the upper two levels. Check the costume storage, rafters, and catwalks in the theater spaces. Henri—main floor with me. We start with rehearsal rooms and sweep stages as we get to them.”
Motion-sensor lights buzzed and blinked to life as we moved, casting a fluorescent glare over the floors. The air smelled of industrial cleaner, musty curtains, and the sweat from hundreds of rehearsals. Somewhere in the distance, a piano echoed faintly through the walls.
As we moved to one of the areas behind a stage, we split up. Curtains swayed from the movement of displaced air, and floorboards creaked with our weight. I scanned the wings. Somewhere in the back, a pipe suddenly hissed, followed by a metallic clatter echoing across the small theater.
“False alarm,” Henri’s voice crackled over the comms. “Just a coat rack with a red wig. I knocked the damn thing over.”
Rory’s voice followed a few minutes later: “Upper dressing rooms and rehearsal studios clear. Checking tech loft now. No signs of recent activity.”