Chapter Twenty-Eight
The sound of the shower hissing through the pipes is the only noise in the penthouse. It’s a white noise that usually soothes me, a mechanical purr signaling cleanliness and order. Tonight, it grates.
I sit on the edge of the bed, staring at the damp towel I used to wipe the blood and soot from my hands. The water in the basin is tinged pink—a diluted reminder of the violence in the warehouse. The mess I had to clean up to keep her safe.
Freya is in the bathroom. Although she’s already showered, it’s like she can’t quite get the warehouse filth off of her. I can hear her moving, the rustle of the shower curtain, the splash of water. She’s alive. She’s whole.
She knows.
The weight of that knowledge presses down on me like a physical burden. For months, I carried the secret of her brother’s survival alone. I carried the guilt of her tears, the hatred in her eyes, the way she flinched when I touched her, all because I was protecting a promise made to a ghost.
Now, the ghost is back.
I lie back against the pillows, folding my arms behind my head. The room spins slightly—not from dizziness, but from the sheer exhaustion of the adrenaline crash. My eyes drift closed, and the darkness behind my eyelids isn’t empty. It’s filled with the past.
Three years ago.
The memory hits me with the force of a bullet. It’s vivid, sharp.
I was younger then. Not by much in years, but in experience. I was the new Underboss, hungry to prove myself, desperate to carve out my own legacy in the shadow of my father. The Gromov empire was stable, but stagnant. We needed expansion. We needed a foothold in new territories.
That was when the Colombos started making noise.
Lorenzo was a rising star in the Five Families, a man with ambition that outstripped his conscience. He was moving product up the East Coast, using ports that we considered neutral. He was bold, reckless, and dangerous.
We needed eyes on the inside.
Ayaan came to me.
I remember the night clearly. It was raining, just like tonight. He walked into my office without an appointment, wearing a hoodie that was worn thin at the cuffs and a pair of jeans that had seen better days. He looked like a student, maybe a grad student pulling an all-nighter.
His eyes… his eyes were old.
“Mr. Gromov,” he said, his voice steady.
“Nikita,” I corrected him. “Mr. Gromov is my father.”
“Nikita,” he amended, “I have a proposition.”
I gestured for him to sit. He didn’t. He stood in front of my desk, his spine straight, his hands clasped behind his back.
“I know who you are,” he said. “I know what you need. You need someone on the inside of the Colombo operation. Someone who can get close to Lorenzo without raising suspicion.”
“You think you’re that man?”
“I know I am.”
I leaned back, studying him. I knew of him, of course. He was Freya’s brother. I’d seen him at the gallery openings, hovering protectively near her, his eyes scanning the crowd for threats. He was invisible to most people—a background figure in his sister’s vibrant life.
I wasn’t most people. I’d seen the way he moved. I’d seen the calculation in his gaze when he thought no one was looking.
“Why?” I asked. “Why come to me? Why not the FBI? Why not a rival family?”
“Because the FBI will put him in a cage,” Ayaan said. “A rival family will start a war that will get civilians killed. I want him gone. I want his operation dismantled from the inside out, piece by piece, until there’s nothing left but ash.”
“What do you get out of it?”
“Freedom for my sister.”
He said the words quietly, but they hit me like a sledgehammer.
“Explain.”
“She’s in danger,” he said, his composure slipping for the first time. A crack in the armor. “I have… debts. Bad debts. With men who don’t care about collateral damage. Lorenzo has been sniffing around. He likes her. He wants her.”
I felt a cold prickle at the base of my spine. I’d seen Freya. I’d seen the way men looked at her. She was a lightning rod for trouble, beautiful and oblivious.
“If Lorenzo gets his hands on the debt, he’ll use her as leverage,” Ayaan continued. “He’ll break her to get to me. I can’t let that happen.”
“So you want me to buy the debt?”
“No. I want you to let me buy it. I’m going to work for you. I’m going to be the best damn soldier he ever had. When he trusts me… when he gives me the keys to the kingdom… I’m going to tear him apart.”
It was madness. It was suicide.
I looked at him—this skinny, desperate kid willing to walk into the lion’s den for a sister who had no idea what was happening.
“You’ll die,” I said.
“Maybe.”
“If you’re caught, you’ll beg for death before they give it to you.”
“I know.”
“If you succeed, what then?”
“Then I disappear, and you make sure Freya is safe. You make sure she never finds out about this. You make sure she lives a normal, happy life, far away from this shit.”
I sat there for a long time, weighing the risks. It was a golden opportunity. A mole in the heart of the enemy’s camp. It could break the back of the Colombo expansion and cement my position as the next Pakhan.
It was also a massive liability. If Ayaan cracked, if he broke under pressure, he could expose the entire Bratva operation.
“I need insurance,” I said.
“You have it.”
“Give me your phone. Your passwords. Your contacts. Every detail of your life.”
He didn’t hesitate. He pulled a burner phone from his pocket and slid it across the desk. Then he pulled out a small SD card.
“Everything is on there,” he said. “My bank accounts, my sister’s schedule, the men I owe money to. It’s all yours.”
I picked it up, feeling the plastic edge bite into my skin. I held his life in my hand.
“If you go dark,” I said, “I will assume you’ve been compromised. I will burn everything. You, me, her. I will scrub you from existence.”
“I won’t go dark.”
“You’d better not.”
I stood up and extended my hand. “We have a deal, Ayaan.”
He shook it. His grip was firm, his palm dry. “Nikita.”
“Go home,” I said. “Pack a bag and say goodbye to your sister. You leave tonight.”
He nodded. He turned and walked to the door. He stopped with his hand on the knob, looking back at me.
“She doesn’t know,” he said softly. “About any of this.”
“It’s better that way,” I said.
“Is it?” He looked at me, and for a second, I saw the terror beneath the resolve. “She’s going to hate me for leaving.”
“She’ll get over it.”
“She won’t.” He shook his head. “She’s stubborn and loyal. She’ll spend every waking moment looking for me. She’ll put herself in danger trying to find me.”
I looked at him, really looked at him. I saw the love he had for her, fierce and protective. It mirrored the feelings I was starting to harbor for her myself, though I wouldn’t admit it then.
“That’s where you come in,” he said.
“Me?”
“You have to stop her.”
“Excuse me?”
“You have to… distract her. Control her. Keep her close enough to watch, but far enough away to keep her hands clean.”
I scoffed. “You want me to babysit your sister?”
“I want you to protect her,” he corrected, his voice hardening. “If she comes looking for me, Lorenzo will find her, and he’ll use her to get to me.”
He walked back over to the desk, slamming his hands down on the wood.
“If she gets hurt because of this,” he said, his eyes blazing, “I will kill you. I don’t care who your father is. I don’t care how many men you have. I will come back from the dead and end you.”
I stared at him. I believed him.
“She’ll be safe,” I said. “I give you my word.”
“Your word isn’t enough.”
“What do you want? Blood?”
“I want your life,” he said. “If she dies, you die.”
I looked at him for a long moment. Then I nodded. “Agreed.”
He stared at me, searching for a lie. He didn’t find one. “Good.”
He turned and walked out the door.
I watched him go, vanishing into the rainy night. I looked down at the SD card in my hand.
I had just signed a death warrant for a man I respected. I had just made a promise to a woman who had no idea I existed.
It was the most dangerous deal I had ever made.
***
The memory shifts, fast-forwarding through months of silence. Reports coming in from anonymous sources. Blueprints of Colombo safe houses. manifests of cargo ships. It was Ayaan. He was feeding us information, slow and steady.
He was good. Better than I expected. He rose through the ranks quickly, gaining Lorenzo’s trust. He became Antonio, the invisible man, the shadow who handled the dirty work.
Then came the night he disappeared for real.
I was in my office, late again. The phone rang. It was a burner phone.
“Nikita.”
“I’m in,” Ayaan said. His voice was distorted, mechanical. “I’m in the inner circle.”
“How bad?”
“Bad. He’s planning something big. A shipment next month.”
“Where?”
“I’ll send the coordinates. You understand how much danger Freya is in, right?”
I gripped the phone until my knuckles turned white. “He’s not going to touch her.”
“He can’t get to her directly. He’s too exposed, but he’s watching.”
“Keep watching him.”
“I will. Nikita… you need to tighten the screws. You need to make sure she’s protected. If he makes a move—”
“He won’t.”
“You don’t know him like I do. He’s obsessed with legacy. With power. He sees things he wants and he takes them.”
“I won’t let him take her.”
“You better not.”
“Ayaan.”
“Yeah?”
“Come home.”
He was silent for a long time. I could hear his breathing, shallow and ragged. “I can’t,” he said finally. “Not yet. I’m close to breaking him. I’m close to bringing him down.”
“If you stay, you die.”
“Maybe.” He paused. “If I leave, he wins, and I can’t let him win.”
“Then I’ll come get you.”
“No.” His voice was sharp. “No extraction. If you come in, you blow my cover. You blow everything. You have to let me finish this.”
“What if you don’t make it?”
“Then you keep your promise.”
The line went dead. I sat in the dark, the phone humming in my hand. I thought about Freya. I thought about her laugh, her stubbornness, the way she looked at me with those big, green eyes.
I thought about Ayaan, sacrificing everything for a sister who thought he was a loser.
I stood up and walked to the window. The city lights twinkled below, ignorant of the wars being fought in the shadows.
I was going to protect them both. Even if I had to burn the city down to do it.
***
The bathroom door opens.
I open my eyes, the past fading away like smoke. Freya walks out, a cloud of steam billowing around her. She’s wearing one of my robes, the white cotton hanging loose on her frame. Her hair is wet, slicked back from her face.
She looks like an angel. She stops when she sees me sitting there.
“You’re awake,” she says.
“I’m awake.”
She walks over to the bed, hesitating. She sits down on the edge, careful not to touch me.
“He’s really alive,” she whispers.
“He is.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
I reach out, taking her hand. Her skin is warm, damp from the shower. “I promised him,” I say. “He made me swear that you would never know.”
She looks down at our joined hands. “He loves me.”
“Yes.”
“He almost died for me.”
“He would have died a thousand times for you.”
She looks up at me, her eyes swimming with tears. “And you?”
“What about me?”
“Did you do it for him?”
I look at her, really look at her. I see the woman I’ve fallen in love with. The woman I’ve fought for, bled for, lied for.
“At first,” I say honestly, “it was a debt. A promise to a dying man.”
“And now?”
I pull her closer, wrapping my arms around her waist. I bury my face in her neck, inhaling the scent of her soap, her skin.
“Now,” I murmur, “it’s because I can’t imagine a world where you don’t exist.”
She exhales, a long, shaky breath. She wraps her arms around my neck, holding me tight.
“We’re a mess,” she says against my hair.
I pull back, looking into her eyes. I see the future there. A future where the secrets are gone, where the lies are burned away. A future where we can just be.
“I need five minutes. Just five minutes to remind myself that you’re here. That you’re real.”
She smiles, a genuine, radiant smile that lights up the room. “You have all night, Nikita.”