Chapter Eleven
Leonid
It’s one chirping little shit outside the window that wakes me up.
Groaning, I push off the covers and kick my legs off the bed.
My shoulders are tight, coiled with stress, and my eyes burn from lack of sleep.
But the first thing they land on is her—my new wife, fully covered in a beige silk nightdress but somehow still glowing like a dreamy ray of sunshine nothing can hide, not even the heavy white comforter pulled all the way up to her chin.
Soft, luscious honey-blonde strands spread over the fluffy pillow, and the only view I get is a glimpse of her back rising and falling gently while she sleeps, completely oblivious to the world around her.
I find it almost peaceful, watching her in her most vulnerable state.
I could stay for a long time, just...watching.
But as quickly as the strange feeling comes, it dissipates, like steam escaping into thin air.
I grab the clothing closest to me—a black shirt and dress pants— roughly put them on over my half-naked body, and push myself off the bed. As I march out of the room, shutting the door behind me, I allow it to click shut softly, careful not to wake her.
The hallway is faintly lit and quiet, with none of the men in sight. By the time I get into the study, the morning light hasn’t even broken over the harbor.
I settle on the chair behind the mahogany desk, ignoring the creaking echo across the silence as I reach for my pen. The desk lamp illuminates shipping ledgers, routes, and customs manifests spread before me, and my mind begins moving.
The first thing I do is cross-reference data before noting the distinct patterns in the recent sabotages at the eastern docks. The signs are clear, and so are the patterns: Vasili’s getting sloppy, leaving a trail of predictable disruptions that he thinks are clever.
I scoff, irritated.
I hate to admit it, but there was a time when Vasili actually made me look twice at a map.
Years ago, the man was a ghost in the shipping lanes.
He understood the rhythm of the black market, knew exactly which customs officials to buy, and moved his cargo with a quiet, lethal efficiency that commanded enough respect to be labelled as a threat.
I had plenty of nuisances, but Vasili was a legitimate menace on my ledger.
For a moment, I thought the bastard might actually force me to share the harbor.
But power does strange things to weak men. When handled poorly, it turns them into fools. Look at him. I glance through the ledger once more. He’s loud, more arrogant than he should be, and incredibly sloppy.
He leaves trails of breadcrumbs through my union workers and actually thinks he’s delivering a masterstroke by disrupting a few shifts.
He’s like a child throwing rocks inside a glass house, hoping no one will notice. Pathetic, really. He’s survived long enough that this is practically begging me to destroy him.
I reach for my phone, then dial a single digit.
“I need you in the study,” I say, ready to hang up before a soft, feminine sigh resonates from the background. “You have ten minutes,” I add before hanging up, not waiting for a reply.
Five minutes later, there’s a shuffle of heavy boots in the hallway and a hard knock on the door.
“Come in.”
I rise from my chair at the same time the door opens and Artem enters with a wry smile on his lips. He shuts the door behind him, but doesn’t move away from it.
He runs one hand over his hair and sticks the other into his pocket with the annoying smirk he wears when he’s about to do something that will definitely piss me off.
“I was having the night of my life,” he announces. “You know, she’s been the best one since Sasha.”
“Good for you.” I raise a hand. “And I’d appreciate it if you kept the details of your night to yourself. That’s not why I sent for you.”
“Obviously not.” He scans the items littered across my desk and raises a brow. “And yeah, that reminds me, I don’t think I’ve personally wished you a hearty congratulations on your marriage.”
“You have, but thank you,” I reply gruffly.
But he pushes. “Swift wedding, almost a bit too swift. But I’m not going to lie, Leonid, you’ve always had an eye for very good things. Isn’t this, what do they call it, the honeymoon phase? Shouldn’t you be having the best nights of your life, too?”
The only reason Artem has gotten so far into this conversation is because of privilege—the privilege that devout loyalty and fierce faithfulness throughout the years have earned him.
He’s fought by me, stood by me, even taken a bullet or two for me. In terms of brotherhood, besides Mikhail and my blood family, no one comes close to Artem.
Most of the men, especially the new recruits, have mistaken us for brothers. I consider him practically family.
But that’s not enough to allow him to make a careless and suggestive remark about Elena.
We’ve talked about the women we’ve fucked. We’ve shared women, recommended them even. But there’s a possessive surge that spikes hard inside me, that makes me want to keep her name out of his mouth by any means possible.
An immediate, primal rage explodes behind my ribs, and the air around me turns to ice. My face stays as a mask of absolute stone, but it takes every ounce of my restraint not to reach across the desk, wrap my fingers around his throat, and squeeze until his windpipe snaps.
My hands stay perfectly flat against the desk, but the wood groans under the sudden, white-knuckled pressure of my grip.
I lean forward, and the tension in the room stretches tight enough for a knife to cut through.
“I’ll fucking put a bullet between your eyes if you mention her again, Art, I swear to God. Focus. We’re not on vacation. We have serious work to do.” I frown, narrowing my eyes at him. “What the hell’s gotten into you this morning?”
Artem’s smirk vanishes instantly, the color draining from his face as he realizes the exact line he’s crossed. He takes a step forward, his posture stiffening as he finally marches away from the door and toward my desk.
“My apologies. What do you need me to do?”
I point to a shelf of history books and begin walking toward it. “We’ll talk in there.”
Artem follows me without uttering a single word. I punch in the passcode to the security panel beside the shelf, and there’s a mechanical whir before the shelf slowly slides to the right, revealing the dark entrance into the war room.
It's a long walk through the tunnel that buzzes and lights up after the motion sensors are triggered, but after a few minutes, we step into the secure office.
The walls around us blink with the blue light of dozens of monitors displaying live feeds of the ports, while topographical maps of the shipping lanes take up the center table.
Artem stands a few meters behind me while I dish out precise orders. I point at one of the large monitors showing the map of our port territories.
“What I want you to do is simple. Track Vasili’s known contacts within the harbor union.
” I tap a finger against the map. “Ensure you trace every recent port disruption back to the specific shift workers on duty, and intercept the suspicious shipments scheduled to arrive on the midnight freighter. I want nothing slipping through.”
He nods, and when I turn around, I find his sharp blue eyes absorbing the data.
Together, we lean over the monitors, dissecting the logistics. It doesn’t take long to identify the weak points in Vasili’s network, the vulnerabilities he doesn’t even know he has.
We quietly map out a brutal attack, a high-risk-proof strategy that has the potential to cut the legs out from under his operation completely while keeping my own shipping lanes insulated and undetected.
While Vasili might expect a loud, messy turf war, I’m going to give him a surgical, suffocating ruin.
****
By the time Artem and I finally step out of the war room and back into the study, the darkness has been entirely lifted.
Warm rays of sunlight cut through the windows, forming shadows across the polished marble hallway.
My mind is already three steps ahead, but the immediate security of my perimeter comes first.
I stop at the top of the stairs, looking down at the men assembled in the foyer. The guards and enforcers stand at rigid attention as Artem briefs them.
The directives are clear and absolute: their priority is to protect the mansion, double the watch at the docks, and ensure Elena is never exposed to danger.
They know the penalty for failure. I don’t need to repeat it.
With the day’s operations set in motion, I walk back to my bedroom and push the heavy doors open, expecting to find her small form buried beneath the sheets, still cuddled up beneath the comforter.
But the room is empty, and the bed is neatly made up.
I pull out my phone and dial Mikhail. The second he picks up, I release a torrent of questions.
“What time did she leave?”
He pauses for a minute, and I kick off my shoes. “A few hours ago.”
“I want a visual on her. Who’s keeping watch?”
“Ace. And I have my eyes on her too, Leonid. There’s no need to worry.”
I stifle a chuckle at how quickly he shields the new recruit.
“I’m sending a link over to you now,” he says, and over the phone I hear a keyboard clicking. “It’s our view on her from all angles.”
A second later, a link to a secure stream pings onto my screen. I open it, staring at the live feed.
She’s at the docks, dressed in a white shirt and long khaki pants. A gentle breeze ruffles her hair, just like it did the first night I saw her, and my chest tightens with a volatile mix of caution and twisted fascination.
Throughout the morning, I handle the logistics of the upcoming operation while keeping one eye firmly on Elena.
Her video feed stays pinned to the corner of my tablet.
I note every movement, every turn of her head. She wanders the perimeter repeatedly, and I don’t need to be close to spot her curiosity.