Chapter Eight - Aleksandr
I wait twenty-four hours before I go to her.
Not because I need the time. The interrogation could happen immediately, questions asked and answered while shock still keeps her compliant. Control requires patience, and patience requires her to understand exactly how powerless she is.
Twenty-four hours in the dark. Twenty-four hours of silence and cold and nothing but her own thoughts for company. Long enough to strip away bravado. Long enough to make her desperate.
Long enough to break most people.
The question is whether Elena Lawrence is most people. I already suspect she isn’t.
Viktor meets me outside the holding cells at midnight, exactly as planned. He hands me a tablet showing security footage from the room: Elena pacing, then sitting, then lying curled in the corner. No crying. No begging at the camera. Just exhaustion and stubborn refusal to completely break.
“She’s been quiet for the last six hours,” Viktor says. “Conserving energy.”
“Smart.”
“What do you want from her?”
Good question. The practical answer is simple—information about who she told, what she planned to do with the data, whether she has backup copies hidden somewhere. Standard interrogation material.
The real answer is more complicated.
I want to see her up close. Want to understand what drove her to do something this suicidal. Want to watch her try to stay strong when strength is the only thing she has left.
Want to see if the defiance survives or shatters.
“Open it,” I tell the guard stationed outside her door.
The lock disengages with a heavy click. I step inside, Viktor remaining in the corridor. This conversation doesn’t need an audience.
The room is dark except for light spilling in from the hallway.
Elena is standing in the far corner, backed against the wall.
She looks exactly like I expected: exhausted, shaken, hair tangled around her face.
The cleaning uniform is dirty and wrinkled.
Her lips are cracked from thirst despite the water we’ve been providing.
Her eyes are furious.
“Lights,” I say quietly.
The overhead bulb flickers on. Elena flinches against the sudden brightness, raising a hand to shield her eyes. When she lowers it and sees me clearly, something crosses her face. Recognition. Fear. And underneath both—rage.
“You.” The word comes out raw and hoarse. “You fucking bastard.”
Not the opening I expected. Most people start with begging or bargaining or at least some attempt at civility. Elena Lawrence starts with accusations.
I close the door behind me, cutting off the outside world. Now it’s just the two of us in this small concrete room.
“Elena,” I say calmly, “you don’t look well.”
“Fuck you.”
She pushes off the wall, moving forward despite how unsteady her legs clearly are. Her hands curl into fists at her sides, nails digging into palms. Every muscle tense with anger she can barely contain.
“You’re destroying my family,” she spits out. “Seized assets, frozen accounts, dismantled companies. Three logistics subsidiaries shut down for violations that don’t exist. The Warsaw property taken on falsified tax claims. Investors pulled out because someone—you—got to them first.”
She’s listing everything. Every move I’ve made against the Lawrence empire, laid out with the kind of detail that proves she wasn’t just guessing when she broke into my facility. She did real research. Understood the pattern.
“You’ve been busy,” I observe.
“You’ve been criminal.”
“Criminal is a strong word from someone currently guilty of breaking and entering, corporate espionage, and theft.”
“I had evidence—”
“Had being the operative word.” I pull the encrypted drive from my pocket, holding it up so she can see. “Your guards found this when they searched you properly after you fell asleep. Excellent hiding place, by the way. The sewn pocket was creative.”
The color drains from her face. She reaches instinctively toward where the drive should be, finding nothing, understanding settling in with visible impact.
“No,” she whispers. “No, you can’t—”
“I already did. Wiped clean. Every file you stole, gone.”
“There are backups—”
“Are there?” I tilt my head, studying her reaction. “Where, cloud storage? Physical copies hidden somewhere? Or is that a lie to make yourself feel less powerless?”
She doesn’t answer, which is answer enough.
I pocket the drive and circle her slowly, assessing. She tracks my movement with her eyes, body turning to keep me in sight. Smart. Never let a predator get behind you.
The bruises on her wrists are visible where the zip ties cut too deep. Her shoulders are tense, drawn up protectively. She’s favoring her left side slightly.
I stop directly in front of her, close enough that she has to tilt her head back to maintain eye contact.
“How did you get access to my facility?” I ask. “Forged credentials don’t explain everything. You had specific knowledge—shift schedules, terminal locations, security blind spots. Who helped you?”
“No one.”
“Elena—”
“No one helped me. I did the research myself. Old contacts, social engineering, publicly available information combined with observation.”
It’s partially true. I can hear the truth in it, but there’s something she’s holding back.
“Who did you plan to give the data to?”
“Journalists. Authorities. Anyone who would listen.”
“Names.”
“I hadn’t decided yet.”
I grip her chin, fingers firm but not painful, forcing her to hold my gaze. Her pulse jumps under my thumb, heartbeat wild and terrified despite the fury in her eyes.
“Don’t lie to me,” I say quietly. “Lying makes this harder for both of us.”
“I’m not—”
“You are.” I tighten my grip slightly. “You had specific targets. Journalists who’ve written about organized crime, prosecutors known for pursuing financial fraud cases. You researched them the same way you researched my operations. Who was at the top of your list?”
She tries to jerk away. I don’t let her. Just hold her there, waiting for the truth.
“Financial Times. They’ve done exposés on Eastern European crime syndicates before.”
Truth. Finally.
I release her chin. She stumbles back immediately, putting distance between us.
“Anyone else?”
“Does it matter? You have the drive. You destroyed the evidence. I have nothing.”
“You have knowledge. You have context. You could recreate parts of what you found from memory, feed it to someone who knows what questions to ask.”
“Then why keep me alive?” The question comes out desperate and challenging at once. “If I’m that dangerous, why not just kill me and be done with it?”
Good question.
I resume circling, considering how much truth to give her. She watches me move, breath coming faster, hands clenching and unclenching.
“You broke into my facility,” I say eventually. “Stole my data. Made yourself my enemy. Under normal circumstances, you’d already be dead. But these aren’t normal circumstances.”
“Why not?”
“You’re Walter Lawrence’s daughter, and your family’s collapse serves my interests better with you alive than dead. And because—” I stop behind her, close enough that my voice reaches her alone. “—killing you would be a waste.”
She spins to face me. “A waste of what?”
“Potential.”
The word hangs between us, loaded with implications I’m not ready to explain fully.
I move back to her front, studying her face. The exhaustion, the fear, the defiance that refuses to die. She’s been in a cell for twenty-four hours with minimal water, no food, no comfort. She’s bruised and shaken and completely at my mercy.
She’s still fighting.
Most people would have broken by now. Would be begging, offering anything, surrendering completely.
Elena Lawrence is demanding to know why I haven’t killed her yet. Impressive doesn’t quite cover it.
“What happens now?” she asks, echoing her question from before.
“Now I decide what to do with you.”
“So my options are?”
“You don’t have options. You have outcomes. Whether those outcomes are pleasant or unpleasant depends on your cooperation.”
“Cooperation with what?”
I step closer, deliberately invading her space. She holds her ground despite how badly she wants to retreat. I can see it in the tension of her muscles, the way her breath catches.
“Tell me about your father’s business,” I say. “The parts you haven’t figured out yet. What do you know about his past dealings with the Bratva?”
Confusion flickers across her face. “I know he partnered with you. Or with Bratva operations. Facilitated shipments, helped with money laundering.”
“And?”
“He tried to pull out. You wouldn’t let him, so he cooperated with authorities.”
“Partial truth. What else?”
“That’s all I know.”
I tangle my hand in her hair, not pulling yet, just holding. A warning. “Don’t lie to me, Elena.”
“I’m not—” Her voice breaks slightly. “I don’t know anything else. My father doesn’t tell me things. Doesn’t trust me with family business because I’m—”
She stops. Bites down on whatever she was about to say.
“Because you’re what?” I prompt, pulling just enough that her scalp stings.
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”
“You’re the bastard daughter,” I finish for her. “The unwanted one. The one who has to fight for every scrap of acknowledgment.”
Her eyes flash with something raw and painful. “How do you—”
“I know everything about you, Elena. Your education, your lack of role in family operations, your desperate attempts to prove yourself worthy of a name that barely claims you.” I release her hair and step back.
“Breaking into my facility wasn’t about justice or evidence.
It was about proving you could do something your father couldn’t.
That you’re valuable even when he treats you as disposable. ”
“Stop.” The word comes out broken. “Stop talking like you know me.”
“I do know you. Better than you think.” I move to the door, signaling this interrogation is over for now. “You’re smart, resourceful, and dangerous when cornered. You’re also lonely, desperate for validation, and willing to risk everything to prove you matter.”
I knock once. The door opens, Viktor waiting on the other side.
“She’s been cooperative enough,” I tell him. “Move her upstairs. Guest room in the east wing. Guards posted outside, but make it comfortable.”
Viktor’s eyebrow raises slightly. “Sir?”
“You heard me.”
Elena is staring at me like I’ve spoken a different language. “What—what are you doing?”
“Making a decision.” I look back at her, cataloging one last time how she looks—exhausted, furious, beautiful in her defiance. “You’re not going back to this cell. You’re not being released either. You’ll stay in my home until I decide what to do with you.”
“That’s kidnapping—”
“That’s protection. From yourself, from the consequences of your actions, and from the people who would kill you the moment they learned you infiltrated Bratva operations.”
“I don’t want your protection.”
“You don’t have a choice.” I step into the corridor, then pause. “Get some rest, Elena. We’ll talk more when you’re thinking clearly.”
I close the door before she can respond.
Viktor falls into step beside me as we walk back through the underground levels. “You’re moving her into the house?”
“Yes.”
“That’s… unusual.”
“She’s an unusual problem.”
“What’s the endgame [3]here?”
Good question. The practical answer is leverage—keep her contained, use her as insurance against her father or as bait if anyone comes looking. Standard hostage protocols.
The real answer is more complicated.
I can’t release her. She knows too much, saw too much, and her defiance means she’d immediately try again. Killing her removes a potential asset and creates more problems than it solves.
Which leaves one option. Keep her. Under my authority, in my home, where I can control every variable.
Not as a prisoner. As something else.
“The end game,” I tell Viktor, “is making Elena Lawrence understand that her survival depends on cooperation. That fighting me is futile. That her best option is accepting her new circumstances.”
“If she doesn’t accept them?”
I think about her face when I gripped her chin. The fury mixed with fear. The pulse jumping under my fingers. The way her body reacted even when her mind resisted.
“She will,” I say. “Eventually.”
Releasing her is impossible. Killing her would be a waste.
She’s a problem that requires a permanent solution, and I’m beginning to think I know exactly what that solution looks like.