9. Inessa #3
He kisses my forehead. Pulls me into his chest. And I let myself shake against him, finally, where it's safe.
We sit on the edge of the bed. His hand rests on the mattress between us, palm up.
I put my hand in his without speaking. His fingers close around mine.
Warm. Steady. The same hands that checked weapons ten minutes ago, holding mine like we’re on a park bench instead of waiting for my father’s enforcer to breach the walls.
The minutes are obscene. Each one stretches and deforms.
Outside the door, boots cross the hallway in patterns I’ve memorized. Knox’s heavy stride, Razor’s precise clip, Wreck’s ground-shaking weight. Ghost passes twice more, his footsteps so quiet I wouldn’t hear them if I weren’t listening for exactly that frequency.
At 7:15, Forge’s phone buzzes. Knox. The Escalade’s been spotted parked on River Road, three blocks south. Engine running. Dmitri is waiting.
“Thirty minutes, and then we find out if my father really did call Dimitri off,” I say.
“Twenty-seven,” Forge corrects. He’s been counting too.
I look at our hands. His scarred knuckles wrapped around my slim fingers.
I think about Galveston. About the hotel room with the heavy curtains, Ruslan’s polite hands, the way I left my body for three days and came back different.
I think about the three years since. The careful theft, the hidden accounts, the slow construction of an escape route built one wire transfer at a time.
And I think about this man beside me, who could have treated me like currency the way every other powerful man in my life has, and instead held my hand and kept me steady.
If we survive this, I’m going to love him with everything I have. The full, reckless, idiotic abandon of a woman who finally has something worth losing.
At 7:31, Forge’s phone buzzes again. Reeves.
He hands it to me.
It’s Reeves. “Warrants were executed. FBI Houston hit six locations simultaneously. Bank accounts frozen, warehouses seized, fourteen arrests. Every lieutenant your father has in the Gulf Coast is in federal custody.”
My breath catches. “And my father? He’s in Moscow I think.”
“We suspect so. He’s been indicted in absentia. Forty-seven counts. RICO, money laundering, weapons trafficking, customs fraud. International warrant issued through INTERPOL. He can’t leave Russia without being arrested.”
I close my eyes.
Viktor Volkov, the untouchable pakhan of the Gulf Coast bratva, is a fugitive hiding in Moscow. His American empire is ash.
Forge is already out of the room and on the phone with Knox. “Stand down the perimeter, but don’t leave it until we have confirmation.”
The news moves fast. But within twenty minutes, Dmitri’s Escalade is spotted heading west on I-10.
He’s running. His boss is a federal fugitive, the Houston operation seized, every man Dmitri commanded in handcuffs or scattering.
There’s nothing left to enforce. Nothing left to protect.
He’s a soldier without an army, and he knows it.
It’s over.
I sit on the edge of Forge’s bed and the tears come without warning.
Not sadness. Relief so intense it feels like a physical force.
My body shakes with it. Twenty-eight years of performing, of smiling at men who wanted to own me, of hiding money in increments small enough to avoid detection, of planning, waiting, and holding my breath.
It’s over.
The door opens. Forge walks back in, and sees me crying.
He drops to his knees in front of me and takes my face in his hands.
“Hey. It’s over. He’s done.”
“I know.” I’m laughing and crying at the same time. “I know.”
He wipes my tears with his thumbs. Those scarred, rough thumbs, so gentle on my skin.
“You did this,” he says. “Not the feds, not the club. You. Three years of planning and you brought down the most dangerous man in the Gulf Coast bratva.”
“We did it.”
“You started it. That’s what matters.”
He kisses me. Gentle this time. A kiss that says you’re here, you’re safe. Mine. Yours. It’s just the beginning.
I pull him onto the bed. We don’t bother being careful or measured.
I need him inside me. Now, here, in this room where an hour ago I thought I might die.
He strips me with trembling hands. I strip him with shaking fingers.
When he pushes inside me, I wrap myself around him, legs, arms, everything, and hold on.
He fucks me slowly this time. Deep, deliberate strokes that make me feel every inch of him. He holds my gaze the entire time, those dark eyes that have seen violence, death, the inside of a fighting ring, watching me as though I’m the only thing worth seeing.
“Stay,” he says, buried inside me, his brow pressed to mine.
“I already told you I’m staying.”
“I need to hear it again.”
“I’m staying. I’m here. I’m not running anywhere anymore.”
He comes hard after me, and does it saying my name.
Afterward, he holds me. His arms around me like a cage, but the good kind. The kind you choose. The kind that has a door you could open if you wanted to.
I don’t want to.