Chapter 41
Zoya
The heavy click of the lock seals me inside.
Silence rushes in to fill the space Roman left behind, thick and suffocating.
I press my back against the wood for a single heartbeat, closing my eyes.
The townhouse feels different now. It’s still mine, but feels less homely.
The silence is deafening as I walk down the hallway to the kitchen.
I was removed in such a hurry that I didn’t even get to clean up from my last meal here. The frozen pizza.
I get to work, loading up the dishwasher and setting it to run as I wipe down the counters, grateful that nothing jumps out at me after leaving the kitchen unattended for days.
It feels like forever ago.
“I know you’re not gone, Daddy, but it still feels empty without you. Be safe, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing,” I mutter to the water gushing out of the tap as I rinse out the dishcloth.
Once everything is in its place again, my nerves settle. Everything in its place was a habit I picked up from my mother. It calms me. Makes me feel that I’m in control.
Knowing I can’t put it off any longer, I move to my father’s office, staring at the broken lock for a moment before pushing the door open. My office.
I walk around the desk and sit, before pulling up Alexey’s number on the old-fashioned rolodex Dad insisted on keeping even after he got a mobile phone.
I pull my dead phone out of my bag and plug it in.
While I wait for it charge up, I pick up the landline and call Alexey’s mobile with steady hands.
The phone rings. Once. Twice. The sound echoes in the empty room, bouncing off the mahogany panelling that has absorbed decades of secrets.
“Alexey,” he answers, his voice rough, likely from lack of sleep or the stress of burying a boss and accepting a new one in the span of twenty-four hours.
“I want the current accounts. The shipment schedules. Everything Nik had his hands on,” I say without a greeting. If he doesn’t know it’s me, then he is useless to me. “I want to know exactly how much damage I have to repair.”
“I am on the doorstep of the townhouse.”
I blink and then smile before I hang up. Rising and crossing the office to the hallway, I yank open the door to see Alexey and several of my men.
“Gospozha Antonova,” Alexey says with a wry smile. “You weren’t expecting us?”
“Of course I was,” I say, eyes narrowed as I step back. “Come in.”
He chuckles and steps in, brandishing a laptop, which I presume has everything I need to know on it.
I lead them to my father’s office and stride behind the massive mahogany desk, my heels sinking into the Persian rug. I sit, settling into the worn leather as if I have done it a thousand times before.
It feels like wearing a coat three sizes too big, but I keep my spine rigid.
Alexey places the laptop on the blotter and flips it open. The screen glows, casting a harsh blue light across the wood. Two other men, large and silent, take up positions by the door. Byki. Or jailors. It depends on how this meeting goes.
“The accounts. We’ve been over them all night since Nik… disappeared,” Alexey says, tapping a key. Spreadsheets fill the display. “He was busy.”
I scan the columns. “He was siphoning funds?”
“Aggressively,” Alexey agrees. “To pay the Albanians for the hit. And to secure loyalty from the lower ranks.”
“Loyalty bought with stolen coin isn’t loyalty,” I state, looking up to meet his gaze.
A corner of Alexey’s mouth quirks. “We halted the transfers, but a significant amount is already gone.”
“Any way to replace it?”
He nods and gestures to a small, wiry man with glasses. I guess this is the money man.
“Several ways. Do you want to start with the most violent or the least?”
It’s a test. And a pretty obvious one. “The most violent, of course. This will lead to the quickest and most lucrative end to this fiasco.”
He and Alexey exchange a look. Test passed.
“Very well. There is a warehouse in Brixton that is housing a large haul of contraband. We raid it. Tonight.”
“That’s soon,” I say carefully but without a trace of concern.
“It’s necessary.”
“Who does it belong to?”
“Petrov,” Alexey says.
The creepy old pakhan from the funeral.
“How many guards?”
Alexey pulls up a map, and we get to work.
“Twelve,” Alexey answers, his finger tracing the perimeter on the screen. “Shift change at 18:00. That is our window. Petrov relies on muscle, not tech. The camera system is antiquated. We can loop it in ten seconds.”
I study the grid of Brixton streets and the blocky outline of the warehouse. Petrov sneered at me in the graveyard, looked at me like I was a porcelain doll he could shatter with a single clumsy grip. Tonight, I take his retirement fund.
“And the cargo?”
“High-grade electronics and uncut diamonds moving through from Sierra Leone. Liquid assets. Fast to fence.”
Diamonds. The irony isn’t lost on me.
I lean back, the leather of my father’s chair creaking beneath me.
“We hit them hard and fast,” I decide, my voice steadier than my pulse. “Silence the guards, secure the goods. Move out.”
“It will get ugly.”
“I can do ugly as long as it gets me those boxes.”
Alexy grins like a wolf. “You are your father’s daughter,” he says. “He would be proud.”
“I hope so,” I say with a bittersweet smile. “Now run me through the less violent options, and we’ll take those too.”
Alexy raises an eyebrow, his wolfish grin turning impressed.
Knowing that Roman will be occupied with his family’s deal at the docks from five o’clock, I remain at the townhouse until I hear back from Alexey that the hit went down as planned. Boxes secured. Casualties on both sides, fatalities on theirs, but minimal.
“Petrov will be on the warpath,” Alexey warns.
“We won’t give him enough track to come at us.”
“Understood.”
We hang up, and I lean back in the chair before I inhale and stand on the exhale. Gathering up my things, I leave the townhouse, spotting Roman’s guards across the street. I smile as I slip into the driver’s seat of my Evoque and tut as I have to adjust the seat and mirrors.
“Day one. Complete,” I say to my reflection in the rearview mirror as I angle it just right.
I feel… invincible. I feel like I was born for this.
As I set off, with Roman’s guards right behind me, I giggle as the directions to the estate come up on the built-in SatNav.
The security detail trailing my bumper doesn’t feel like a cage; it feels like an entourage.
I tap my fingers against the steering wheel to the rhythm of the windscreen wipers, the adrenaline from the successful raid humming under my skin like a second pulse.
Petrov will be furious, spitting blood and threats by morning, but tonight, his loss is my ledger’s gain.
By the time the iron gates of the estate loom out of the mist, I’m ravenous and hope that there is food on offer. The guards clock the Evoque, and the gates swing open without hesitation.
I park next to Roman’s sleek black Mercedes. He’s back. My stomach does a traitorous little flip, part excitement, part apprehension. He told me to take the chair, but I doubt he expected me to smash it over someone’s head on the first day.
Sliding out of the car, the cool night air bites at my cheeks as I head for the heavy oak doors. They open before I touch the handle.
Roman stands in the doorway. His jacket is gone, sleeves rolled up to reveal his ink.
“You’re back,” he says with a knowing smile. “Have a nice day? My sources tell me half of Brixton is currently on fire.”
“Oh?” I say, feigning surprise. “How unfortunate.”
“Nothing to do with you then?” He allows me to pass, taking my coat and hanging it up.
“Nothing whatsoever.”
He knows I’m lying, but he doesn’t press. He knows this is business, and I can’t discuss it. At the end of the day, we are rival families, despite whatever vow he made to my father to protect me.
“Food?” I ask.
“Dinner is being served as we speak.”
“I’m starving,” I say, heading straight for the dining room. The scent of roasted lamb and rosemary hits me.
Roman follows and pours a deep red wine that looks like blood in the candlelight.
He holds the chair out for me, and I sit, placing the pristine white napkin on my lap.
It’s civilised. It’s respectful. It’s… normal.
And yet we are anything but normal. We are two powerful people in the Bratva with our own secrets that must be kept at all costs, but right here, right now, we are a man and a woman who were promised to each other under strange circumstances, and yet we have made it work.
For us.
Always and only for us.