Chapter 18
Dominik
The phone vibrates against the wood, a short buzz that freezes the room. I know before I look because of the timing, the way Alina’s eyes jump to my desk and then away. Archer finally remembered he has a sister he loves.
I don’t rush. I take a sip of the coffee she made for me first. Even though it’s cold, I feel obliged to drink every sip. I also want Archer to sweat. It’s the least he deserves for what he did to her, to us.
“Please answer it,” Alina whispers, her voice shaking. She’s now standing near the bookshelf, her bare feet planted like she’s bracing herself.
I can’t help but notice that her neck is also still bare. She still refuses to wear the necklace I left out. Her rejection is more frustrating than I thought it would be. I don’t understand why it matters so much—why her refusing a piece of metal feels like she’s refusing protection. Refusing me.
Pushing aside those thoughts for now, I finally answer the call and hit the speaker button. “Morozov.”
There’s silence on the line, then: “Dominik.”
“Archer. You finally found some courage,” I say. My voice is even. Pain bites under the bandage when I lean forward, so I don’t. “Or you ran out of places to hide.”
“I have information,” Archer says. “On the guns.”
I glance at Viktor, who’s posted by the window, arms folded, a soldier who got us through worse than this. He shifts his weight a fraction. Ready. “Talk,” I say.
“The shipment didn’t scatter as much as they wanted me to think,” Archer says, trying for steady and failing. He swallows so hard I can hear it. “The main lot’s sitting in a warehouse off 1/9 near Kearny, two streets from the Meadowlands trucking company near the railroad.”
“Who’s holding it?” I ask.
A beat. “Popeye’s people. Not all of them. He’s got three bikes up front, and a van backed into the loading bay. I heard that they’re planning to move small bundles at night under a tarp in a panel truck. I don’t know where.”
“You do,” I say.
“No. Well, not everything,” he stammers. “Not yet. But the warehouse is real. That’s a start, right? They’ve got lookouts at the corner and a drunk in a sedan across the street that looks like a civilian. He’s not. He’s got the same sticker on his dash as the patches.”
Petrov is already tapping notes to the team chat on an untraceable phone. He mouths Kearny. I nod once. Like Viktor, he stands there without making a sound, eyes on me, waiting for more intel.
“What else,” I demand, not ask.
“They’re…nervous,” Archer rushes on. “After yesterday, they’re expecting a hit. Their radio call is ‘river’ when they want to move fast and ‘smoke’ when they want to disappear. The door code on the front keypad should still be two-six-six-seven if they haven’t changed it.”
I watch Alina stare at the phone as if she can drag more out of it with sheer hope.
“How do I know you aren’t feeding me to your friends again?” I ask him.
“You don’t,” Archer says. The words come too quickly to be invented. “But you know I called. And you know I—” His voice breaks. He smothers it. “You know what it means that I called.”
It means Alina pressed him hard enough to bruise his selfish, thick skin. It means the fear in her lie worked. Good.
“If this is a trap,” I say, “you will die slowly.”
“I know that,” he huffs down the line.
“And you’re still going to be punished for stealing,” I warn him. “You assured that much with the shooting.”
“They made me tell them the location!” he argues, and I ignore his weak excuse.
“How many men are inside the warehouse?” I ask him. Even wounded, my mind sketches the layout automatically, entry points, blind corners, how many seconds a man can bleed before he drops.
“Between six and eight I think,” Archer says. “One on the roof with a rifle, another on a catwalk near the north window.”
“Vehicles?”
“Inside there’s one panel truck. One white van backing onto the bay. Then the bikes and fake drunk’s sedan like I already told you.”
He’s not improvising. He sounds like someone who walked circles around that building until his feet memorized it. I look at Viktor. His face doesn’t change, but his eyes do. We both believe him enough to make a move.
“Why help me now?” I ask mildly. “You had a head start. You ran with our money. You sold our guns. You sent these assholes to kill me, my men, and your own sister. Why should I listen to a word that comes out of your mouth telling me where to find them now?”
“Because Alina is still there,” he says. “Because she’s alive, and I want her to stay that way, even if she hates me.”
I cut the call. Cowardly or not, I can’t listen to him say her name like it still belongs to him.
When I roll my shoulders back, the bandage reminds me I’m human and stitched up. I disregard it and stand to begin pacing while I think.
“Viktor.”
He nods that he’s ready to listen to my orders and retrieves his phone.
“Three cars,” I tell him, “staggered entry. First car idles two blocks south—eyes only. Second car posts at the north corner, one man on foot with a long lens, one in the alley on the east side with a hook to kill the warehouse’s power if I say.
Third car floats, stay back close enough to be ready to wedge the back bay if they try to push the van out. ”
Petrov’s fingers move faster, typing it all down. Good. If Archer is lying again, I want every angle mapped before we walk into the dark.
Neither man needs me to say the next part. I say it anyway. “No sirens. No neighbors. No noise until the first call. We don’t own Kearny PD. We do own its councilman. Keep the cameras on but put them on a loop.”
“Yes, boss,” Petrov says.
Viktor lifts his phone so I can see the recent messages. “Sergei is on point. Daniil drives the second car. Leon—”
I shake my head. “Not Leon. He thinks with his trigger finger first and his head last. I want someone else who is careful minded, not bloodthirsty. Take Renat instead; he’ll be smarter about when things need to get messy.”
“Renat, then,” Viktor agrees.
“Petrov,” I add, “you ride in a third car. Keep your distance. Take long guns,” I instruct.
“Understood,” Petrov says.
“Comms,” I add, “encrypted. No chatter. We’ll use their code. If you hear ‘river,’ everyone moves fast. If you say ‘smoke,’ you all get out of there and you leave one hell of a decoy.”
“Virtual overwatch?” Viktor asks.
“Ears only,” I say. “No eyes I can’t control. A drone is risky. Put Ivan’s man on the roofline two streets over. He owes us for his cousin’s bar license.”
Alina watches with a small frown, trying to keep up. She has no idea how often we have days like this. She thinks violence is just chaotic improvisation. It isn’t. It’s careful choreography with more surveillance than knives or bullets if it’s well planned.
“Go,” I tell my men, wishing I could go with them, but knowing Gavriil is right; I’m more of a liability than an asset at the moment.
They leave without another word. The door closes and the room seems bigger without my men in it. I breathe once and count the pull of thread across skin.
Alina takes a seat, hands folded tight in her lap, knuckles white. “So, you believed Archer.”
“I believed enough to move,” I say.
“You wanted to go with them,” she remarks, and I can’t tell if she’s surprised or relieved. I want to hope it’s the latter even though this is one of the few times I won’t be in the line of fire with them.
“Of course, I did. They’re my men. This is my call. But I know I’m not a hundred percent yet. I’m a…liability.” Speaking my brother’s word to describe me is bitter on my tongue. “If I were at least ninety percent, I would’ve gone.”
“You always go?” she asks. She says it like it’s obvious, like she’s already memorized the qualities of the man she thinks I am.
I let the corner of my mouth twitch. “You’ve known me a handful of days, hellcat. What do you think?”
“Yes, you do. You’re there when it matters.”
I nod my confirmation because she already has me all figured out. “But if I died in a warehouse in Kearny because my pride wanted to be useful, who would protect you from the consequences afterward?”
She shakes her head in denial. “Your brother…I would make him listen to me.”
“Just because you backed Gavriil down once doesn’t mean it will ever happen again.”
Alina refuses to accept that. I can see the doubt and stubbornness written on her face. A face that looks so young and na?ve it scares me. As if brushing that truth aside for now, she straightens her spine, finds the steel again. “They could be walking into a trap.”
My hands tighten on the desk. I hate that she’s right.
“They could,” I agree. “Which is why three cars full of men go instead of one, and why I choose a man who hates sloppiness as my second.”
“And if Popeye has more men than Archer thinks?”
“Then we’ll kill more men,” I say gently, because the truth doesn’t become less true if I sugarcoat it or whisper it to her.
Alina swallows. Her eyes are bright but dry. She’s made of stronger things than tears, and that… pleases me more than it should. It worries me as well.
“You’re still bleeding,” she says, her gaze sliding to the edge of my shirt where the bandage has printed a darker patch thanks to my movements. “You told Yelena you’d take it easy.”
“I didn’t promise Yelena anything,” I say. The truth is, if I inhale wrong, the wound snarls at me. The ache helps, though. It pins me to the chair when instinct wants me to jump up and run out the door.
Alina takes a step toward me and then stops herself. “Sit down,” she says. “Pacing around isn’t going to help your men, is it?”
I could refuse her. I don’t. I lower my ass into the chair behind the desk and let my body accept the gravity it’s been fighting since this morning. The relief is a small thing. I pretend it’s bigger for her.
Alina leaves the room and returns with the small kit from my room, setting it on the desk with a click. “Take your shirt off,” she orders.
“You’ll have to buy me dinner first,” I reply.