Chapter 24
Alina
The penthouse feels less like a home and more like an expensive trap the longer I pace around it without Dominik.
I can’t see them, but occasionally I hear the two guards in the hallway keeping watch.
At this point, I’m pretty sure they know I matter to their boss. I’m not just a hostage or a flight risk anymore; I’m someone they’re supposed to keep breathing.
But I doubt they’ll protect me from his brother. I don’t think anyone but Dominik can, and I have no idea how much power he really has over Gavriil. I’m sure his men would stand by him in any other circumstance, though.
Dominik told me to eat when he left. I pushed eggs around a plate until the yolks went cold and then threw them in the trash.
Unable to stay still, I straighten the throw blanket on the sofa for the third time, folding the corner down precisely as if that’s important. I stand at the window and count the red cranes along the river.
When the elevator dings, I somehow know it’s not Dominik. I can feel the tension in the guard’s soft, terse words through the door before it unlocks and swings open with authority.
I know who it is before I see him fully.
If Dominik is violence in a suit, then his brother is like gravity that decided to dress to impress.
He fills the doorway wearing a dark suit that looks like it costs more than I make in a year at the hotel, his handsome face a blank mask.
The last time I saw him alone, Dominik was sleeping, recovering, and I was too worried about him to be afraid.
But at least he was nearby. Now, he’s not home, not here for me to stand behind him the way I despised before, and fear fills me.
“Miss Kent,” Gavriil says, and the honorific is either courtesy or the first stab of a knife.
When he goes to close the door, the guards shift forward as if on instinct.
He doesn’t look at them, but I can feel the order anyway as he shuts the door in their faces—stand down, stay out there, you work for me, not my brother.
Gavriil walks past me, close enough that the sleeve of his suit grazes my arm. It isn’t a touch, not really, but my body reacts like it is. Heat shoots under my skin before I can stop it, and I hate my body for that.
He pauses. Just half a second. Long enough to feel like he noticed it too.
“Where are my roses?” he asks as he glances around the room.
“Trash bin,” I answer. His jaw ticks. I should feel smug not guilty about tossing out his gift, but I’ve never received flowers before. The first ones I get just had to come from a ruthless mobster and were apparently meant as an omen of my death. Or my brother’s.
My mouth goes dry as we stand there facing off after that truth, all alone in the penthouse since the guards were too chicken-shit to follow him inside.
“Dominik’s not here,” I blurt out before I can stop myself. It sounds both like a warning and an invitation, and I’m annoyed that it can even be both. “He should be back any second,” I add, and the lie tastes like acid. I have no idea where he is or how much longer he’ll be out.
“Yes, of course,” Gavriil replies sarcastically as if he tastes my lie.
“You should give him a call,” I say because I know being alone with the Pakhan is not a good idea. I don’t know what all he’s truly capable of, and I’d rather not find out all on my own.
“Ah. I would, but Dominik has decided to ignore my calls today.” His gaze takes in the room; nothing is admired, everything is assessed. When his eyes land on me again, they rest there, and lines of chill bumps raise along my arms.
“What do you want?” My voice is steadier than the rest of me, which is shaking on the inside.
“A conversation with you,” he says. His jaw tightens, not like a man issuing orders, but like one stopping himself from saying something he shouldn’t. “A short one.” He moves closer, slowly, like an animal polite enough to ask permission before it eats you alive. “I wondered about something.”
“Wondered,” I echo, because the word coming from his mouth feels wrong. He doesn’t seem like the type of man to waste time wondering about anything.
“Yes, about whether my brother’s poor judgment lately is a choice,” he says, “or a sickness he can’t see.”
Anger flares, quick and useful. He means me. I’m the poor judgment he’s talking about. “You should ask him that.”
“I did,” he says. “He told me to judge him by his results.” A sliver of a smile touches his mouth and dies there. “He’s been taking his time.”
“He’s been working on getting all the guns and money while suffering from a gunshot wound. He’ll meet your deadline,” I say in a rush. He doesn’t get to criticize Dominik behind his back when he’s the one making things unnecessarily difficult for him.
Gavriil studies me like he can see through me, underneath my skin. “Do you really believe that?” he asks, curious and cruel. “Or do you need me to believe you do?”
Both. Neither. “Dom…he doesn’t make promises he can’t keep.”
“Dom,” he repeats, mocking the way I say the shortened version of his name.
He steps into my space, his cologne becoming all-too familiar.
“Dom promised me one week. In that week I have received a shooting, a public mess, a hole in him, barely half of my stolen guns, and a sad sack of money he did not deliver himself, but not you.”
The last word is soft and dangerous. I try not to move.
“I didn’t ask to be here,” I say.
“No,” he agrees. “You were taken because you were to be leverage.” His eyes hold mine with a steadiness that makes me want to blink and not give him the satisfaction. “But leverage becomes liability when the person holding it grows attached. You see my problem here.”
Heat floods my face so fast it feels like a betrayal. “He’s not—”
“Attached?” His brows lift by a hair. “My brother, who never refuses me anything, refuses to hand you over when I ask. He places you behind his body when I enter a room. He threatens men whose names he will need tomorrow because their eyes linger on your pretty mouth.” His gaze flicks to my lips and then back to my eyes, a scythe disguised as a glance.
“If that is not ‘attachment,’ then my English translation has clearly failed me.”
The floor pitches like an elevator starting too hard. I swallow. “What do you want me to say, Gavriil?”
He smiles again, not kindly when I use his name. “Nothing. I just want you to listen.” He tilts his head; this close, I see the small scar near his temple, a pale line that reminds me he’s not perfect after all. “You can end all this.”
I stare. “End… what?”
“The week,” he says. “The pressure. The dangers of a man trying to protect too many things at once.” He takes one slow step closer.
If I leaned forward an inch, my shirt would brush his jacket.
My throat locks. He wants me to cower, to back down.
I don’t. “Walk out the door with me now. Willingly. No scene. No shouting. You give Dominik back his focus. I tell our people that his judgment is intact. I call off certain debts. I keep your brother alive and well. I can do all this with a single word.” He holds my gaze so long my pulse feels like it has to ask permission to continue.
“All I require is another word. From you.”
No. It forms. It struggles. It runs straight into the memory of Archer’s voice the last time we spoke—thin, scraped, trying to be brave knowing he’ll never come up with the full amount of money he stole.
It collides with the knowledge that Dominik is still bleeding from a gunshot wound because my brother betrayed him twice.
“You’re lying,” I say, and the line sounds childish even to me. “You can’t guarantee any of that.”
He shrugs one shoulder, elegant, controlled.
He may look too polished to be violent, but the slight weight in his suit jacket says otherwise.
A gun is nestled inside, close enough to draw without thinking.
“Very little in our world is guaranteed,” he replies.
“But my will, Alina, is a strong substitute.”
“You’ll keep Archer alive? Unharmed in any way?” The question escapes me, a soft thing I didn’t authorize.
“Yes. For a time,” he says, and I hate him for the honesty. “A probationary window where he can earn his freedom. A mercy only your surrender buys him now that we know he’s been betraying us for five, maybe six months.”
The room feels like it suddenly shrinks, and everything in it has moved closer, especially the walls.
“Wh-what do you mean Archer betrayed you for months?”
“Didn’t my brother tell you?” he asks, like he already knows the answer. “The biker rat spilled all the gang’s secrets, including that the leader has been meeting at a bar with Archer every Tuesday for five or six months to screw us over.”
Five or six months. The number hits harder than any punch. While I was worrying about rent and long shifts at the hotel, Archer was busy betraying the mafia behind my back.
A sharp jab of shock pierces my heart, and my eyes uncontrollably widen. “Dom…he knows about this?”
“He pulled it from the biker himself. I’m surprised that he didn’t tell you,” Gavriil states in a voice that says he’s not the least bit surprised because he knows his brother better than I ever will. “Why do you think Dominik would keep such important information from you?”
Because despite his promises to me, Dominik knows Archer won’t be allowed to live now that his betrayal is deeper than the Bratva knew. It’ll be Gavriil’s call, completely out of Dominik’s hands now.
As if it were ever really in his hands…
My throat tightens as my eyes threaten to sting. Archer didn’t just make one mistake. He’s been at this for months now! Not only putting his life on the line but mine too.
How could he not realize that this was going to come back and bite him in the ass, eventually? Is he that cocky or just stupid?
And what am I to him anymore? Because I don’t feel like his little sister that he would do anything to protect.