Chapter 23
Kirill
Motionless, I watch Jordan sleep beside me. Her body, which radiates with steady heat, fits into the curve of my arm.
Sunlight slips down outside the window, dragging gold across the walls, making this hotel room appear almost royal.
This should feel like victory. Mission progression.
Instead, my head spins out, rewinding and picking at the last several hours. I can’t ignore the fact that I don’t know what to do with her.
Her soft breath ghosts across my chest. Her hair trails over the pillow. She’s spent. I did that, and remembering how I broke her down shoots an electric jolt through my body.
If this were just about sex, the situation would be simple, but she’s tangled me up in knots, and now I can’t get loose.
Nor can I stop thinking about the way she lied to that detective for me.
Or the glint in her eyes when she said I was what she’d wished for.
The utter truth of her body beneath mine.
My name on her lips. Her reaction when I said her name.
As if no one has ever said it before.
I aim my blank-eyed stare at the ceiling while running the numbers. Nothing about this job, which once seemed so clear—gather evidence for Roman and adhere to my own personal code by neutralizing the mark—lines up anymore.
I haven’t completed either objective, and Roman doesn’t tolerate excuses. Not from anyone, and especially not from me.
I cringe. I might as well be Kolya at this point.
Worse, even.
At least when he got hooked on that teacher, he didn’t blow up an entire operation.
I’ve seen Roman’s reaction when one of his own goes soft. The disgust and disappointment on his features before he writes them off like they’re not even worth the trouble of disposal.
I’ve never failed him before. Not once.
Jordan appears smaller when she’s asleep, revealing no hint of the force that could topple an empire. But according to Roman, she’s the key. She has intel. She’s tied to whatever’s in her father’s safe, to 237, and what happened on that island fifteen years ago. She must be.
But what if she’s not? What if she’s honestly in the dark?
My stomach clenches. I’ve stripped her life bare, torn everything open, and uncovered nothing.
“Safety-237” and “Insurance” could really mean anything.
Perhaps those clues refer to a storage box, system file, locker, or the string of numbers on a door.
Unfortunately, I’m running out of options and time to figure this out.
And that’s the truth that really sticks.
I’m going to fail. For the first time, I won’t deliver what Roman needs. That thought makes my skin crawl.
Easing away from Jordan, I cross the space to the bathroom. The light clicks on, spotlighting everything I’m trying not to see. I stare into the mirror and find that I don’t look the way I should. My face is softer around the edges.
I splash cold water over my cheeks while reminding myself of what’s important.
The job.
That’s what matters.
The water’s still running when I hear her.
“My father was investigating a mafia meeting.”
I go still, my hands dripping over the sink. “What?”
Her voice floats into the bathroom. “Fifteen years ago, he was on Isla de Huesos during a mafia meeting. He’d heard rumors, I guess.”
I turn off the tap and pad over to the doorway.
She’s sitting up in bed with the sheet pulled high, her eyes clear and all trace of sleep gone.
“He died there. Brutally, apparently.” The words come steady. “Burned up. Or shot, then burned. Mom and I never got the full answer. Not enough left to say for sure. I was ten.”
I recline against the wall and listen, hoping she’ll reveal some useful information. She’s never talked about her father before, and I just need one clue.
“I was close to him.” Her fingers trace idle patterns over the sheet.
“He called me the Watson to his Sherlock. Showed me how to see between the lines, how to find the hidden thing inside the lie. We had codes. Notes at breakfast, secret games while my mom wasn’t paying attention. They always meant something.”
This version of Jordan is soft. Quiet.
Like another wall has crumbled.
And I didn’t try to pull this one down. At least not on purpose.
I’ll take the unintentional win anyway.
Internally, I insist it’s because I’ll get the intel I need for Roman out of her.
Underneath that lie, I know I just want to hear more about her.
She smiles and pulls her knees to her chest. “Mom hated all of it. She hated the secrets, the danger, the phone calls at night. The way he’d disappear for days to chase a lead.” Her voice chills like shards of ice on the water. “Hated that he looked at me like I was the only thing that mattered.”
I don’t say anything. Just wait.
“I think Mom was relieved when he died.” No mystic lilt threads through these words.
She states them in a flat and empty tone she’s never used in her podcast. “Not happy. Not glad. Just…relieved. Like she’d finally released the breath she’d been holding all those years.
Knowing the worst had happened…that she had nothing left to dread. ”
Outside, the sun nearly finishes falling beneath the horizon. Long shadows stretch across the bed, climbing up her bare shoulders and transforming the room into the color of an old bruise.
“He lived for his work. And much of his work was stored in his safe.” She watches me, reading every twitch of my face, every slip. “Savlite. Model number 237.”
A spike of adrenaline pierces my chest. My whole body goes cold, and my skin fizzes with recognition. “Safety-237.”
She nods with finality.
The details slam into place. “You knew all along.”
She hesitates, just for a second before offering another tiny nod.
She gives no apology, shows no fear.
Everything inside me contracts.
Of course she knew.
She spun me in circles, day after day, obscuring her secrets in plain sight, using confusion and that New Age fog to slow me down while she calculated her next move.
I should be furious. The revelation of her playing me like this should drive me to put my fist through a wall.
But this wave surging inside me is nothing like anger.
Instead, respect burns through my muscles.
Respect for the woman who matched me and never gave up the game. For the metal under her skin, her razor-sharp mind, and her will to outlast anything I threw at her.
On the surface, she’s slick, shiny silk. Underneath, she’s steel, burnished and honed to a blade’s edge.
I shuffle to the bed, sit on the edge, and gape.
When she glances back up, she’s someone else. She’s no longer the woman who talked to her used, battered laptop or the vague, wayward believer who dealt in her crystals and smoke.
Now she’s someone new and alive. Someone dangerous.
Our eyes meet.
She doesn’t blink. “Hello.”
With one word, my old impressions dissolve into ash as the truth punches me.
For the first time, I’m experiencing a greeting from the real Jordan.
She manipulated me. She won. And she survived.
I slide my hand to her neck, reel her in, and kiss her.
Not with demanding hunger. Not to own.
Just to know her.
To learn what her mouth tastes like when she’s not pretending, when it’s just her and no lies between us. My hand follows the line of her throat, where her pulse beats steady.
She’s not prey… She’s my equal.
Desire floods through me. I don’t want to take her. I mean, I do, but not now.
No, this desire is more than that.
I want to truly—fully—make her mine.
But that will have to wait.
When we part, I lean back, my mind spinning. “So, where is it?”
“At my mother’s home.” She utters the answer like a curse. “Her estate. A prison.”
Of course. The safe is with Jordan’s mother.
I have so many questions running through my head.
No time to dive into them now, though.
My attention narrows to the present. In my mind, I start mapping the estate grounds, guards, and cameras. “So, we go in—”
“You can’t.” The words are flat. Final. “There’s no way in. It’s impossible.”
I raise an eyebrow in disbelief.
“My mother’s husband is a tech millionaire who has the house wired to the teeth. Motion sensors, cameras, armed security. Everything.” She huffs out a humorless laugh. “You can try to infiltrate, but you’ll fail. Spectacularly.”
Adrenaline surges through me. While she’s brilliant, she’s also infuriating. “So, you call your mom—”
Jordan shakes her head, a flush of rage and pain twisting her mouth. “I haven’t spoken to her in nine years. Not since she tried to erase my dad from my life. I lived under a bridge rather than her house.”
The story from before comes back in sharper focus. Jordan at sixteen, homeless, starving, and trading safety for freedom.
“After my dad died, my mom stopped pretending. She remarried in less than a year. A rich tech guy obsessed with security. And suddenly, there were all these new rules.”
Money comes with rules. That makes sense.
Her hands grip the sheets. “Prep schools. Uniforms. Etiquette lessons. Private security. Everything fake and scrubbed clean. She threw my dad’s clothes away like he never mattered. Said it was for me. That I needed to move on. Become someone else.”
I can picture that. The daughter, her father’s shadow, suddenly alone in a museum of perfection, every trace of love boxed up and thrown away.
No wonder she bolted.
Jordan remains stiff and upright on the bed.
“I ran away a lot. The first time I lasted three days. The second, five. Then two weeks. By the time I was sixteen, I knew the streets. Learned how to vanish. Where to find food and which shelters would look the other way. Then I found…the spiritual stuff. Auras. Energy. A way to assign logic to the world. To prove that everything made sense if you just believed hard enough.”
Dense, suffocating silence stretches between us.
I don’t know what to say.
When I lost my mother, Roman took me in and gave me a family. Even if I work alone more often than not, I’ve had somewhere to go and people at my back for most of my life.
What did Jordan have?
A dead father, a closed-off mother, and no one to depend on but herself.
My fingers twitch with a foreign sensation. I should reach for her. I should…comfort her.
She wraps her arms around her body and curls into herself. “That’s it. The whole truth. No leverage. No secret plan. Just a safe I don’t have access to, if it even still exists. I can’t help you. I guess, in the end, I wasn’t worth a whole lot.”
There’s no protocol for this. No manual for how to respond when your target burns herself down to the bone and shows you every crack, every scar.
I can’t fix what’s broken or give her back what she lost. I can’t erase her mother’s apathy or her father’s ghost.
But I can do something.
I lift myself up, grab my phone, and call Evgeni, the errand boy who handles my requests.
“It’s me. I need a reservation at Lighthouse.
Best table. Thirty minutes.” I bulldoze over the objections from the other end.
“I don’t care. Tell them it’s for Roman Kozlov.
” I cut off more pushback. “Buy the restaurant if you have to. Table. Now.”
I hang up before he can protest, certain he’ll come through.
Jordan stares at me, wariness and confusion battling in her eyes.
“Get dressed. We’re going to dinner.”