Chapter Fifteen
Dmitri Konstantinov
Some things were worth investigating simply because they refused to leave you alone.
I didn’t have a reason to dig into Inna’s family beyond what was useful to me.
Iker was the target, and that was supposed to be the beginning and end of my interest. But the more I pulled on her father’s case, the harder it became to put back down.
Her father was a ghost of a man who lived on the island. He never built friendships or held conversations longer than it needed to be. He moved through his days as if being noticed was a risk he couldn’t afford.
Akim spent considerable time pulling some footage. The records were scrubbed, not carelessly but deliberately. Akim reached into cloud backups and pulled fragments out piece by piece, reconstructing a picture from what was left behind.
Someone wanted this family erased. Not just the father. The whole family.
And here I was, sitting in my office like I had nothing better to do, watching fragments of a man’s ordinary days on a screen.
I had an empire to run and a trap to finish closing around Iker, but he hadn’t moved yet.
Men like Iker didn’t sit on a provocation.
You scratched them, and they reacted. I scratched him at the auction, and he smiled and walked away.
That wasn’t restraint. He was most certainly building something.
A knock came at the door, and I answered without looking up.
If it was Akim, it meant Inna was back from shopping. That meant it was closer to dinner with the governor’s family.
I checked my watch—four o’clock.
“Hi.”
I looked up when the voice came.
Malia stood in the doorway. She always carried herself the same way, like she rehearsed how to show up on my face.
She was the woman men described as perfect without being able to explain what they meant.
Her obedience felt more like grace rather than submission, always calm and smiling.
She wore it so often, I stopped trying to tell whether it was genuine or simply load-bearing.
I paused the footage on my laptop. “What are you doing here?”
She walked in and stopped by my table. “May I sit?”
She always asked. I pointed toward the chair, and she settled into it, smoothing her satin dress. The neckline cut a V at her chest, and I caught myself comparing everything to Inna.
Malia was blonde, her hair thick enough to wrap a fist through at least twice.
Every woman I ever took to bed had long hair.
And then Inna walked in with her short hair and somehow made that feel like my only preference I didn’t know yet.
That was the problem. I touched her and didn’t finish what I started.
And my brain already appointed her as the reference point for everything.
The night after she offered herself to me, I ended up in my office and tortured myself with control. That only happened when you played games you designed yourself.
The only way through it was to fuck her out of my system and move on. That was how I played, and that would happen soon.
“I left home early to do something before dinner,” Malia said.
“In my office?” I asked, bringing myself back to the room.
She shifted. “No, no. I was meeting a friend nearby and finished earlier than expected. I thought we could go to dinner together.”
She wanted this wedding. Most people would, if it came with my name attached to it. She showed interest from the beginning, and she was good at it. Only that she didn’t know what this dinner was actually for.
“And you thought that was a good idea?” I pushed my chair back and stood.
“If it’s fine with you, yes.” She turned in her seat as I moved toward the liquor table. “How was the auction yesterday?”
I poured a measure of drink and looked out the window. Malia was still talking. I stopped absorbing it somewhere between the second sentence and the window.
The problem was Inna. Not in the way problems usually present themselves.
It was more like her getting under your skin without announcing herself.
In just a handful of days, she became more interesting than most people I know.
She argued, schemed, and made sinful offers while still shaking.
She was chaotic, wearing confidence, but scared on the inside.
Malia would never compare to her.
Speaking of Inna, she should have been back by now. She needed to get ready for dinner.
“Are you alright? You seem off today.”
I turned. Malia was already close to me. She was watching me with careful attention.
“Go ahead,” I said. “I’ll follow shortly.”
“We still have time.” She held my gaze for a moment, searching for my approval, but got none and nodded. “Okay. I’ll see you in an hour.”
She left the room.
My phone vibrated, and I pulled it out expecting Akim, but the screen read wife.
I looked at it for a second longer. She was supposed to be getting ready and doing whatever she was told. But seeing her call, that small fucking fact did something to my mood that I chose not to examine too carefully.
I answered. “Wife.” I took a sip from my glass.
We left things charged. She asked for something I could have ignored, but I was already looking into it. So what was this? The curiosity as to why she was calling was killing me.
I checked the screen. The line was open, but she wasn’t speaking.
“Inna, darling.” I returned to the table. “You didn’t call just to breathe at me, did you?”
A male cleared their throat on the other end, and I became more alert.
“I have the right person.” The deep voice came, and everything in me went still.
I pulled the phone from my ear and looked at the screen again just to confirm I was connected to my wife’s number.
The door opened without a knock, and I looked up. Akim walked in with his laptop already open. The signal he used for emergencies was on his face. I read it in a second.
Inna was in trouble.
“I see.” Akim was already working. “I’m curious. How do you have my wife’s phone?”
The man on the line chuckled. “Let’s call it magic. Though it took some time to know what your number is, because she has you saved as Psycho.” He laughed. “Can you imagine? This girl is something, isn’t she?”
Akim turned the laptop screen toward me. There was a signal, a location already pulling into focus. Akim wrote down a message so fast, telling me the man worked for Iker.
“She is,” I said, studying the screen. “You must be wondering why I married her. I like interesting women.”
“You can fool anyone else but not me,” he said, “There’s something you need from her. I want to know what it is.”
My jaw ticked once. So Iker didn’t approach me after the auction. He chose to take her instead. This meant he planned this after the auction, to see if Inna was really my wife.
I admired that, and I also intended to make him regret it.
“Let’s skip the introduction,” I said, grabbing my motorcycle keys. “What do you want?”
“Now we’re talking.” He cleared his throat again. “It’s simple. I want the boy.”
I let out a short laugh, just enough for him to hear it. He wanted Cole? “And what makes you think I’d hand him over?”
“I’m serious,” he said. “Two hours. I’ll send the location. You bring him, I give you the girl.”
So Cole was the target all this time?
“Two hours?” I was already walking to the door.
“Mess this up, and she dies.”
“What’s interesting is that you think I will let you have my wife for two hours.” I stepped into the elevator. “I enjoy a good game. Do you?”
“You think this is a joke?”
“Isn’t it?” The doors closed. “Here is what happens. You touched my wife. So in seven minutes I will touch you, and you will feel it somewhere in your bones.”
I hung up and turned to Akim. “Update.”
“Same location. He hasn’t moved.”
There was one thing people who underestimated me consistently failed to understand.
The fact that I would discard Inna after a while didn’t mean she was unclaimed.
She was mine until I decided otherwise, and I made people bleed for touching what was mine.
That never changed, and it was not changing tonight.
He took my wife. That sat wrong. I got onto my bike and rode off.
“Let me introduce myself.” I pulled my gloves tighter at the wrist and stepped closer to where the bastard was crawling across the floor, leaving a dark smear behind him. “I’m Dmitri. Dmitri Konstantinov. In case whoever sent you forgot to mention who you were walking into.”
He hit the wall and stopped, chest heaving. He tipped his head back to check the window above him. I watched him do the math on it as if he could escape.
“Your turn,” I said, checking the remaining bullets in my gun.
I already used four bullets on the men who were stationed around the house.
I shoved the gun on my back and reached for the knife instead.
One bullet was enough to end him, but I loved to make them suffer first. “I’d hate for you to just sit there. ”
He looked up at me, fingers pressing flat against the floor. “I only wanted the boy.”
“You said that already.” I crouched in front of him, resting my forearm across my knee. “What you haven’t said is who you are. Don’t be boring. We’re just getting acquainted.”
“You won’t kill me.”
“I absolutely will.” I unfolded the knife and drove it into his thigh in one clean movement.
He screamed as his hand flew to the handle, clutching at it while blood soaked through his trousers in a widening stain.
“Introduce yourself.”
“Fuck off,” he spat through his teeth, hands still clutching the knife, trying to pull it.
“You think I don’t know you.” I pulled the knife out, and he dragged a ragged grunt from somewhere deep in his chest. “Walter Klus, forty-eight years old. You have a wife and a daughter. Does your daughter know what you do?”
“I’m just working…”
I stabbed his other thigh before he finished the sentence. His head slammed back against the wall, and he cried.
“He will kill you,” Walter managed.
“Oh.” I straightened and pulled out my phone. “I’m ready to die. The question is whether you are.” I dialed Ivan, who was already at Walter’s home. “Kill his wife.” I declared and hung up.
The color left Walker’s face entirely. “What was that? You didn’t, you didn’t actually…”
“Your daughter is beautiful. College age, from what I can see. But her father won’t be around for it.”
“No. No, please.” He tried to push himself up, and the pain folded him back down. “I’ll talk. Don’t touch my family.”
“Good. What does he want with the boy?”
“I don’t know, I was just given the job.” His words came fast now, tripping over each other. “I don’t know who the boss is. The man who assigns us is called Gunter. He contacts us, gives us the target, that’s all I know, I swear that’s all.”
“Where do I find Gunter?”
“We meet in different places when there’s a job. It’s random. I never know until he calls. Please, man, my family…”
I gripped the knife and pulled it out clean. So Gunter ran the street work. He reported to Iker. Taking Gunter apart would send a message to Iker that didn’t need a signature.
“Describe him.”
“Tall. He’s tall and—” Walter pressed his eyes shut for a second, pulling himself together through the pain. “He has a butterfly tattoo on his neck.”
“Butterfly,” I repeated, wiping the blade against his shirt. “Interesting.”
He looked up at me, something desperate moving through his face. “Spare my family and me. I only do this for money, that’s all this is, please.”
“The problem is that,” I raised the gun, “you touched what’s mine.”
He scrambled backward, the fear doing what it did on a man’s face when he finally understood the room he was in. “I only knocked her out. She should already be coming around or will be soon.”
I smiled. “So you’re the one who knocked my wife out.” I pulled the trigger. The bullet went between his eyes, and his body dropped.
I stepped back and pulled a cigar.
Killing Walter didn’t satisfy me. Gunter was the problem; he was close to Iker. And Iker chose to come at me sideways instead of walking through the front door like a man with actual confidence.
All he needed to do was approach me and make a deal. He wanted Inna and her family, and I needed Zachary. But he decided to come at me with his chest out, which told me he didn’t know I was already a step ahead.
He didn’t know I knew it was him. So we would play. I would let it run as long as it needed to run. Inna would stay as my wife until I got what I wanted or until I burned his entire operation to the ground. Both were options I was comfortable with.
My phone rang. I dropped the cigar and crushed it out under my shoe. Walking out of the room, I answered Akim.
“What?”
“There is a black Nissan across the street. Someone is watching.” Akim reported.
My men were already moving through the house, cleaning the mess. I walked past them to the car they brought and opened the door.
The houses in the neighborhood sat close together, worn at the edges, a place where poverty described them easily.
I slid into the driver’s seat and looked at Inna in the passenger seat. She was fast asleep.
My eyes moved and found the car, the window slid up just a fraction too late.
“Track it. I have dinner to get to.”
“Yes, boss.”
“I want the motorcycle at the mansion.” I started the engine and drove off. “And find me Gunter’s location. I’ll need it tonight.”
After the dinner, Gunter was next. Iker needed to feel something before the night was over.
I glanced at Inna again. She was still wearing the dress she was trying on when they took her. My grip tightened on the wheel as I sped up.
A year ago, if anyone asked me to name the weakest man I knew, I would have said Rodion. I remembered the day I pressed a gun to his wife’s head and watched a man who never bent for anyone in his life bend right in front of me. I pitied him that day, yet here I was, acting as if I were possessed.
The plan was simple: let Iker come for Inna, then use her as the exchange point to get to Zachary. Nothing personal.
Except I was sitting here with my jaw tight because someone touched a woman I kept telling myself was temporary. The feeling wasn’t of a man running a clean operation.
There was this specific disorder that Inna introduced into every calculation I made. Nothing moved the way I planned it when she was anywhere inside the equation.
I stopped the car on the private road leading up to my beach mansion. The ocean stretched as the sun dropped into it, orange bleeding into the water at the horizon line.
I got out and pulled another cigar. Leaning against the car, I smoked, giving my wife time to get the sleep she needed.