18. Chapter 18 #3
“I need the second front assigned,” I said.
“Not solved before lunch. Not magically erased because everyone in this room is powerful and attractive enough to develop unreasonable confidence.” Remy’s mouth twitched.
“Assigned. Owned. Reported. I need to know who is looking, what they are looking for, and that I will not be the only person keeping Lucian’s crimes from disappearing beneath vampire politics and arrogance. ”
Silence followed. Not resistance. Assessment.
Lucia moved.
She was seated to my left, close enough that I had been aware of her the entire time without quite admitting how much her presence steadied me. She set her mug down, reached across the small distance between us, and covered my hand with hers.
The gesture struck harder than I expected.
Lucia did not seem like a woman who touched casually.
Last night, she had taken my hands as a form of introduction, yes, but even that had been assessment wrapped around welcome.
This was different. Her palm rested over my knuckles, warm and firm.
Unarmored, or as close to unarmored as a Kozlov daughter in a room full of weapons could become.
“Leave finding evidence of his evil doing to me,” she said. “I am the most stealth of the Kozlovs. I have brought more than one man to his knees and to his death because of evidence I have gathered. But do not worry. The kill will be yours and yours alone, Grace Marlow.”
The words should have frightened me. Perhaps they did. But beneath that fear was something darker, steadier, and not entirely civilized.
My legal mind rose at once with objections. Jurisdiction. Due process. Evidence preservation. The distinction between vengeance and justice.
Then another part of me remembered Lucian in a chair beside a bed, smiling as if my captivity were an evening’s entertainment.
The two parts of me did not reconcile.
They simply sat beside each other, both true.
I looked at Lucia’s hand over mine. “I want evidence that can stand.”
“You shall have it.”
“I want the blood slaves found alive, if there are any left.”
Her expression did not change, but the air around her did. “So do I.”
“I want the people helping him identified. Not only guards. Money. Properties. Staff. Compelled humans if they can be recovered.”
Lucia’s mouth curved slightly. “Good. Specific wrath is more useful than broad fury.”
Doc leaned forward then, forearms on the table.
“What my cryptic wife was trying to tell you is that we will leave tonight and take some of my men and Remy and go on the hunt. Lucian thinks he has covered his tracks. That’s only because nobody has looked before.
We are now looking and we will not stop until we have the evidence to hold him and any associated with him.
You concentrate on Nikolay’s defense. We’ll bring Lucian to you. ”
His tone had changed completely.
The drawl remained, but warmth no longer did the work.
This was the measured cadence of a field commander.
Calm, because panic wasted oxygen. Plain because lives got lost inside elaborate phrasing.
I saw, suddenly, how a pack would follow him.
How wounded people would believe him when he said breathe.
How Lucia might have looked at him bleeding out and refused the universe’s terms.
Remy nodded once. “I will handle ward traces, property thresholds, hidden rooms, blood-triggered protections, and any sloppy little concealment spell Lucian’s people were foolish enough to think adequate.”
“Sloppy little concealment spell?” I asked.
Her smile was slow. “Cher, every spell is sloppy if I dislike the caster enough.”
Taras’s pen resumed moving. “I will coordinate records access, shell companies, and any financial history attached to properties in Phoenix and related territories.”
Maksym spoke last.
“Lucian will be at the hearing in Chicago,” he said.
I turned toward him.
His face was calm in the way deep winter water was calm. Beautiful only if you forgot what it could do to lungs.
“Front and center,” he continued, “because watching a Kozlov face charges is exactly what the man lives for.”
Nikolay’s expression remained composed, but the muscle in his jaw moved again.
Maksym’s gaze stayed on me.
“I personally cannot wait to see his face when he sees you. He’ll still think he has won because we won’t have come for him yet.
Let him think that. While he is in Chicago thinking he’s watching the end of Nikolay, Lucia, Doc, Remy, and the Iron Valor wolves will be hopefully freeing blood slaves, decimating his guards, and gathering all the evidence we need to end him for good. ”
The room held the statement without flinching.
Seeing Lucian again had lived in me as an abstract horror since Shad’s face had appeared on Bohdan’s screen.
I had imagined it in fragments because whole images were harder to survive.
His blond hair tied neatly back. His cruel smile.
The careful English accent that made degradation sound like etiquette.
The way he would look at me and try, even in a room full of kings, to remind me of the bed, the chains, the hunger.
Maksym was right. Lucian would think he had won.
If he saw me alive, restored, sitting with the Kozlovs, representing Nikolay, he would not immediately see defeat.
Men like Lucian could not comprehend losing access as anything but a temporary inconvenience.
He would calculate. Adjust. Smile. Decide there was still a way to make my survival serve his vanity.
Let him.
While he watched me, others would move through the places he had left unguarded because he had believed himself untouchable.
The thought settled into me with unexpected precision. Not peace. A weapon fitting into my hand.
I inhaled slowly.
My shoulders dropped a fraction.
“Thank you,” I said.
Only that.
Anything more would have broken the clean line of it. Gratitude did not need decoration when everyone in the room understood its cost.
Lucia withdrew her hand, but not abruptly.
Doc reached for his coffee again. Remy sat back as if a course had been plotted and now merely required the audacity to sail it.
Maksym’s knee brushed mine beneath the table.
Brief. Intentional. Not public enough to become a spectacle, not hidden enough for me to miss.
I fired up my laptop. The screen woke at once.
The heading stared back at me: NIKOLAY KOZLOV — COUNCIL HEARING — DEFENSE STRATEGY.
I took one of the beautiful pens from the leather portfolio, uncapped it, and set it beside the legal pad.
Then I looked down the table at Nikolay.
His amber eyes met mine. Warm, grave, tired beneath the composure. A mediator now forced to be a defendant. A prince whose fate might turn not only on facts, but on whether anyone in authority could stomach a wolf woman’s truth when it disrupted old prejudice.
“Since we have that front covered,” I said, “Nikolay, can you please call for Maddie to join us?”
The room changed again. Not much. Enough.
Nikolay’s face remained careful. Too careful.
I did not let him look away from the question.
“Everything,” I said quietly, “will likely hinge on her testimony.”