Chapter 3
ALEKSANDR
Why was she there? How could she have known? What kind of twisted timing puts her in that alley—that alley—at the exact moment I was about to pull the trigger?
It all happened too fast. Her voice—sharp, cutting through the air. Screaming no. The shot. The sirens, already closing in. The way I stored the gun, grabbed the takeout bags with one hand and her wrist with the other, and dragged her into the maintenance elevator before anyone could see her face.
I've dealt with panic before, this overwhelming need to make her stop rocking on the heels of her feet, and for her to tell me that despite all of this that she is not losing her mind. I have never had to deal with her seeing me in this position before.
She's standing across from me now, not saying a word, chewing her bottom lip raw and accumulating so many knots in my scarf I know I will drive myself mad trying to unknot them later.
It makes me want to walk across the elevator and pull that lip out from between her teeth.
Rub the worry from her forehead with my thumb.
Rewind the whole goddamn night until she's safe in her chair, feet curled beneath her, reading her book and too concerned with Tom and his Ballad to care about anything else in this world.
Instead, I stand here. Holding the food. Watching her twirl the edges of my scarf into little knots. And thinking about how I also want to throw her over my knee and turn that soft little ass red for putting herself in this position in the first place.
Who the fuck walks down a city alley alone at eleven o'clock at night?
She's small. Too small. All curves and softness and no fear. No backup. Just her stubborn little self with no clue what she almost walked into.
She devours horror novels like candy—has shelves full of them—but doesn't seem to grasp the most basic rule they all teach: don't go down the goddamn alley. Don't follow the sound, or save the stranger screaming for help.
Every single one of her books tells her to be selfish, and run, but she doesn't. Not from anything.
She infuriates me. Drives me to the edge of my restraint. Because she has no idea how dangerous this world is. She has no idea how close she comes, every time, to being pulled under.
And worse—she doesn't belong anywhere near it. Near me.
She is what's wrong with the entire universe, to be so bright and consuming like the sun, but being dragged to the darkest corners of the world at every turn.
How is she not sick of us? How has she not punished every single one of us for condemning her to this eternal despair she must endure from us?
This elevator is crawling upward floor by floor, slower than usual, and I feel every second like a countdown.
She's curled in on herself in the corner, hugging her arms and playing with the edge of my scarf, not meeting my eyes. She shifts her weight again, and clears her throat.
"There was an ice cream truck," she squeaks, her voice so terribly small it barely takes up the space around her.
"What?" I unfortunately bark.
She flinches at my tone, recoiling back against the metal wall. I force my shoulders to stay still, and my body to relax as much as I humanly can, when all I feel like doing is running up a wall.
"Outside. There was like an ice cream truck sitting outside the building and a woman came up to me--"
"What do you mean a woman came up to you?" I snarl.
She swallows. "She said her name was Dahlia. She started asking questions. About me entering the building so late. I didn't tell her anything—I brushed her off." Her voice trailing off at the end, just as the elevator dings for the 80th floor.
I don't move, because if she is saying what I think she is then the NYPD, or fucking worse, are watching us.
They were just outside, ready to move, and now their friend is dead in the alley with no communication to his cop friends that he is alive.
They are going to swarm this place in a matter of fucking seconds.
"Fuck," I say through gritted teeth and stalk over to the elevator shaft.
The metal gate groans under the force of my grip as I wrench it upward—the rusted track screeching in protest before snapping into place. I manually pull open the second inner door, and it gives way with a metallic thunk, revealing the pristine white corridor of the Petrov business headquarters.
Lily follows without a word, her boots squeaking against the polished floor, leaving tiny slush tracks behind her. Normally, the sound of dirt and meltwater being dragged across clean tile would set my teeth on edge. But not now. Not from her.
Her hands are clenched tightly around the scarf, shoulders hunched forward like she's trying to take up less space. She stares at the floor like it holds all the answers, or like she's afraid to look up and find something worse.
I guide her quickly but silently down the corridor with a firm hand between her shoulder blades, feeling how rigid she is beneath my palm. Instinctively my fingers knead gently, trying to ease it even a fraction. The food bags swing and crackle softly at my side with each measured step.
Every second feels like it ticks too fast.
We need to scrub the security footage. We need to pull the building feeds, override the camera logs, and get the fuck out before someone puts two and two together.
But there isn't enough time. We don't know how much they already have.
If they were watching us before, then they might already be in the building. If we stall, we're dead.
As we round the hallway I see the conference room has emptied in the last half an hour.
Nikolai and Nadia are hunched over the table together deep in discussion while the rest of the room is left in an obscene disarray with the chairs around the massive black marble table being pulled out and left scattered across the room, accompanied by half drunken cups of cappuccino and espresso respectively.
The Polish mafia must have left in a hurry—clearing out the moment they realized what they had done, that their unanimous decision to turn over Jakub, formerly known as Officer Lyon, wasn't just a betrayal of blood but a death sentence for all of us.
For four years, a fucking cop had sat at their table, listened to their secrets, and worn their crest. A decade-long operation, hidden under the guise of loyalty and family, unraveled in the span of one night.
The late Tomasz, their former head, must have thought finding his long-lost nephew was a miracle—his dying wish fulfilled, a bloodline preserved—but all of that faith led to this humiliation.
The kind of shame they won't recover from, not once word spreads through the city's underground. Their reputation is finished.
And the Italians? They vanished just as fast. Dante Romano, the smug bastard, has always had a sixth sense for impending disaster and decided to disappear before the storm hit.
From the look on Nadia's exhausted face, it's obvious this meeting was already a disaster long before I walked in with Jakub's real identity. The original purpose—solidifying new allies for the Bratva—had already begun to unravel.
Ever since the Yakuza publicly denounced us and others followed suit, threatening our existence, we've been spiraling.
The shift in leadership from a man—Nikolai—to a woman—Nadia—has unsettled more than just our enemies.
No new alliances have formed. No one wants to back a syndicate that looks unstable from the outside.
And now, after tonight, that talking point has all but been abandoned.
Which means this meeting wasn't just unproductive. It was a fucking failure. And we are in deeper shit than we can afford to be right now.
Only Nikolai and Nadia remain in the conference room, speaking in low, tense voices at the head of the table.
Nadia leans against the glass wall, arms crossed tightly over her chest, her brows drawn into a sharp line of frustration.
Nikolai sits in a chair across from her, elbows on his knees, rubbing a hand over his face like it's the only thing keeping him from exploding.
He mutters something under his breath—too quiet for me to hear—but whatever it is, it makes Nadia shake her head slowly.
I stop just before opening the door, my hand still on the keypad. Behind me, Lily walks straight into my back and lets out a soft, startled "Ow."
I glance back at her, my jaw tightening. "I need you to clear out your desk like you weren't here," I direct.
She rubs her nose. Her hair is frizzy and a little messy at the top from when she took off my hat, and her glasses are still foggy around the edges, as she squeaks out a response.
"They already know I am here. That doesn't make much of a--"
"Lily," I snap, my eyes narrowing on the pink flush of her nose. "You need to listen, not argue right now."
"I am not," She huffs, pulling her glasses off of her face and avoiding her hazel gaze from mine. "I'm just-"
"You are giving me a lot of back talk when I need you to move." I shift the bags in my hands, and nod my head towards her desk. "Now, pack up your desk."
I don't give her any chance to further argue as I push the conference doors open and immediately place the food on the table.
Nadia and Nikolia's heads both snap to me when I enter, but Nadia's eyes follow Lily outside the conference room.
Watching as Lily insistently mutters to herself and quickly packs up her desk.
"You sent Lily home?" Nadia questions, her eyes narrowing on me, because the one thing my sister hates more than anything is her brother's controlling anything, but especially Lily.
"We have a problem," I say, clearing my throat as I rip open the take out bag, the smell of Miss Ming's food invades the space so deliciously my mouth waters in hunger I didn't realize I had.
Nadia's eyes flick immediately to Lily again. She straightens, kicking herself off the wall. "What happened?"