20. BRAXTON
Chapter twenty
T he night had stretched into early morning. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since Daria was taken, but it felt like an eternity—each minute dragging by hellishly slowly. The scent of coffee wafted through the house, mixing with a cloud of cigarette smoke—a vice Nik occasionally indulged in when he was deep in a job, he’d explained. I’d been spending most of my time with my elbows braced on my knees, my entire body humming with tension. My vision blurred at the edges from lack of sleep, but there was no chance in hell I was leaving this room.
Not until we had something.
“You always have access to this much classified intel?” I asked, my voice coming out rough due to the exhaustion that had settled into my bones.
Nik didn’t look up. “Always.”
I frowned. “And nobody’s caught on?”
His lips curled slightly, amusement flickering across his face even as he remained focused on his work. “Sometimes they know someone is in their systems. They just don’t know it’s me.” He cracked his neck. “And even if they did, there’s not a government on the planet that could catch me.”
Jesus.
I dragged my hands down my thighs, inhaling deeply as Nik continued running Daria’s data through multiple systems across Russia. Another program running simultaneously decrypted intercepted communications from the FSB and Bratva networks.
We had to find her.
Every second that passed was another she spent in hell.
That afternoon, a unique beep from one of the programs snapped me to attention.
Nik’s gaze narrowed as he scanned the flagged data packet.
“She was taken directly to Krestovskaya. This confirms it,” he muttered.
My stomach twisted.
I could still see the inside of that goddamn prison. Feel the cold concrete beneath my knees. Hear the taunts of the guards.
Daria had saved me from that place.
Now she’d been dragged back into it as a prisoner.
I pushed forward in my chair. “Is she still there?”
Nik’s eyes flicked between lines of encrypted text, and his brows drew together. His fingers stilled for a fraction of a second—just long enough for my gut to tell me something was wrong.
“She’s gone,” he said. “They moved her.”
A slow burn started in my chest, crawling up my throat like gasoline ready to ignite.
“To where?” I demanded.
Nik’s jaw flexed, tension rippling through him as he continued to work.
“That’s what I’m finding out,” he snapped.
Nik wasn’t just hacking—he was activating his entire network: a web of embedded informants, black-market smugglers, corrupt border agents, off-the-books mercenaries, and former intelligence officers who owed him favors. The kind of people who answered without hesitation, no matter the hour or the cost.
He fired off messages, and after a few minutes, his expression sharpened as he opened an email.
I arched my brow. “Who’s that message from?”
“Ares,” he muttered. “High-level hacker in Moscow. If anyone can dig up classified transport records, it’s him.”
I exhaled sharply. “Someone has to be talking about where they’re moving her.”
Nik smirked. “I’m already on it. I’ll tap diplomatic chatter too. The Russian higher-ups don’t like to move high-value prisoners without covering their asses politically.”
His fingers slammed against the keyboard as he started pulling real-time data from Russian military servers, scanning for any mention of prisoner transfers.
Neither of us spoke.
The only sound in the room was the rhythmic tapping of keys and the quiet hum of servers working in overdrive.
Nik didn’t look away from his screen, but after about an hour of this, his voice cut through the hum.
“Go shower, Thorin.”
I scowled. “What?”
“You smell like a goddamn corpse.” He finally glanced at me. “Get clean. Get a couple of hours of sleep. By the time you wake up, I’ll have something. You’re no good to me—or Daria—like this.”
I started to argue, but the exhaustion hit me all at once, and his order brooked no argument.
I stood slowly, rolling my shoulders before heading out. He was right. The second we knew where Daria was—I had to be ready.