23. BRAXTON
Chapter twenty-three
F our days.
That was how long Nik and I had been running on caffeine, exhaustion, and sheer fucking frustration.
We had fallen into a rhythm—if you could call it that. Eat when we remembered. Sleep in shifts. Cycle through every goddamn surveillance feed and database we had access to. Nik contacted any informant we would dig up to help us find out where they had taken Daria. Every hour she remained missing, the guilt I felt pressed harder against my ribs, like a vise.
Nik worked his network like a man playing chess with the devil.
I had no clue how many back channels he had access to or how many servers he had cracked open without finding a single goddamn trace of her—but I knew this: if she was in any database, on any surveillance cam, or buried in any encrypted file on the planet, he’d find her.
I just had to keep my shit together until he did.
Nik cracked his neck, glancing over at me from his spot at the workstation. “She’s valuable,” he said, more to himself than to me. “Too valuable for them to just bury in a hole and forget.”
I leaned forward, bracing my elbows on my knees. “Valuable how?”
Nik inhaled sharply. “She’s Alexey Melnichenko’s daughter. That alone makes her worth a lot. And she was a double agent. If she hasn’t cracked yet, they’ll keep trying.” His fingers paused over the keys. “If she has…they’ll dispose of her,” he said darkly.
An aching pressure throbbed at the base of my skull. “Then we’d better find her before that happens.”
Nik didn’t argue. He resumed tapping, his eyes flicking across a dark web forum.
After another few minutes, he leaned back, stretching his arms over his head. “If— when we find her, breaking her out is going to be another nightmare.”
I handed him a cup of coffee from the latest pot I’d brewed. “We’ll figure it out.”
His gaze flicked to mine. “You realize how deep we’re in?”
“I don’t give a shit.”
Nik smirked, shaking his head. “Say we find her. We’ll need disguises, safe houses, alternative IDs, and a way to smuggle her out of Russia.” His eyes gleamed with mischief. “Good thing I make people disappear for a living.”
I nodded, turning to watch the various screens. Chaos unfolded across the screens. Nik had thrown me into the deep end, forcing me to learn hacking skills and espionage techniques I’d never imagined. I would never see the world the same way again.
A few minutes later, Nik stilled, then turned to study me, his expression unreadable. His lips curled, something close to amusement flashing behind those calculating eyes.
“Fuck.” He exhaled sharply, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “You’re really gone for her, aren’t you?”
I met his gaze, unflinching. I’d come to the same conclusion several days ago—when she and I had been walking hand in hand down that dusty road just before she was taken from me. I hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself, much less anyone else, but yeah, I was totally gone for her.
I’d never met a woman like Daria Melnichenko. Hell, I hadn’t thought a woman like her could even exist. She was the deadliest person I’d ever seen—sharp as a damn blade, trained to kill, move, and think faster than most people could breathe. An FSB Special Forces agent forged in the line of fire, she was hardened by war and betrayal, yet she never gave up.
She fought like hell for every inch of ground she stood on and believed in her own strength, like it was written into the fabric of the universe. And yet—beneath all that steel, all that fight—she had a heart so damn big it staggered me. Daria wasn’t just strong; she was good, the kind of good you didn’t find in this world very often. Despite everything, despite the nightmare of a father who had murdered her mother, despite the life the Kremlin had forced her into, she still believed in doing what was right.
She still fought for the people no one else would. And somehow, by some goddamn miracle, she had let me in. She had trusted me, a Boy Scout who should’ve never been in her orbit in the first place. She was an enigma—untouchable in her strength—but there was something fragile about her too, something that made every protective instinct inside me roar to life.
She had changed me, wrecked me in ways I couldn’t even process. And whatever this feeling was—this raw, brutal need to make sure she got the life she deserved—it wasn’t going to go away. I would go to the ends of the earth for her. I’d burn down anything that stood in her way. And if she let me, I’d make her my queen. Because I wasn’t just falling for her; I was already gone. And I swore on every last breath I had that I would make things right for her.
Nik reached over and nudged me on the shoulder, drawing my attention back to him. “You, okay?”
“Yeah—”
“Actually, no. No, I’m not okay. You’re right. I’m so fucking gone for that woman, I can’t breathe.”
Nik chuckled and turned back to his keyboard.
“Then let’s get back to work.”
Several hours passed, and then abruptly, Nik froze, his fingers hovering over the keyboard. The steady tapping of keys, a noise that had filled the apartment for four days, was replaced by silence. His eyes grew dark, and his brow furrowed so deeply that I could tell whatever he’d just learned wasn’t something he wanted to utter out loud.
But finally he said quietly, “The guard I’ve been working on at the prison just accepted my payoff. He’s given me information on what happened to her while she was there.”
A chill slithered down my spine.
I straightened, the muscles in my shoulders locking up. “Say it.”
Nik hesitated—just a fraction of a second, but it was enough.
My stomach twisted. My pulse slowed to a thick drumbeat inside my skull.
Nik exhaled sharply. “Interrogation Chief Fedorov spent hours going HAM on her,” he said grimly. “Her screams echoed through the entire prison.”
The words hit me like a sledgehammer.
A roaring filled my ears. My breath stalled. My vision narrowed to a dark, suffocating tunnel.
Daria alone.
In pain.
Screaming.
The image tore through me, and white-hot rage ignited every nerve in my body.
I forced in a breath, but it did nothing to steady me. My hands fisted hard enough that my nails sliced into my palms, but I barely felt the pain.
She had saved me. She’d risked everything.
And because of that—because of me—she had been dragged back. Beaten. Broken. Left to suffer at the hands of monsters.
I swayed slightly, caught between fury and guilt so thick it clogged my throat.
Nik watched me carefully, reading every reaction. “She’s strong, Thorin,” he said, his tone calm but firm. “If she were dead, my informant would have said so.”
That didn’t help.
It didn’t erase the fact that they had hurt her. That they had tortured her. That I hadn’t been there to stop it.
A sick, twisting nausea coiled in my gut. The walls of Nik’s apartment suddenly felt too tight, too fucking suffocating.
I shoved back from the table and paced to the far side of the room. My body was coiled tight, and my breath came in short, uneven bursts.
I wanted blood.
I wanted to rip those men apart with my bare hands.
Bracing myself against the back of the couch, I locked my arms straight and hung my head low, trying to swallow the rage, trying not to completely lose my goddamn mind.
“Where is she now?” My voice came out hoarse, raw.
Nik didn’t answer right away.
I snapped my head up and asked again, my chest heaving, “Where?”
Nik exhaled heavily, dragging a hand down his face.
“We knew that they moved her, and now it makes sense why we never picked her up on any cameras. Why her trail has been completely dark.”
I froze.
“Go on,” I said, my voice dangerously low.
Nik’s jaw tightened. “She was cuffed, shackled, and bagged, then thrown in an empty shipping container at the industrial train yard not too far from the prison.”
I stared at him, barely registering the words.
“My guy doesn’t know the destination.”
The fury in my chest erupted. Before I could think, before I could stop it, my fist slammed into the nearest wall.
The impact cracked through the silence, rattling the shelves, sending a shockwave up my arm.
I didn’t care.
I barely felt it.
My knuckles were already starting to swell as I pulled my fist from the wall. Back at his station, Nik had resumed working, wasting no time. His fingers flew across the keyboard, his body tense, his mind locked in.
I stepped back, shaking out my hand, breathing through the white-hot frustration boiling inside me. I didn’t bother to ask what he was doing—I had already seen enough to know that he was on top of it.
A minute later, he let out a low sound of approval. Then his fingers tapped out a rapid sequence before he pulled up a familiar image.
Daria’s passport photo.
My heart stuttered as I gazed at those sharp cheekbones, those intense blue eyes—eyes I had stared into in the darkness of an abandoned house, glistening with river water, and shadowed with desire. Eyes I had last seen burning with fury.
Nik growled. “I have her entire digital footprint now, right down to her fucking DNA.”
With another keystroke, he uploaded her image into a software program—one I had never seen before.
“What’s that?” I asked, stepping closer.
“A new facial recognition algorithm using the latest AI that I wrote last night,” he said without looking up. “My own design. It taps into security cameras across Russia, skimming through public and private feeds, cross-referencing pretty much every database in the country. If she steps in front of a camera anywhere, we’ll know.”
He slid the laptop across the table.
“Monitoring it is your job now.”
Without hesitation, I grabbed it, my body still running hot with rage. The screen flickered, data streaming in real time as it began scanning thousands of security feeds, searching for even the slightest match to Daria’s face.
Nik leaned back in his chair, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “It’ll take time. But the moment there’s a hit, the program will save a file to the hard drive, notify you, and then keep running. Pay attention and stay on it.”
I nodded once, then sat on the sofa with the computer on my lap. I had one job—to find her.
I clicked through feed after feed, my mind blurring as I scanned the grainy footage of train stations, border crossings, and military checkpoints.
Every hour that passed made it more likely that she’d be lost to me forever.
Across the room, Nik was just as locked in. He had his phone pressed to his ear, and his voice was a low murmur as he spoke to someone in Russian, the gruffness in his tone making it clear he wasn’t asking for favors.
He made another call, drumming his fingers against the desk, his mind moving a million miles an hour.
He wasn’t just chasing digital ghosts—he was pulling on every string he had in Russia.
After several minutes of intense conversations, he leaned back, his expression unreadable.
“Fuck me. He’s directly involved. No wonder her whereabouts have been so secure,” he muttered under his breath.
I looked up from the screen. “Who?”
Nik’s lips curled in irritation. “Alexey fucking Melnichenko. Daria’s father. He made a deal with the Kremlin to interrogate and then dispose of her however he sees fit. I’ve had eyes all over him, but his estate is a silent fortress. No one in their right mind crosses him. She must be there.”
I gritted my teeth, my fingers tightening around the edge of the laptop.
Of course he was involved.
I had spent enough time around Daria to know how much of a monster her father was. He was a cold, calculating bastard who’d murdered her mother and then shaped her into the perfect Kremlin weapon.
Nik exhaled slowly through his nose. “We need to shake some trees. I need to turn one of Alexey’s own—not an easy task.”
He started sending encrypted messages, offering massive bribes through digital channels so fast it made my head spin.
I didn’t know who he was reaching out to, but I was certain of one thing—he was burning through a lot of cash.
I lost track of time.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been staring at the laptop screen, but my vision started blurring at the edges, and my temples were pulsing from the headache that had settled behind my eyes.
Nik’s home had turned into a war room. Coffee cups were stacked haphazardly on every available surface, and the stale scent of cigarette smoke hung in the air from Nik’s now-not-so-occasional habit.
The weight of potential failure loomed over us, thick and suffocating.
Then his phone pinged.
A single sharp tone.
Nik sat up straighter, swiping his fingers across the screen. His face changed instantly.
His lips pressed into a thin line, his usual arrogance—gone.
Every ounce of blood drained from his face.
I knew that look, and my stomach turned to lead.
“What?” I demanded.
Nik hesitated.
“What?”
He exhaled sharply, then read the message aloud.
“She’s in Alexey’s house in St. Petersburg. She was taken there after her capture,” he read, clearing his throat. “She was tortured until she was unconscious. Then they carried her to her childhood bedroom. She’s awake now, but…”
He stopped.
I registered his reluctance, sensed something even worse coming, and forced myself to breathe.
“What, Nik?”
He dragged a hand down his face, then finally met my eyes.
“Her father has sold her to his underboss, Yakov Malinov…as his sex slave.”
Silence.
A thick, heavy silence stretched between us.
Then I moved.
The laptop flew from my hands, crashing into the wall with a violent shatter of plastic and metal.
My chest heaved, and my hands shook with pure rage, a red-hot fury so intense it nearly blinded me.
How the fuck could a father sell his own daughter—and for such a vile purpose?
Like property, just some disposable thing.
To a man that could make Nik Volkov pale.
“Tell me, Nik. Who the fuck is this Malinov?”
“He’s a sadistic psychopath with a taste for cruelty, an underboss to the Tambovskaya Bratva. He’s a man my father’s age, and he’s feared even among the worst of the Russian underworld.”
Nik stayed where he was, watching me carefully.
I braced my hands against the table, trying to control the storm tearing through my body.
“You’re sure?” I asked, my voice guttural.
Nik’s face was somber. “My informant wouldn’t lie. Not for what I paid.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, inhaled sharply, then forced my spine straight.
“There’s more,” Nik added.
My eyes snapped open.
“What else?” I ground out.
Nik ran a hand through his hair.
“Malinov wants an heir, so he’s going to claim her as his wife. There’s an engagement party being planned for ten days from now at his estate on Stone Island in St. Petersburg.”
I went utterly still.
Nik continued, his voice not wavering, “It’s going to be a huge event. Press, dignitaries, massive security.”
She would be paraded in front of the world as Malinov’s woman. Her father’s hands would appear clean while Malinov staked his claim, with the Kremlin watching in the background, ensuring their piece of the game remained firmly in control.
Nik leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowing as he processed the information. He drummed his fingers slowly against the desk, his mind already running a thousand calculations at once.
“There’s an opportunity here,” he finally muttered.
“What kind of opportunity?”
He laid his phone on the desk and regarded me intently. “The engagement party.”
“What about it?”
“My men can get inside, blend with the staff, and extract Daria before anyone knows what’s happening.”
His men. Not us?
I pushed off the table, stepping closer. “Hold on. Your men? What the hell do you mean by your men?”
Nik gave me a patient look, like he’d already been bracing himself for my reaction. “I mean exactly what it sounds like. My people go in. You and I stay out of it.”
“The fuck we do!” I shot back. “I’m not sitting on the goddamn sidelines while strangers pull Daria out.”
Nik sighed, rubbing his temple. “I’m too recognizable. And let’s not pretend you have the language skills or the background to blend in at an event like this. These aren’t street thugs—this is a high-society gala full of diplomats, arms dealers, intelligence officers, and men who can spot an outsider in seconds. You’d get made before you got past the first glass of champagne.”
I gritted my teeth. He wasn’t wrong. But that didn’t mean I was about to let someone else take the lead on this.
“What if I had a cover?”
Nik arched a brow. “What kind of cover?”
I racked my brain. An idea hit me like a bullet. “Some billionaire crypto king from America. The kind of arrogant asshole who throws money around like confetti and doesn’t ask questions. I get invited as a guest of some Russian socialite, blend in, and no one looks twice at me.”
Nik stared at me, then rubbed his jaw. I could practically hear the gears turning in his head.
“It’s risky,” he muttered. “You’d need to prepare. Hard. No improvising, no cowboy heroics. You’d have to do exactly what I say. No shooting from the hip. I’ll fit you with an earpiece, and if I get even the slightest whiff of this going sideways, I’ll pull you out.”
I held his gaze. “It will be fine.”
His unease was clear. He didn’t like this. Not one damn bit.
“I pay people to risk their lives for me, Thorin. Neither one of us needs to be on-site. Besides, I promised Anastasia I’d keep you safe.”
I huffed a short laugh. “Yeah? You broke that promise a long time ago.”
Nik smirked, shaking his head. “Fair point. But if you fuck this up, I will be the one to kill you.”
I grunted, the fire of possibilities already burning in my gut. “Then I guess I’d better not fuck it up.”
I straightened, and my breathing slowed, my rage shifting into something more controlled.
“We have ten days to figure out how to burn that fucking island to the ground,” I growled.
Nik studied me for a long moment. Since I’d lost Daria, he had tested my resolve, questioned my motives, and made it clear he didn’t understand why she meant so much to me, didn’t understand why I was willing to risk everything to save her. But now?
Now he understood.
I’d die for her.
I didn’t know what had pushed him to go all in. Maybe it was the leverage I had over him—my knowledge of his parents’ whereabouts. It might have been his promise to Anastasia to keep me safe. Or perhaps he’d come to see Daria for who she really was. Maybe it was all of it. Maybe none of it. But whatever the reason, I was damn grateful for his help.
The man was working tirelessly, dropping loads of cash and burning through favors like they were nothing. And the irony wasn’t lost on me that Daria’s unlikely guardian angel was a sworn enemy of her family. She would never see that coming.
Hopefully, once we got her out, she’d give me the chance to explain. And maybe she’d give Nik the chance to prove that he was nothing like the men who had shaped his life. Because, despite what the world saw—despite the dark legacy of his last name—Nik Volkov was his own man. And I respected the hell out of him.
Nik stood and rolled his neck. “I need a fucking break. Don’t go anywhere.” With that, he headed out the front door.
For the first time in days, I was alone. I needed a shower and a good night’s sleep. I finally had direction—no more having to second-guess every step. We knew where Daria was. Now, it was just a matter of ironing out the details of our rescue.
Late the next day, after we’d had some much-needed time apart, Nik leaned against the counter, casually sipping his espresso as if we weren’t days away from kicking in the devil’s front door.
“St. Petersburg is Volkovi Notchi territory,” he said smoothly.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “You sure about that? Because, from what I’ve been reading, Melnichenko and Malinov have the full weight of the Kremlin behind them.”
Nik smirked, tapping a cigarette against the counter before lighting it. He took a slow drag, then exhaled. “So do I on any given day. Loyalty in the Kremlin lasts about as long as a bottle of vodka at a Russian wedding. They’ll back whoever keeps them drunk on power.”
I tilted my head, skeptical. “You sure you’re not overestimating your pull?”
Nik shrugged, taking another drag of his cigarette. “I never overestimate. That’s how men like me stay alive.”
I wasn’t sure what pissed me off more—his arrogance or the fact that I believed him.
I had spent my whole life problem solving under pressure. That was the job of a paramedic—assess the scene, triage, stabilize, move.
Nik operated the same way.
Only, instead of saving lives, he controlled every single moving piece on the board.