Chapter 17 Under Watch #2
“Nothing. Came back here. Stayed close to the house.” I thought about it. “Ran into Rafael at a bar. That's it.”
The room went quiet.
“Rafael,” Luka repeated.
“We know each other. It was a coincidence.”
“In this business, coincidences are just patterns you haven't identified yet.” Luka's voice had gone flat and careful in the way it did when he was working something out. “How much did you tell him?”
“Nothing. We talked about Chicago. His investments in the fight scene. That was it.”
“And he knows you're connected to Declan.”
It wasn't a question. I'd told Rafael I was staying with my stepfather. The conversation had felt easy and surface-level at the time. Now it sat in my chest like a stone.
“He didn't push on it,” I said.
“He didn't have to.” Luka looked at Dmitri. “Pull everything we have on Rafael's operation. Any connections to the fight network, any financial ties to the promoters we've already flagged. And I want to know who he's been talking to in the last two weeks.”
Dmitri was already on his laptop. “On it.”
“I could be wrong,” Luka said, his voice steady, not conceding the point so much as setting it aside.
“But we follow the thread. If it goes nowhere, we go back to the other leads.” He looked at me again.
“Now. The shooter. The pattern on the shot doesn't match what we have on the ghost from the first attack.”
“Different operator?”
“Possibly. Could mean whoever's behind this has more resources than we thought, or it could mean they changed contractors after the first job didn't produce the result they wanted.” His eyes bore into mine.
“Either way, the situation has changed. The hotel conversation assumed a single operator with a specific brief. This is a different calculus.”
“Which is why I'm not moving to the safe house,” I said. “Whoever this is has already mapped the house. They had a sightline and they've tested it. If I move, they track me to the new location and I've handed them a fresh target and burned your asset in one move.”
Luka studied me for a long moment. I watched him run the logic and come up against the same wall I had.
“If you stay,” he said, “they have a sightline they know works.”
“Then we change the exposure points, not the location. We're already doing that.” I held his gaze. “And I'm not leaving Declan here with a skeleton crew while I'm tucked away somewhere safe.”
The silence stretched out. Ash watched us both. Dmitri kept his eyes on his screen.
Luka looked away first. “We reinforce the perimeter. No movement without two people minimum. The windows on the east side stay covered.” He looked at Ash.
“I want a second sweep of the surrounding buildings.
Whoever had that sightline had to set up somewhere.
I want to know how long they'd been there.”
“Already pulled the request,” Ash said.
“Good.” Luka stood and started moving, the restless energy he usually kept locked down bleeding through now. “Troy, I'm going to ask you something and I need you to answer it straight.”
“When have I not?”
“Regularly.” He stopped pacing and faced me. “After the hotel. After we talked. Did you change anything? Your routine, your contacts, how you were moving through the city?”
“I tightened up. Stayed closer to the house.”
“Did you make contact with anyone new in the network? Anyone who might have reported back to someone?”
“No.” I thought about it again, harder this time. “Just Rafael.”
“Then that's where we start.” He picked up his coffee mug, realized it was empty, and set it back down with more force than necessary. “I want you to think back over every conversation you had with him. Every detail. What he asked, what you answered, what he didn't ask that he should have.”
“You think he was fishing.”
“I think a man in his position doesn't run into people by accident.” Luka's expression was flat. “Think about it. Take your time. Write it down if you need to. I want everything.”
The fight had drained out of me somewhere in the middle of it. He was right. I hated it, but he was right.
“Okay,” I said. “I'll go through it.”
“Good.” Luka moved toward the window. Checked the street. “Dmitri stays here tonight. Tomorrow he'll bring more equipment and set up proper security across the approach points.” He looked over his shoulder at me. “Declan will deal with it.”
“I know.” I sat down finally, feeling the weight of the morning settling into my legs. “He'll deal with it.”
Ash stood and moved toward me quietly. “Can I get a minute? Outside?”
I looked at him, then at Luka, then back. “Yeah.”
We headed through the kitchen to the back door.
The garden was small, just a patch of grass and a few overgrown bushes that Declan probably meant to trim and never got around to.
I stood there looking up at the sky, gray and heavy with clouds that threatened snow.
Chicago in winter looked exactly like I remembered.
Cold and unforgiving and still somehow beautiful in a bleak way.
Ash stood beside me and didn't say anything at first, just let the silence settle.
“He's worried about you,” Ash said finally. “That's why he's being intense.”
“I know.”
“I'm not sure you do.” His voice was gentle.
“Luka doesn't know how to love people halfway.
It's all or nothing with him. And when someone he cares about is in danger, he goes into protection mode.
Which looks like control. Which looks like him being an asshole.
But it's just fear wearing a different face.”
“You defending him?”
“Explaining him. There's a difference.” Ash smiled slightly. “Luka can be overbearing. He can be controlling. He can make you feel like he's trying to run your life. But underneath all that is genuine care. Genuine fear of losing the people who matter to him.”
“I get that. I do. But sometimes his care feels suffocating.”
“It is suffocating. That's one of his flaws.” Ash turned to face me fully.
“But it's also one of his strengths. Because when Luka commits to protecting someone, he doesn't half-ass it.
He goes all in, uses every resource he has, burns bridges if he needs to.
And he doesn't stop until the threat is neutralized.”
“That's a hell of a way to love someone.”
“It's the only way he knows how.” Ash's expression was serious. “You understand that better than most. You've worked with him for years.”
“Doesn't make it easier when he's in my face.”
“No. But it might help to remember he's doing it because he cares.
Not because he thinks you're incompetent.” Ash paused.
“And Troy? He's going to need you to extend him some patience on this one.
The same way he's extended it to you over the years, every time you pushed him away or tested the limits or made his life harder than it needed to be.”
“You're good at this,” I said. “The making-people-see-reason thing.”
“I've had practice.” He smiled. “Luka's not easy to love. But he's worth it. Same way I suspect Declan isn't easy, but you're figuring out he's worth it too.”
“How do you know about Declan?”
“Dmitri texted me updates. Said you finally stopped being an idiot about it.” His smile got wider.
“He's such a gossip.”
“Yes, he is.” Ash looked back at the house. “Come on. We should go back in before those two start planning without us.”
We headed inside. Luka was at the kitchen counter, staring at Declan's coffee machine like it had personally insulted him. Dmitri was watching from the dining table with a grin.
“It's broken,” Dmitri said helpfully.
“It's not broken.” Luka pressed another button. The machine beeped at him. “It's unnecessarily complicated.”
“You run international operations,” I said, “but you can't figure out a coffee maker.”
“This is not a coffee maker. This is a torture device disguised as an appliance.” He pressed another button. Water started dripping but no coffee came out. “Who needs this many settings for one beverage?”
“Americans,” Dmitri said. “They make everything complicated. In Russia we have a kettle and instant coffee. Very simple.”
“That's because Russian coffee tastes like dirt,” Ash said.
“It builds character.” Dmitri leaned back in his chair. “Makes you appreciate the good stuff when you finally get it.”
Luka glared at the machine and pressed what looked like the grind button. It made a horrible grinding noise. “I hate this thing.”
“Want me to do it?” I asked.
“No. I'll figure this out.” He studied the display like it was coded intelligence. “There has to be a logical sequence.”
“It's coffee. Not cryptography.”
“Difficulty level should be the same.” He pressed another combination of buttons. The machine beeped three times and shut off completely. “Fuck this thing.”
Dmitri laughed. “Official. Luka Markovic has been defeated by a kitchen appliance. I'm putting this in the report.”
“You're not putting anything in any report.” Luka unplugged the machine. Plugged it back in. It powered on with a cheerful beep. “There. Reset.”
“There's a manual,” Ash said.
“I don't need a manual.”
“Clearly you do.”
“I can figure this out on my own.” Luka pressed the power button, then the brew button, then the strength selector. The machine whirred to life and started grinding the beans. Hot water began dripping through. “See? Logical sequence.”
“Only took you ten minutes,” I said.
“Speed is overrated. Victory is what matters.” He watched the coffee drip into the pot with obvious satisfaction.
Dmitri shook his head. “You're a ridiculous man.”
“I prefer determined.” Luka pulled a mug from the cabinet and poured himself coffee once it finished. Took a sip. Made a face. “This tastes terrible.”
“Because you did it wrong,” I said.
“I followed the logical sequence.”
“The logical sequence makes bad coffee.” I grabbed the pot from him and dumped it. Started over with the right settings. “You have to use the right grind size. Right water temperature. Right brew time.”
“That's too many variables for a morning beverage.”
“That's why Declan has it programmed. You just hit the preset button.”
Luka stared at the machine. “There's a preset button?”
“Right there.” I pointed to it.
“That would have been useful information ten minutes ago.”
“Would have been funny information never,” Dmitri said. “Watching you fight with the coffee maker was the highlight of my day.”
“How long are you staying?” I asked, before Luka could throw the pot at Dmitri.
“As long as it takes.” He looked at Ash. “We already cleared our schedules. We're here until this is resolved.”
Ash nodded. “We got a hotel room downtown. Close enough to respond if anything happens, far enough that we're not in your space around the clock.”
“You don't have to do that.”
“Yes, we do.” Luka's voice was firm. “This is what family does, Troy. We show up. We stay. We handle things together.”
The word family hit differently coming from him. Luka wasn't sentimental. Didn't throw that word around casually. Which meant he meant it.
“Okay,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Don't thank me yet. Wait until we catch whoever did this.” Luka took another sip of the coffee I'd made and nodded approval this time. “In the meantime, we work the problem. We find the answers. And nobody else gets shot at.”
“And if they try again before we get there?”
“Then we make them regret it.” Luka's smile was cold. “I'm very good at making people regret things.”
I believed him.
Dmitri stood and stretched. “I'm staying here tonight. On the couch. Tomorrow I'll bring more equipment and set up proper security.”
“Declan's going to love that.”
“Declan will deal with it.” Dmitri grinned. “It's his house, but you're more important than his comfort right now. He'll understand.”
I hoped he was right. But knowing Declan, there was going to be another conversation about boundaries and autonomy and all the ways this situation kept getting further out of control.
I was already tired just thinking about it.