Chapter 22 Stefan
STEFAN
The warehouse squats in a forgotten corner of Boston’s industrial district. Even the cockroaches here have abandoned hope.
And I don’t blame them. It’s intentionally grim here.
Dust settles in thick layers across cracked concrete.
Water drips somewhere in the unseen distance, the splashes marking time like a metronome.
Overhead, dim fluorescent lights flicker and buzz, giving off just enough illumination to reveal floors stained with decades of spilled secrets and unanswered screams.
The sound of my fist against Volkov’s jaw echoes off the metal walls. It’s a wet sound, a meaty sound. Like a ripe peach being split open. Blood sprays in a fine mist that settles on my shirt cuffs.
Italian linen ruined with the blood of another traitor. What a waste.
“I swear to God, I don’t know any Iakov!” Volkov pleads, the words garbled through split lips and broken teeth. “Those texts are fake!”
I study his face. Alexei Volkov is thirty-four, divorced, father of one child he never sees. He’s spent the last five years managing our Dorchester warehouse operations and two offshore accounts we laid out as bait for rats.
And a rat is exactly what he is.
At least, that’s what Mikayla’s evidence suggests. Taras and I have been looking for Alexei for weeks, but it was Mikayla who tracked the bastard down to some rundown crackhouse and scraped through his phone to find the encrypted messages on a phone he’d been too stupid to destroy.
The conversations with Iakov went back months. Alexei sold him warehouse schedules, security protocols, and employee rotations. Some of the information went even above his paygrade, opening up the possibility of even more rats in the ranks.
I’m used to liars. What I’m not used to is the genuine confusion beneath his fear. Usually, when I have a man on his knees, his life in my hands, the truth bleeds out faster than he can.
But Alexei is stubborn. A good actor.
So I press on his soft spots.
“Your daughter starts kindergarten next week,” I remark, wiping blood from my knuckles with a monogrammed handkerchief. “Anastasia, yes? Pretty name. Pretty girl.”
Mikayla found Alexei, but Taras found his weaknesses. I was five minutes into the interrogation when Taras handed me a folder that outlined everything I’d need to know to break this man.
Just as I planned, fear flashes in his eyes—pure, primal. Better than truth serum.
“Leave her out of this,” he whimpers. “Please.”
I know where I draw the line—I’d never lay a finger on his little girl—but no one else does. It makes for effective torture.
“I don’t like to go around hurting children.” I bend closer and whisper, “But what do you think Iakov will do when he discovers you failed? He lacks my restraint.”
“I told you, I don’t know him!” He’s wailing now, as pitiful as anyone I’ve ever seen. “I’ve never met him! Check my phone records, my accounts. The texts are— Someone must have planted them! It’s bullshit!”
He drops to all fours, begging from knees and elbows—the perfect position for my boot to connect with his chin. When it does, his head snaps back. His eyes cross over as he flops into an unconscious heap on the dirty floor.
Taras leans against a rusted support beam. A shaft of light filters through a hole in the roof, highlighting the smile on his scarred face.
“You’re playing with your food, Stef,” he drawls. “Just put a bullet in him and be done with it.”
“I need information first.” I flex my bloodied hand.
“Information? Or therapy?” Taras wags a knowing brow. “You seem tense lately. Maybe you should schedule another ‘meeting’ with your little doctor. Olivia could help you work out some of that… frustration.”
My spine stiffens. Olivia’s name doesn’t belong in this place. I fix Taras with a look. “Maybe you should focus on doing your job properly so Mikayla doesn’t have to keep cleaning up after you.”
Taras’s smirk falters. He toes dust across the concrete floor, face downcast. “Low blow, man. Not my fault your she-wolf has access to systems I don’t.”
Volkov groans as he struggles back toward reality. Fresh blood pools beneath his slack jaw, dark and sticky.
“You know,” Taras continues, “there are easier ways to blow off steam than beating the shit out of potential informants or mixing business with pleasure re: the foxy little doctor.” He gestures toward the exit with his cigarette.
“Plenty of willing women will be at Odessa tonight. That redhead from the casino has asked about you every time I’ve been in. ”
I continue to methodically clean my knuckles. I don’t bother to respond.
“You enjoy that sort of distraction,” Taras presses, studying me for any hint of a reaction. “Or should I say, you used to enjoy it… before a certain doctor spread her legs on your desk.”
“Careful.”
Taras grins, sensing a nerve. “What? Am I wrong? Three months ago, you’d have taken that redhead home, fucked her until she couldn’t remember her name, and sent her packing before sunrise.
Now?” He shakes his head as if he’s disappointed in me.
“Now, you’re punching out low-level employees and brooding like a teenager. ”
“Keep talking and I’ll start punching people closer to my rank instead. Know any within arm’s reach?”
Taras is smart enough not to respond to that one.
“I’m not interested in random women,” I add flatly.
It’s the truth. For so long, getting off was the aim. It didn’t matter who it was; I just wanted the release. But suddenly, there’s no interest.
Except…
Flashes of the dream I had last night come back to me. It’s been days of waking up to thoughts of Olivia, my cock aching, balls blue. The thought of touching anyone else after Olivia feels… wrong. Like settling for tap water after tasting aged whiskey.
“Jesus Christ.” Taras’s eyes widen. “Don’t tell you’re— You’ve got it bad, don’t you? You do. It’s a crush. Stefan fucking Safonov has a schoolboy crush.”
“You’re on dangerous ground, man. I will cut out your tongue and feed it to you.”
“You’re the one on dangerous ground, my friend,” Taras retorts. “‘The moment you prefer one woman, you’ve created a vulnerability.’” The asshole taps his chin, looking thoughtful, looking smug, looking very punchable. “Any idea who said that?”
I scowl at him, which only makes his grin cockier.
“‘That’s how they get you, Taras.’”
“Stop fucking quoting me,” I snap. “This isn’t a philosophical debate. This is only business.”
“Is it?” Taras raises that insolent eyebrow again. “Then why her, specifically? Why insist on Olivia Aster carrying your child when any surrogate would do?”
I don’t answer, because any surrogate won’t do. Olivia is the only choice. And nothing I can say will make sense to Taras—or to myself, for that matter.
That’s why I’ve avoided talking about it with him.
“Speaking of your doctor,” Taras continues with a sigh, his tone shifting to something more serious, “I should review the surrogacy agreement. Make sure everything’s airtight before she gets any ideas about exploiting leverage.”
My silence fills the warehouse, heavy as the iron beams overhead.
When I still don’t say anything, Taras pauses with the third cigarette of the morning paused halfway to his lips. “Hold on. Tell me there’s an agreement. Tell me you at least made her sign the NDA before you fucked her.”
When I don’t answer, his cigarette falls to the ground, his jaw right behind it. “… You haven’t signed contracts yet?”
“Formalities,” I mutter, even though those “formalities” have been the only way I’ve ever done business.
If there is no guarantee, there is no deal. I don’t fuck around with “maybes.”
Until now.
And Taras knows that.
He lays into me. “What the fuck were you thinking, Stefan? When I fucked that don’s daughter without a condom, you almost forced me to get snipped! You ranted for damn near days about how stupid I was. And I’m not even a pakhan! I don’t have a legacy that’s in jeopardy.”
“Nothing is in jeopardy,” I growl. “Iakov doesn’t have a blood claim to anything. His uncle was a second. He can’t—”
“If you give him an inch, he’ll take a lightyear. And you’re giving him more than an inch by fucking this doctor. That bitch is going to—”
In an instant, I have Taras slammed against the wall, forearm crushing his windpipe. The movement is pure instinct, a violence I haven’t directed at him since we were teenagers fighting for scraps in Grozny.
“Don’t talk about her like that.”
My vision is red. My voice is lethal.
I have a traitor lying on the floor behind me who deserves my wrath, but it’s Taras I want to rip to shreds right now.
He knows he’s gone too far. He raises his hands in surrender. But his eyes remain hard.
“This is exactly what your father did, Stefan. I don’t want to say that, I hate saying it, but I have to. You’ve spent your life running from his mistakes, but now, you’re letting a pretty woman cloud your judgment. You’re giving her the chance to destroy you.”
I clench my teeth. The potential for violence strains for one second longer, almost to the breaking point…
Then I release him. I step back as my mind races. The whole point of this sterile surrogacy arrangement had been to separate emotion from procreation—to ensure no woman could ever manipulate me the way my mother had done to my father.
Yet here I am, letting desire overrule logic. Breaking my own cardinal rule.
“Olivia isn’t my mother. I know what I’m doing.”
But even I know that sounds like bullshit.
“Do you?” Taras challenges, rubbing his throat where I pinned him. “We need a contract, Stef. Before she gets pregnant and this gets messy.”
I turn away. The memory of Olivia beneath me on my desk flashes through my mind. Her scent clung to the room for days, followed me home, threaded itself throughout my dreams. I can still taste her on my tongue, feel how she softened in my hands, surrendering to the moment. To me.
Worse, I remember the way I’d surrendered to her.
“It might already be messy,” I admit quietly. My father’s words echo in my memory: A Safonov man loves once, and it ruins him.
Alexei regains consciousness with a wet gurgle, providing the perfect distraction. My expression hardens as I turn back to him, forcing thoughts of Olivia aside.
Business first.
Always.