Chapter Two - Lukyan
The article sits open on my screen, her name printed beneath mine like a challenge. I read it twice. Then a third time. Smoke curls from the end of my cigarette, the only movement in the room.
She puts my name in the second paragraph. Bold. Careless. Stupid.
My jaw holds tight as I drag in another pull of smoke. The information she has isn’t enough to hurt me. She doesn’t have details, locations, or names of my people. She has threads, nothing more. Threads can be woven if someone feels ambitious enough.
What bothers me isn’t the risk. It’s the audacity.
“Who gave her this?” I ask without looking up.
Nikolai stands across the room. He shifts his weight like the air’s too heavy. “We’re checking. The sources she listed don’t match anything internal.”
“So she guessed.”
“It looks that way.”
A humorless breath leaves me. Guessing about a man like me isn’t bravery. It’s ignorance.
“Trace her,” I say. “Find out who she is, where she lives, who she speaks to.”
Nikolai nods once and taps his phone. He knows better than to ask why. I don’t explain my decisions. I don’t need to.
While he works, I read the article again. It’s written cleanly. Sharp. Confident. Too confident.
She speaks about corruption as if she understands it personally. She hasn’t. Most people twice her age don’t understand the world they’re living in. They think justice exists. They think systems are fair. They think their actions matter.
This girl acts like she’s exposing evil. She doesn’t realize she’s poking at a structure older and stronger than anything she’s touched in her short life.
Nikolai steps back to my desk. “Found her.”
I raise a brow. “Show me.”
He turns the screen of his phone toward me. A university directory entry loads. A student ID photo. Dark hair. Warm brown eyes. A subtle tilt to her chin like she’s daring the photographer to ask her to smile.
“Clara Whitmore,” he says. “Journalism student. Twenty-one. No criminal record. Lives alone. Parents out of state.”
Something about it hits me wrong. Not fear. Not annoyance. Almost… insult.
A girl barely old enough to rent a car puts my name online and waits for applause. It feels like mockery.
I swipe the screen from Nikolai’s hand and open a browser. Her name brings up a few university articles, a scholarship announcement, a local interview. I click the video.
She sits outside on campus. Curvy frame tucked into a sweater. Hair pulled back but loose pieces keep falling forward. She keeps brushing them away. Her eyes light up when she talks, sharp and expressive. There’s no hesitation in her voice.
“I think truth matters,” she says. “If we’re afraid to name the things that corrupt our city, then nothing ever changes.”
There’s no tremor. No doubt. She says it like she believes every word.
I lean back in my chair.
She’s not what I expected. I imagined someone older. Someone jaded. Someone who understands danger. This girl sits in the sun and talks about justice like she’s immune to consequences.
I watch her again, slower this time. Her posture. The way she tucks her fingers around her mug. The way she doesn’t look away from the interviewer even once.
She’s soft around the edges, but not weak. She’s stubborn.
Interesting.
I shouldn’t care what she looks like. That isn’t the point. She’s a liability, and liabilities get handled quickly. Contained… silenced if necessary, but something about her pulls at me. Not attraction alone. Something else.
Curiosity.
Why would someone like her choose to provoke someone like me? Why risk herself? Why act like she understands the world she’s stepping into?
Nikolai clears his throat. “Orders?”
I stub out the cigarette, watching the ember die.
“Keep eyes on her,” I say. “Discreet. I want to know her schedule. Who she meets. When she’s alone.”
“You want her brought in?”
“Not yet.”
He nods and leaves the room.
The door shuts behind him, and I open her article again. Her name sits there, proud and certain. She doesn’t flinch when she speaks on camera. She doesn’t lower her gaze. She doesn’t act like a girl who’s afraid of shadows.
She should be, because now she has my attention, and I don’t let things go once they land in my hands.
***
The city is quiet by the time I reach her block. I kill the headlights a street away, then ease the car forward until I can see the front of her building. The engine idles low, a steady hum under my hands. I sink back in the seat and watch.
Her windows glow with warm light. Soft. Lived-in.
Nothing like the places I’m used to. There’s no symmetry, no expensive furniture, no polished surfaces.
The curtains don’t match. One hangs slightly crooked.
Small plants crowd the sill—overgrown, thriving, stubborn.
A stack of books leans against the glass like a small tower.
It’s ordinary in a way that feels foreign.
I expected someone reckless enough to write my name online to live like she thinks she’s bulletproof. Instead, she lives like she believes in safety. As if she’s untouched by the world she challenged.
For a moment, I don’t think about threats or strategy. I think about how her space says more about her than the article ever could. Softness she doesn’t hide. Clutter that isn’t insecurity. A life she hasn’t learned to guard.
A shadow crosses behind one curtain. She moves through the room, blurry from this distance. A shape. A presence. She’s on the phone for a minute, pacing. Then the lights shift again. She changes clothes. She sits on the bed. Her computer screen lights her face in a pale glow.
She doesn’t close the blinds.
She has no idea who’s out here.
One of my men stands on the sidewalk near the corner, phone to his ear. He keeps watch without drawing attention. After a minute, he taps the window of my car and leans in.
“You want us to send a message?” he asks quietly. “Something small. Enough to shake her.”
It’s routine. A warning. A reminder of boundaries. A way to show we saw the article and didn’t appreciate the boldness.
Normally, I’d agree immediately.
I look back at that window. At her silhouette against the soft light. At the way she lifts her hands when she talks, even when she’s alone, like she’s arguing with herself or trying to make sense of something bigger.
“Sure,” I say. “Something small.”
I stay until past midnight. Her window goes dark around eleven thirty. The light flickers once, then disappears. She doesn’t return to it. She doesn’t peek outside. She doesn’t notice the car waiting in the shadows.
I don’t move. I watch the last sliver of movement disappear from the room. Only then do I start the car and pull away.
The drive back to the mansion is long and silent. The roads stretch out in dark, empty lines. My phone buzzes twice with updates from my men—her building is quiet, no unusual visitors, nothing out of place.
I answer none of it.
When I reach the estate, the guards open the gates without a word. The house looms in front of me, all stone and sharp lines, a monument to a life built on discipline and calculation. Inside, the hall is dim. The air smells faintly of smoke and whiskey.
I pour a drink without thinking, the glass cold against my fingers. I sit in the living room with the lights off and watch the reflection of the night settle across the windows.
Her article sits open on the coffee table. I read the line with my name again.
Sources point to Lukyan Sharov, though the trail vanishes quickly.
Her voice from the interview plays in my mind. Confident. Warm. Clear. She speaks my name like she’s testing it on her tongue. No tremor. No hesitation.
Sharov.
She says it like it belongs to her for a moment. Like she’s studying it. Studying me.
That sound stays with me longer than the article itself.
There’s something binding in it, something I can’t brush aside as easily as I should. She wrote my name because she thought she could throw it into the world without consequence. She doesn’t know what the name carries. She doesn’t know who it pulls toward her.
Most people who mention me publicly do it with caution. Some do it with arrogance, thinking they’re untouchable. Few do it with her kind of conviction.
Truth matters. That’s what she said. Truth matters, even if it’s dangerous.
She’s wrong. In my world, truth only matters if it can be used.
Hearing her say it… it does something strange to me. It’s not anger. Not exactly. I expected to feel insulted. Challenged. Instead, I feel pulled.
Curiosity is a dangerous thing. It leads to pressure points. Weakness. Distraction.
I shouldn’t think about her beyond the risk she poses. She’s a problem to fix. A name on a screen that needs to disappear before she becomes an inconvenience.
The image of her apartment window lingers. The warm glow. The plants she keeps alive. The way she didn’t close her blinds because it didn’t occur to her that anyone would be watching.
She has no idea.
The sun begins to lighten the windows in slow streaks. Dawn creeps across the horizon. I take another drink, savoring the quiet before the day starts.
My phone buzzes. Nikolai again. He wants instructions, and he’s waiting for a decision.
I finish the drink, set the glass down, and speak the words that settle something inside me.
“Bring her to me,” I say. “Unharmed.” The line goes silent for half a beat. I add, “No mistakes. No bruises. No fear unless it comes from me.”
When the call ends, the room is quiet again. The decision sits comfortably in my chest.
She wanted the truth. Well, she’ll have it.