Chapter Six - Lukyan
The reports from my men arrive before sunrise. I read them one by one, standing at the long table in my study. The more I read, the tighter the muscles between my shoulders pull.
They weren’t mine.
The men who tried to take Clara acted without my orders.
They belonged to a smaller crew that has been testing boundaries for months, pushing at places they think I have stopped watching.
They followed her for days. They waited until she was isolated.
They moved in with confidence, expecting no consequence.
My hand closes around the edge of the table until the wood strains under my grip.
They thought they could take her from the street like she was nothing. They thought I would ignore it. They thought she belonged to no one.
A heat rises in me that I haven’t felt in years. It sharpens my focus until every other concern falls away.
I call one of my lieutenants. He answers on the first ring.
“Find them,” I say.
“Yes, sir.”
“And handle it.”
There is a brief pause. “Handled how?”
“Permanently.”
The word hangs in the air. He understands. No questions. No hesitation. He moves to carry out the order.
It should end there, but another lieutenant steps forward as I set the phone down. His posture is stiff, careful, as if he already regrets speaking.
“Sir,” he begins, “we have other matters due this week. Allocating resources to chase men over a journalist—”
My stare stops him.
He lowers his eyes. I step closer so he hears me clearly.
“They touched what’s mine.”
He swallows and nods. He does not ask another question. He walks out quickly, leaving the room in a silence that settles deep.
I should return to business. I should focus on the operations that keep this entire structure intact. Instead, I walk down the hall toward the guest room where she sits behind a locked door.
I expect to find Clara pacing or shouting again.
Instead, when I unlock the door and step inside, she is sitting in the chair near the window.
Her knees are drawn up slightly. Her shoulders sag with exhaustion she is trying to hide.
Her skin looks pale from lack of sleep, but her gaze is clear the moment she hears me enter.
Clara doesn’t shrink back. She straightens.
Her eyes track me as I cross the room. I stop in front of her, expecting resistance, anger, maybe another attempt at throwing something, but she stays still.
I ask her the same questions I asked last time. “Who told you to write my name? Who paid you? Who stands behind you?”
She doesn’t hesitate. “No one.”
“Why do you keep lying?”
“I’m not lying. I wrote the story because corruption matters. Because it affects real people, because I found a trail and followed it.”
“You don’t understand what kind of trail you followed,” I say.
“Then explain it,” Clara snaps.
I hold her gaze. She’s shaking, but she hides it well. Her knuckles are white against the edge of the chair. She keeps her voice steady through sheer force.
Most people beg or bargain at this point. She pushes.
I could shout. I could threaten. I could remind her what happens to those who challenge me. Instead, something in her expression stops me.
I kneel.
Her breath catches, but she doesn’t lean away. I settle in front of her, eye level, eliminating the distance between us.
“You have no idea what kind of men you’ve provoked,” I say. My voice stays low. Even. “They don’t warn. They don’t negotiate. They take. They make people vanish. They don’t care who you are or why you wrote what you wrote.”
“Including you?” she fires back.
My jaw tightens. The question strikes deeper than she knows. For a moment, I consider answering honestly. I consider telling her that I stopped her kidnapping because the thought of anyone else touching her felt intolerable.
I say nothing.
The silence stretches. She watches me with that same mix of fear and defiance. I stand slowly, brushing the dust from my knee.
“We’ll talk again,” I say.
She opens her mouth to argue, but I’ve already stepped back. I walk to the door and lock it behind me.
Her voice doesn’t follow me this time, but the question she asked does.
“Including you?”
I close my hand into a fist as I walk down the hall.
***
The sun is lowering behind the trees when a knock comes at my door. It’s sharp, controlled—one of my men who knows better than to interrupt me without reason. I close the ledger on my desk and tell him to enter.
He steps inside with a tablet in hand. There’s tension in the way he holds his shoulders, a stiffness that tells me something is already wrong.
“Sir,” he says, “you should see this.”
He hands me the tablet. A security feed from outside the estate plays on loop. The footage is grainy at first—tree branches shifting, a sliver of the far fence line, the long stretch of shadows beyond. Then a figure moves across the screen. Not one of mine. Not a civilian.
Someone watching. Someone scouting. Someone bold enough to get close.
My jaw goes rigid as I replay the clip again, slower this time. The figure surveys the property, keeps low, then slips back into the trees. A single person, light on their feet.
A spy.
My men were supposed to spot anyone within half a mile of the grounds. The estate is remote, quiet, forgotten by most. The only people who know the land well enough to get near it are rivals who survived the last purge.
The tablet creaks under my grip.
“How long ago?” I ask.
“An hour.”
“Are they still nearby?”
“We’re checking, but they moved fast. We haven’t seen them again.”
A fire burns low in my chest. Controlled, but vicious.
“Where was the patrol team?” I ask.
“On the east side,” he says. “They didn’t hear anything.”
“Then they weren’t paying attention.”
He lowers his gaze. He knows I don’t tolerate incompetence. Not now. Not with someone like her behind locked doors.
The idea of a rival syndicate finding her—dragging her out, interrogating her, using her as leverage against me—tightens something in my chest far stronger than anger.
“They were testing the perimeter,” I say quietly.
“Yes, sir.”
“They’re watching us.”
“Yes.”
“They know I brought someone here.”
The man doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to.
I set the tablet down and stand. The room feels smaller around me, as if the walls are closing in. I take a steady breath and let the calculation settle into place.
“Double the guards,” I say. “Every entry point. Every blind spot. I want eyes on the entire property.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tighten internal security. No one outside the estate hears about this. Not a word. Not a whisper. Tell Nikolai to keep his guard up and don’t let her out of his sight.”
His expression shifts. Confusion flickers for a moment before he hides it. He knows what it means when I hide someone so completely—not even my closest contacts will know she exists.
“Understood.”
I step closer until he lifts his chin reflexively. He can feel the tension radiating off me.
“If anyone outside this house learns she’s here,” I say, “I’ll hold every one of you responsible.”
He nods quickly. “We won’t let that happen.”
“Good, because if someone tries to take her again, I’m not showing restraint.”
He swallows and backs away.
When he leaves the room, I sit at the edge of the desk and let the anger settle into something colder.
Rival syndicates don’t act on impulse. They watched her before I brought her here.
They planned her abduction. They saw something in her story they didn’t like—or saw an opportunity and moved fast.
Either way, they won’t stop. They think she’s an easy target. A tool. A pawn.
They think she’s unprotected.
The thought makes my chest tighten again, sharp and unfamiliar.
I walk to the hallway monitor and pull up the feed from her room. She’s sitting on the floor now, her knees pulled to her chest. Her eyes are red from exhaustion, but she isn’t crying. She keeps glancing toward the door, waiting for footsteps, waiting for answers she isn’t going to get yet.
I turn off the feed, jaw still tight. The silence of the house sinks in around me. Heavy. Thick with threat.
Clara is here because of me, and I’ll keep her safe no matter who I have to kill to ensure it.
***
Night settles heavy over the estate, but sleep won’t come. I sit alone in the study, lights dim, the quiet pressing against my skin. My laptop glows on the desk, the security feed from her room filling the screen.
Clara sits where she always does now, curled up by the window, knees drawn tight to her chest. Her hair falls over her cheek, half hiding her face from the camera. She looks tired. Not defeated, but stretched thin.
I watch as she leans forward and breathes against the glass, clouding it with a small circle of condensation. She lifts her hand and uses her fingertip to trace shapes in the mist. At first it looks random, idle movements. Then she hesitates and writes something slowly, deliberately.
I zoom the camera in, sharpening the image until the letters take shape.
Get me out.
Three words, clear and pleading.
For a long moment, I don’t move. Her finger lingers on the glass, as if she’s waiting for an answer. The words smudge, fading as the condensation disappears.
A hollow ache settles somewhere I thought was long dead. I try to tell myself she’s safe here—that if I let her leave, my rivals would destroy her or worse. I tell myself this is for her own good.
The image won’t leave me.
She’s not begging. She’s not falling apart. She’s trying—desperately—to hold on to hope. I’m the one erasing it, day by day.
A pulse of something almost like guilt flickers inside me, too sharp to ignore. I snap the laptop shut and lean back in my chair, pressing my palms to my eyes.
“You wanted the truth, little journalist. Now you’re living it.”
The words leave my mouth in a whisper, harsh and unsatisfying.
She wanted to know what the world is really like. I’m giving her the lesson she thought she was prepared for. Except as I sit in the dim glow of the study, watching her words fade into the darkness, I wonder whose lesson this truly is.
She’s safe from the world in here, I tell myself.
For the first time, I’m not sure if I’m protecting her from my enemies—or from myself.