Chapter 5
Kazimir
Exactly half of the wall at Baranov Tech Conference Center is glass, running horizontally the length of the building. When guests first walk in, it’s stunning, but even more so when they realize it overlooks the tarmac and my private fleet of aircraft.
The men behind me have no interest in what’s outside. They’ve seen it a million times before. They discuss business amongst themselves – some in suits, others in civilian clothing; some in murmurs, others insistently.
They know better than to interrupt when my attention drifts, which it does now, drawn to the jet parked nearest the hangar.
Fresh blue and white paint catch the light, its interior stripped down and rebuilt to my specifications just weeks ago.
Italian leather and dark wood. The plan is perfect, which is the problem.
It’s the same aircraft that brought Alyona Demsky to the United States seven years ago.
She was so pale and fragile. Anyone who saw her could see she was exhausted.
Her eyes were red-rimmed from grief, although she refused to cry in front of anyone.
She just stood there clutching a single carry-on.
Did I fall for her then?
It’s hard to know; but I don’t think so, even now, after getting a taste – a touch – of her last night.
No, I was younger then too. Sharp around the edges and less practiced at compartmentalizing. Is it sick that I’m obsessed with a woman eighteen years younger than me? Probably. But she’s never been a girl, not really, not after everything she’s been through.
She stepped off that plane as an adult. Wrecked, confused, and pulling away from Liev immediately.
That’s the real problem here.
She’s my best friend’s daughter.
She should be off limits.
She is off limits.
“The Dubai order is confirmed,” Liev says beside me. His voice is steady and deliberately grounded. He knows me well enough to know how to draw me back to the moment. Which makes me feel even more guilt.
“Five jets, all custom builds. They want delivery staggered over eighteen months to avoid suspicion.”
I nod without looking at him, my gaze still fixed on the aircraft.
Baranov Tech stretches behind me in a sprawl of steel, concrete, and manufacturing plants.
It’s sleek enough to disguise crime as innovation, but every man inside knows exactly what we manufacture here.
What else moves through our private airstrip under the protection of legitimate contracts and international ambiguity.
“Production can handle it,” I say. “Shift the smaller contracts. Outsource.”
Liev hums in agreement, making a note on his tablet, and I feel it then – the reminder that this empire is not self-sustaining and that my focus is not something I can afford to misplace. Guilt laps at me anyway, a sea of it against a steady shore.
Liev Demsky trusts me with his life. He trusts me with his daughter’s life, and what did I do? I had my hand down her panties, working her to the brink of euphoria in a dark alley outside of a dirty bar. We’ve known each other for more than half of our lives, Liev and me.
He has no idea how often I stand in the shadows three nights a week, watching his daughter exist in a space that does not deserve her. Tracking the way men look at her; calculating how easily I could ruin them.
The meeting continues with figures, timelines, and logistics flowing in one ear and out the other.
It ends with a collective understanding that nothing here requires my immediate attention of violence.
The men disperse. I roll my shoulders once, tension cracking through muscle and bone.
The leftover anger from last night is still lodged inside me somewhere.
The memory of a stranger’s hand on Alyona doesn’t fade.
Liev lingers, as he often does, and Nika joins us near the exit. His sharp eyes are already cataloguing everything about me that’s off. That’s the price I pay for his expertise.
“You look like hell,” he says pleasantly. “Rough night?”
There’s nothing to read into his words, but I turn toward him anyway, agitated. Liev’s glance lands immediately on the dark bruise blooming along my wrist, the imprint of a desperate man’s grip before I broke his fingers.
Liev’s mouth curves. “You keeping secrets now, Kaz? Finally found one worth keeping?”
“Work,” I say shortly.
But Nika laughs behind me, quietly, commenting to Liev: “That doesn’t look like work.”
I let it pass because deflection is easier than truth. Liev studies me for a moment longer, suspicion flickering behind the humor, but he lets it go.
We leave Baranov Tech together, the heat slamming into us as soon as we step outside, Savannah in summer offering no mercy, the air thick and bright and oppressive. I slide into the back of the SUV, muscle memory taking over as the city rolls past in flashes of green and sun-bleached white.
Alyona does not leave my thoughts.
She arrived seven years ago after her mother died in a car accident on a wet road outside Prague, sudden and senseless, the kind of loss that cleaves a life cleanly in two.
Liev had called me in the middle of the night, his voice strained in a way I had never heard, and I had arranged everything within hours.
The plane. The paperwork. The quiet arrival that would keep her out of the press and away from questions she could not yet answer.
She had been older than I expected, younger than I was prepared for, grief sharpening her into something fragile and fierce all at once.
I’d been obsessed then, but in a different way.
It had nothing to do with lust; just with seeing something so untouched become sullied by the world. The unexpectedness of it.
She is neither fragile nor untouched now, and the knowledge twists in my chest.
The SUV pulls through the gates of my home, the old plantation rising from the riverbank like a relic that refuses to die, all sweeping oaks and wide verandas, history layered thick into its bones.
Inside, the command room hums with low voices and screens flickering to life as we take our places.
History swathes the technology, keeping my empire from prying eyes.
Nika is all business now, the teasing gone. “We’ve got movement from the south. Cartel traffic pushing north.”
That has my attention.
“Name,” I say.
“Hinto,” he replies. “Mostly drugs, but he’s branching out. Testing routes. Shopping for port space in Savannah.”
The implication settles heavily and is unwelcome. Savannah is mine. Every dock, every shadowed corridor of legitimate shipping, every informal understanding that keeps my operations smooth and invisible.
“He’s probing,” Liev says quietly. “Seeing what you’ll tolerate.”
I lean back, steepling my fingers while my mind calculates angles and outcomes. This is the kind of challenge that requires decisiveness. Clear assertion of control before curiosity becomes entitlement.
“Set a meeting,” I say. “I don’t like surprises.”
Liev nods, already reaching for his phone.
Might as well end it before it begins.
As strategy unfurls neatly in my mind, another image intrudes; unwanted and relentless.
Alyona in the alley, her breath hitching, her body responding to me with a trust I do not deserve and a hunger that mirrors my own.
The forbidden nature of it only sharpens the edge.
She is Liev’s daughter and not mine to claim.
I have already crossed a line with her in ways that cannot be undone.
I close my eyes briefly, trying to shut her out because distraction is a liability and obsession is a weakness. I’m supposed to be better than this.
When I open them again, I know one thing with absolute certainty.
Whatever comes next, whether it is a cartel testing my borders or a woman testing my restraint, I will not lose control of what is mine.