CHAPTER 4
Blood Calls to Blood
# ILYA
Twenty-four hours.
I've spent twenty-four hours pacing my study like a caged animal, reviewing surveillance footage, fielding calls from Dmitri about the Chechen situation, and pretending I'm not thinking about the woman locked in my bedroom.
The woman who should be nothing more than leverage.
I stop at the door, my hand hovering over the handle, and force myself to breathe. This hesitation is weakness. This awareness of her—of the way she looked at me when I touched her jaw, of the defiance burning in those dark eyes—is a liability I cannot afford.
Three years of hunting her. Three months of surveillance after the facial recognition hit. And now she's here, behind this door, and I'm standing in my own hallway like a man afraid of what he'll find.
*Get control.*
I turn the key.
The bedroom is bathed in morning light, pale gold streaming through windows I deliberately left uncovered. No privacy. No darkness to hide in. Every tool of psychological pressure deployed with precision.
And there she is, sitting cross-legged on the bed with her father's file spread around her like a war map.
She doesn't look up when I enter. Doesn't flinch. Her fingers trace the edge of a crime scene photograph—the aftermath of the Rostov warehouse massacre, if I'm not mistaken—with the clinical detachment of a surgeon examining an X-ray.
"You're not eating."
The untouched breakfast tray sits on the nightstand, exactly where the staff left it eight hours ago.
"I'm not hungry." Her voice is flat, focused. She still hasn't looked at me. "Your intelligence on the Kovalev faction is outdated. This file lists Sergei Kovalev as the primary enforcer, but Sergei's been dead for eighteen months. His nephew Viktor runs their operations now."
I go still.
She lifts her gaze then, and what I see in her eyes makes my chest tighten with something I refuse to name. No fear. No desperation. Just cold, calculating focus.
"You didn't know that." It's not a question.
"How do you know that?"
"Because I've spent seven years watching everyone who wants me dead.
" She sets down the photograph and reaches for another document—the organizational chart my analysts compiled six months ago.
"This is wrong too. You have Dmitri Volkov listed as a mid-level operative.
He's been running their weapons pipeline since his father's stroke in 2022. "
I cross to the bed, close enough to see the notes she's penciled in the margins. Corrections. Additions. Names I don't recognize connected by arrows to names I do.
"Where did you get this information?"
"I told you." She looks up at me, and the morning light catches the exhaustion in her face—the shadows under her eyes, the tension in her jaw. She hasn't slept. "Survival. When people want you dead, you learn everything you can about them."
I stare at the file, at her careful annotations, and feel the ground shift beneath my feet.
This is not the terrified girl I expected to find. This is not a hostage waiting to be broken.
This is a weapon.
---
# NADIA
He's looking at me differently now.
I can see the calculation behind those pale eyes, the rapid reassessment of everything he thought he knew about me. Good. Let him recalculate. Let him understand that I am not a pawn to be sacrificed.
"Sit down." I gesture to the chair by the window. "You came here to tell me something. So tell me."
His jaw tightens. Men like Ilya Morozov don't take orders. They give them. But after a long moment, he pulls the chair closer to the bed and sits, his posture rigid with the effort of ceding even this small measure of control.
"You're bait."
The words land like bullets, precise and brutal.
"I gathered that much."
"You don't understand." He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and his gaze pins me in place.
"In two weeks, three rival factions will receive evidence that you're alive and in my custody.
The Chechen alliance, the Kovalev remnants, and what's left of your father's organization.
They'll all converge on the same location at the same time. "
"And you'll eliminate them while they're fighting over me."
"Yes."
"And me?" I keep my voice steady, even though my heart is hammering against my ribs. "What happens to the bait after the trap springs?"
His silence is answer enough.
"Public execution." I say it for him, because he won't. "To prove the Morozov family keeps its promises. To show everyone what happens to Petrova blood."
"It's not personal."
"It's my death. It's personal to me."
Something flickers in his expression. Something that looks almost like regret before he locks it away behind that mask of ice.
"The decision isn't final," he says. "There are... variables."
"Variables." I laugh, and the sound is sharp enough to make him flinch. "Is that what I am? A variable in your spreadsheet of corpses?"
"You're leverage. You're bait. You're—" He stops. Swallows. "You're complicating things."
"Good."
I gather the scattered pages of the file and stack them with deliberate care, giving myself time to think. Time to calculate. Time to find the angle that will keep me breathing past the two-week deadline he's just handed me.
"I have a proposal."
---
# ILYA
She has a proposal.
Of course she does. Because Nadia Petrova doesn't beg. Doesn't break. She studies crime scene photos with the focus of a general planning a campaign and offers deals to the man who's supposed to kill her.
"I'm listening."
"Everything in this file is wrong." She taps the stack of papers. "Your intelligence is outdated, your organizational charts are incomplete, and your timeline for the rival factions' movements is based on assumptions that stopped being accurate two years ago."
"And you can fix that."
"I can give you names. Locations. Weaknesses.
I can tell you which lieutenants are skimming from their bosses and which ones are looking for a way out.
I can give you the Chechen alliance's supply routes and the Kovalev family's safe houses and every secret my father's organization thought they buried when they tried to bury me. "
My pulse quickens. "In exchange for what?"
"Protection." Her eyes meet mine, and I see the steel beneath the exhaustion. "Not just during your operation. After. You keep me alive, you give me resources to disappear properly, and I give you everything I know about the people who want us both dead."
"You're asking me to choose between a guaranteed outcome and a gamble."
"I'm asking you to choose between using me once and using me indefinitely." She leans forward, and her proximity sends heat coiling through my chest. "I'm worth more to you alive than dead. You know it. I know it. The only question is whether you're smart enough to admit it."
I should say no.
I should remind her that she's a prisoner, that her survival depends entirely on my mercy, that this negotiation is an illusion I'm allowing her to maintain.
Instead, I find myself studying the curve of her jaw, the defiance in her dark eyes, the way her pulse flutters at the base of her throat.
She's afraid. She's hiding it well, but I can see it—the fine tremor in her hands, the way she holds herself too still. She's gambling everything on this moment, on her ability to convince me that she's more valuable alive than dead.
And the terrifying thing is that she's right.
"Cooperation means complicity." I keep my voice flat, clinical. "You won't just be providing intelligence. You'll be participating in operations. Violence. The kind of work your father built his empire on."
"I know."
"You'll become the thing you've been running from."
"I know." She holds my gaze without flinching. "But I'll be alive. And at this point, that's all that matters."
The silence stretches between us, charged with electricity I can almost taste. I should walk away. I should lock the door and let the plan proceed as designed.
Instead, I reach out and take the file from her hands, my fingers brushing against hers.
The contact sends heat racing up my arm.
"Show me," I say. "Show me what you know about the Chechen alliance."
Her breath catches. Just slightly. Just enough for me to know that she feels this too—this dangerous pull between us that has nothing to do with leverage and everything to do with recognition.
She starts talking. Names, dates, locations. Information that would take my analysts months to compile, delivered with the precision of someone who's been preparing for this moment for years.
I listen. I watch her hands move across the papers, watch her face as she explains the web of alliances and betrayals that define our world.
And I realize, with a certainty that settles into my bones like ice, that I'm not going to kill her.
Not because she's valuable. Not because her intelligence is useful.
Because somewhere in the past twenty-four hours, she stopped being leverage and became something else. Something I don't have a name for yet.
Something dangerous.
My phone buzzes. Dmitri's number.
"What."
"We have a problem." His voice is tight with controlled panic. "The Chechen alliance moved early. They hit the Westside warehouse twenty minutes ago. Six dead, including two of ours."
"Casualties?"
"Contained. But they left a message. They know about the girl."
I go still. Nadia watches me, her expression sharpening as she reads the change in my posture.
"How?"
"Unknown. But they're mobilizing. Full assault protocol. They want her, and they're not waiting for your timeline."
I end the call and meet Nadia's gaze.
"The Chechens know you're here. They're coming."
She doesn't panic. Doesn't scream. She just nods, once, and starts gathering the scattered papers.
"Then we need to move."
"We?"
"You just spent ten minutes listening to intelligence that proves I'm worth more alive than dead." She stands, and her proximity makes my breath catch. "So make a choice, Ilya. Am I disposable bait, or am I an asset you're going to defend?"
The question hangs between us, heavy with implications I'm not ready to examine.
I should sacrifice her. Let the Chechens have her. Salvage what I can of the original plan.
Instead, I reach for my gun.
"Stay close to me," I say. "And don't make me regret this."
Her smile is sharp enough to draw blood.
"I wouldn't dream of it."