Chapter 5 - Nikolai
I don’t linger outside the door, regardless of the urge I feel to, silently grasping at ways I can ease the pain for her, only to find myself at a complete loss.
Still, I stand there a second longer than I should, staring at the dark wood and listening to the muffled sound of her voice, raw and fractured, slipping through the cracks.
Her grief is messy and ugly, but honest.
She was willing to find herself under a knife just to prolong her father’s life, and in the end, it was taken away from her anyway.
My jaw tightens as I turn away.
That could have gone a lot better, and yet, I don’t know how I would’ve possibly softened that blow if I had the chance to redo it.
Moving down the hall with measured steps, I feel an edge under my skin now, leaving me feeling restless. I run a hand along my jaw while irritation simmers just beneath the surface.
I handled that wrong…not necessarily the truth of it, since that was inevitable, but the delivery and timing. Hell, the entire situation.
I’m used to being in control and knowing how people will react. I know how to steer conversations where I need them to go. Fear, anger, and loyalty are predictable and manageable, but what she gave me in there wasn’t something you manage.
In all honesty, I wasn’t even going to tell her yet. I wanted to give her the chance to rest and regain some of her strength, but her mind was too sharp to let it go. She needed answers.
Another wave of irritation moves through me, but I force it down as best as I can.
At the very least, she’s here, and not in that clinic or on the damn operating table. Instead of being carved open while they strip her down to parts and profit, she’s safe, even if she doesn’t see it that way yet.
Even if she hates me for it.
Stepping into my office, I shut the door behind me, and the quiet snaps into place like a seal around me. It gives me the chance to decompress and to momentarily forget about the pure agony she’s enduring in the spare room.
It’s better, but I know that will be a momentary thing.
I pull my phone from my pocket and scroll once before hitting Ruslan’s contact again, and it rings twice before I hear his voice.
“Yeah?”
Straight to the point, as always. It’s something I respect about the way he operates.
“What’s the status?” I ask, bracing for something I’m not going to like, given how I deviated from the plan.
He pauses, and my grip tightens slightly on the phone.
“They pulled out,” he says, flat enough to let me know the rest of it didn’t fall into place like they were supposed to.
My expression hardens. “Define pulled out.”
“Grigori Malenkov, the one in charge, caught wind that something was off after you spoke to the doctor,” Ruslan replies. “They shut it down fast and cleared out whatever they could carry. The clinic is a graveyard now.”
Closing my eyes with a steadying breath, I try to keep myself from losing it completely. Of course they did.
“They didn’t just walk,” I say, voice low. “What did they take?”
“Everything that incriminated them…files, storage drives, and any inventory they had.”
Organs.
My jaw locks, wishing more than anything that I could face them myself right now. “They’ve gone into hiding then?”
“For now.”
A sharp exhale leaves me as I lean back against the desk and stare at nothing.
Weeks—months of groundwork. Of contacts procured, surveillance performed, and perfect positioning, all gone.
Because I stepped in and deviated. Because I couldn’t let one more person die when I had the power to stop it, regardless of what it cost me.
“Shit,” I mutter, lacking the right words to say as I scrub a hand down my face.
“Yeah,” Ruslan agrees, lacking any real judgment.
As much as I try to keep it tempered, irritation flares hotter in me now, and while I want to blame Malenkov and Volodin, this blame rests on my shoulders. I did this.
“I had them,” I mumble, unable to keep the disappointment in. “One more night and I would’ve had everything we needed to bury them.”
“I know.”
“That clinic was our entry point,” I continue, pacing now. “The harvesting, their distribution, their buyers…everything ran through that place.”
“And now they’ll find a way to continue elsewhere.”
His words aren’t unkind or wrong, but they grate anyway.
Stopping my pacing, I brace my hands on the desk and keep myself as steady as I can.
“They spooked, and it tipped them off.”
“You want the truth?” Ruslan asks after a moment, giving me the chance to refuse his opinion, which means I likely don’t want to hear it.
I huff out a humorless breath anyway. “Always.”
“You moved too early.”
No sugarcoating and no hesitation, as I expect from him by now.
Straightening slowly, my expression hardens. “I know. I made a call.”
“You did,” he agrees. “And now they’re ghosts.”
Silence stretches between us, both knowing he’s not wrong, and that’s the problem.
I close my eyes briefly and exhale through my nose, forcing the anger down into something usable. Something that doesn’t leave me feeling like all of this was for nothing.
“Where are they heading?”
“We’re still tracking, but we’ve got leads. Just nothing solid yet,” Ruslan responds.
“That’s not good enough.”
“Then we’ll tighten things,” he says. “They won’t stay off-grid forever. Operations like that relocate instead of disappearing.”
He’s right. Men like Malenkov don’t back down at the first sign of resistance. He’ll back off as long as he needs to before getting everything in order and trying again. There’s too much money at stake.
“They’ll be careful now. Paranoid, too.”
“Good,” Ruslan counters. “That means they won’t be operating for the time being. Not for a while, anyway.”
Tilting my head slightly, I consider that.
Pressure forces them into hiding, and it disrupts the network as a whole. It isn’t the outcome I wanted, but it isn’t a complete loss either.
“We still know who they are,” he adds, not letting this be the end of it, regardless of the fumble. “We know how they work, their buyers, their routes…it’s not all gone, just delayed.”
“Delays get more people killed,” I mutter.
“So does rushing.”
I huff out another breath and idly stroke my jaw. He has a point.
“You did what you had to,” he adds after a beat, surprisingly supportive considering the circumstances.
I don’t acknowledge that, because I’m not sure that’s true. Instead, I murmur, “I compromised the operation.”
“You adjusted it. That’s a whole different thing.”
Leaning back again, I stare up at the ceiling now. “It feels the same.”
“Maybe, but we’re not done. We’ll find them again, and next time, we’ll go harder.”
Harder and more direct. The kind of approach my brothers would appreciate.
“Extreme measures?”
“If it comes to it,” he murmurs like it’s simple.
Letting that settle, my irritation cools into something more focused, able to see where the plan needs to adjust, and how it’s still viable.
“They won’t expect us to wait,” I say slowly.
“Then we don’t,” Ruslan replies. “We’ll regroup and hit them where they think they’re safe. Then, that’ll be the end for them.”
A faint smirk tugs at the corner of my mouth. That’s more like it.
“Alright. Keep tracking, and I want updates the second you have something concrete.”
“You’ll get them.”
I can practically hear the shift in his posture through the line, knowing that when he sets his mind to something, he’ll get it no matter the cost. It’s how we’ve made it this far.
“But there’s the other matter,” he says carefully, already letting me know exactly where this is going. “The victim. How is she?”
“She’s awake,” I tell him with an exhale, well aware that it’s a completely separate issue now. “And taking it as well as you’d expect.”
Ruslan considers his words, then fills the silence with a steady exhale. “That complicates things.”
“Everything about this is complicated now.”
“She’s a liability.”
My gaze drifts toward the door despite not being able to see the spare room from my position, and I imagine her in there, curled up, broken, and trying to process a world that just collapsed under her.
“No,” I say after a beat. “She won’t be. She’s contained.”
It doesn’t feel like the right word, but it’s the one that fits the situation.
“Then we deal with it like everything else.”
That means we adapt and move forward, which seems to be a trend for now.
“Yeah,” I murmur. “I’ll handle it.”
“We’ll get another shot at them,” he adds with a note of optimism. “This isn’t over, Nikolai.”
Straightening my posture, I roll my shoulders back and allow that notion to settle in. It certainly isn’t.
“Good. Call me when you’ve got something.”
“Will do.”
The line clicks dead, leaving me in silence again.
I stand there for a long moment with the phone still in my hand, and the weight of everything else settles into place.
While I lost the clean ending and the easy path, it isn’t all gone.
Now it’s going to be messy and more personal than I wanted, but I don’t have a choice now.
A slow exhale leaves me as I push off the desk, well aware of what I have to do next.
Fine. I can work with that, like I always do.
But first, there’s something else I need to deal with. Something I chose.
Glancing at the spare room door again once I step back into the hallway, the quiet stretches through the house again. I don’t hear any sound from her now, and it sends a flicker of worry through me.
I stop outside her door, hand hovering over the handle for a brief second as I gather myself, then I push it open.
The room is dimmer now with the curtains partially drawn as the sun has nearly completed its descent, amber glow slowly draining away.
Danielle’s still on the bed, curled slightly on her side with her back to the door. Her shoulders are tense and rigid like she’s holding herself together by force alone, but soon enough, it will give way.
For a moment, I just watch and try to find the best path ahead. Then I step inside and force myself to face it.
“We need to talk,” I tell her, quieter this time.
She stiffens but doesn’t turn around, and her voice comes out hoarse. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that we need to.”
Then, slowly, she rolls onto her back with stiff movements, her eyes red and swollen when they meet mine. She doesn’t trust me, and I don’t expect her to.
“Then talk,” she says flatly.
With only one place to start, I gather my thoughts and begin. “You and your father were part of a fraudulent medical trial. They pretended their surgery could save him just to get him on the table.”
Her expression doesn’t change at first, then her brows knit slightly as it registers. “What?”
“The procedure,” I continue, “the synthetic organ…it wasn’t real. It was a front for something much worse.”
“For what?” she asks, though I can see the realization starting to form in her eyes.
Holding her gaze, I know this won’t sit well in any capacity. “For organ harvesting.”
Danielle freezes again, expression gradually twisting. Now she’s really listening.
“No,” she says immediately with a shake of her head. “No, that doesn’t make sense. The doctors…they had credentials, they were legitimate.”
“They were part of it,” I tell her, not leaving room for debate.
Her breathing quickens, and she blinks back at me in utter disbelief. Then she seemingly tries to grasp onto something more believable in her eyes, but there’s less conviction in it now. “You expect me to believe that an entire hospital was involved?”
“It was a private clinic,” I correct. “Not a hospital. And yes, it happens more than you think.”
Her eyes search my face, looking for cracks and doubt. For anything that says I’m lying, but she doesn’t find it. Then, her face hardens a bit as her suspicion flares. “If you’re not connected to them, then how do you know all this? Who are you really?”
It’s the question I’ve been avoiding, but I can’t completely avoid it forever.
I exhale slowly. “I have connections.”
“What kind of connections?”
“The kind that put me in a position to know what was happening there, and what was going to happen to you.”
Her gaze sharpens at my vague response, and frustration flashes across her face, quickly followed by what looks like fear. It settles in her eyes, both dark and uncertain.
“You said they were going to kill me,” she says quietly, looking more hesitant now. “How do I know you’re not going to do the same?”
The question hangs between us, and as annoying as it is to hear, given everything I just put on the line to get her out of there, I know it’s reasonable.
With a small step closer, but not close enough to crowd her, I try to keep myself as unimposing as possible. But I’m not blind; I know how intimidating I can seem.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
She studies me like she’s trying to decide if that’s a promise or a veiled threat. “You expect me to just believe that?”
“No,” I admit. “But you don’t have much of a choice right now either.”
Danielle hesitates, then grits her teeth. “I want to leave.”
“I know.”
“Then let me.”
“I can’t,” I mutter.
More irritation sparks in her, regardless of her devastation. “Why not?”
Because the people who killed her father would finish the job if they found her, and now she’s tied to something bigger than she could possibly understand. Because I dragged her into my world, and now I don’t know how to let her out of it without ruining her life more.
But all of that feels like too much to say, so instead, I say, “Because it’s not safe for you out there yet. Not this soon.”
She lets out a shaky breath and runs a hand through her hair with a whisper, “This is insane. All of this. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It will. Eventually.”
She looks at me again with that fear still in her eyes, but also with something else underneath it now. Something raw and almost desperate for answers.
“Why did you help me?”
The question catches me off guard, and I don’t have a clean answer for it.
I could say it was strategic or that it served a purpose, but none of that would be true. Not really.
Holding her gaze, something unfamiliar stirs under the surface within me, and the words leave me like an admittance, “I’m not sure.”
That’s the truth. Somewhere between hearing her voice through that wire and knowing she was on that table changed something in me. Something I can’t place a name to yet.
And I don’t like not being able to name things.
Her brows draw together slightly, like she doesn’t know what to do with that answer, but she doesn’t say anything.
Neither do I.
“Get some rest,” I tell her after a long moment before I step back toward the door. “We’ll figure this out.”
Her lips part like she wants to argue, yet nothing comes out.
Good…I don’t have the patience for another fight right now.
With a note of finality, I step into the hallway again and pull the door closed behind me. As I walk away, I know this wasn’t part of the plan.
But somehow, it feels like the start of something I can’t walk away from.