Chapter Twenty
Nikolai
Something pulls me out of sleep at three in the morning.
Not a sound. Not movement. Just the sudden, absolute awareness that my eyes need to be open—the same instinct that kept me alive through decades in the Bratva and four years of living like a ghost.
I’ve learned not to question it.
Lauren is asleep, her breathing slow and even. I ease back the covers without waking her and take my gun from the nightstand drawer.
The penthouse is dark.
I move through it the way I was trained to—low, quiet, checking angles before I clear them.
Living room first. The city glows through the floor-to-ceiling windows, painting everything in a low amber wash.
I cross to the glass and run two fingers along the frame.
No pressure variation. No tampering. The front door locks are intact. The balcony doors, the same.
I hold my breath outside Hannah’s room and listen. Through the wood, I can just make out her breathing—soft, steady, deep under. My chest loosens by a fraction.
I finish the sweep. Every room, every lock, every point of entry. Nothing out of place. No sign of anything.
That’s the problem.
I end up in the kitchen, gun set on the counter beside me, and stand in the dark. The city hums faintly through the glass. I don’t turn on the light.
A perfect way to lure you out.
Elias had buried it in the middle of the call like a casual observation, the way he always buries the live wire. I’ve been turning it over since—running the variables, trying to put a shape to it.
Aslanov doesn’t want money. He wants to pull the trigger himself. Which means the lure isn’t a location.
It’s a person.
I press my palms flat against the counter and breathe through it.
Lauren.
Hannah.
The two people in this penthouse who have no idea what they represent to a man like Ronan Aslanov—not as people, but as leverage. As the perfect way to make me come out of hiding and walk straight into whatever he’s prepared for me.
I stay in the kitchen a long time, thinking it through in the dark.
He’s already set things in motion. I can feel the shape of it pressing closer—the same way you feel a storm before the sky gives anything away.
I push off the counter, pick up the gun, and start moving again.
I move into the hallway, gun raised, and hold still. Nothing jumps. The corridor runs clean to the far wall, every shadow where it should be.
I’m about to turn back toward the office when something stops me. The closet door—third on the left—sitting an inch open. I know that door. It’s always shut. Claire keeps it that way.
I cross to it in three steps, cock the gun, and go in hard.
A face stares back at me.
Wide eyes, fixed smile.
The blank expression of a doll that has been collecting dust long enough to forget what it was made for. My pulse spikes and then drops. I stand there a moment, looking at it—folded towels, spare bedsheets, a shelf of old linens stacked to the ceiling around it—and exhale slowly through my nose.
I leave the door exactly as I found it. Ajar.
On my way back through the main area, I pass under one of the security cameras, its red light steady in the dark.
I stop.
Blyad.
I’ve been walking the floors with a gun while the answer was mounted to the ceiling the whole time. Three in the morning and I’m checking linen closets. I need the footage.
I make my way to the office and open the laptop. The security system is solid, but the download is slow, files crawling in one percent at a time while I sit in the dark and wait. I watch the progress bar with the particular patience of a man who has learned that impatience costs more than time.
When it’s done, I pull up the panel and work through it methodically. Balcony. Kitchen. Front door. Hallway. I run each feed, then run it again on half-speed, watching for anything that doesn’t belong—a shadow that shifts wrong, a frame that stutters, anything.
Nothing.
I sit back.
The cameras are clean. The locks were intact. The door was a doll and a shelf of spare towels.
Which means either I’m chasing a feeling—or whatever Aslanov is planning hasn’t arrived yet.
I’m not sure which is worse.
I go back to the beginning. Not the past few nights this time—I pull just the last twenty-four hours, tightening the window. If something is coming, it’ll show up here first.
I sit forward and work through it slowly, timestamp by timestamp. Half-speed.
The balcony. The kitchen. The front door and hallway.
Then the screen stutters. A crawl of pixelated static, there and gone in a few seconds, before the image resolves again.
I go back.
Same thing. Front door and hallway cam, same window of time.
I close the file and redownload it, deleting older footage to clear the space. The laptop churns through it while I wait, jaw tight.
Same fucking result.
I set the gun down on the desk and look at it for a moment, then pick up my phone and dial.
“Paladin Security. How can I help?”
“My hallway cam is glitching. A few minutes of footage, earlier tonight—corrupted or missing. Everything else is running clean. I need to know why.”
“Let me check your account.”
I lean back and wait, listening to the soft percussion of keys on the other end of the line. The clock on the laptop reads 3:54 AM.
“I’m not seeing any external issues from our end, sir. No breach flagged in our log. Based on what you’re describing, it looks like the corruption originated inside the system itself.”
“Inside the system.”
“That’s correct.”
“Can you retrieve the footage?”
“I can run a remote diagnostic. If the data’s recoverable, it could take twenty-four to forty-eight—”
“Twelve hours, max.”
A pause. “Sir, if the corruption is significant—”
“Twelve hours.” I end the call.
I stare at the stuttering frames on the screen. The static holds for a moment and then clears, the hallway resolving into sharp focus on either side of the gap—before and after, clean as a cut.
Someone was in this building earlier tonight. They knew where the cameras were, knew the window they needed, and knew how to corrupt the footage from inside the system without triggering a flagged breach. This wasn’t opportunistic. It was careful.
And while they were being careful, Lauren and Hannah and I were all in our beds.
Blyad!
My hand finds the gun on the desk.
Whatever Aslanov’s planning, it isn’t coming.
It’s already here.