Chapter 32
Ryder
Despite the tension between us, and what should be a threat, something in the air loosens. The storm’s teeth pull back and the thunder rolls lower, rain turning from a lashing to a simple drumming on the roof.
In the settling shadows, Liev’s hand comes up and wraps around the back of my neck. Delves into my hair, and his thumb strokes once, twice.
The sensation of falling is overwhelming. My breath catches as I sway into him, realizing: This is all I want. Him.
The thought is so terrifying that I step back, mind racing to escape it.
I could tell him right now. The truth presses against my teeth so hard that I clamp them down. My gaze drops for half a second to the space between us, the space I’ve been trying not to think too much about.
“I think my father is hiding something.” The words come out quickly, more abrupt than I intend, but there’s no taking them back once they’re in the air. This confession feels safer. I don’t want to tell him about our child yet, not when everything is unraveling. Not when it might distract him.
Liev doesn’t move, but his expression shifts, and I watch it go from husband to Pakhan in an instant.
“Explain,” he says.
His hand wraps around my waist, tugging me forward surprisingly gently. It’s grounding in a way that makes the tightness in my chest go away, the nerves settle.
“I didn’t tell you before because I wasn’t sure,” I continue. “And I didn’t want to bring you something half-formed. But things in Miami are changing. You wouldn’t really know because you didn’t see what his business was like before. I’ve been watching him,” I admit.
A beat.
“How?” Liev asks. His eyes narrow, and I can see the worry there. I’m the person stalking my father in the shadows. We don’t say it out loud, but both of us know that it wouldn’t stop him from punishing me if I were caught.
“I have people following him,” I say.
His grip tightens slightly, not enough to hurt, just enough to register. “Which people?”
“… Oleg. And Gloria.”
“Our cleaning lady?”
I can’t help smiling at his surprise. Oleg he barely flinched at, despite the fact that the older man has secured himself a spot at the table with Liev. My husband trusts him to lead the Boeviks in their day-to-day activities.
“Gloria’s nephew used to work for my father. He was killed in a shootout.”
Liev’s lips purse. I don’t need to explain further; that kind of grief lodges in people like a thorn.
“Since he came back to Miami,” I continue, “something felt off. The people he brought with him, the way he inserted himself… it didn’t add up. He’s always been cocky, but this is different.”
Lightning flashes somewhere far off, a crackle that briefly lights up the room. Liev draws me toward the bed, and we sit on the edge, thighs touching, fingers entwined.
“You’re brilliant, Ryder, but if this goes wrong—”
“There’s less a chance that he’ll kill me than one of your men. Sure, he might break a few bones, but it won’t go further than that.”
The smile I give my husband is soured by guilt, because the fact is, if my father does catch me and harm me, he’ll be harming our child too. The one Liev doesn’t know about yet. Would he ever forgive me?
“What have you found so far?”
He’s not pushing back, which means he agrees that something is off.
I exhale slowly, steadying myself. “He’s careful. Smarter than I gave him credit for. Most of what he does is insulated, layered through people who don’t know enough to be useful if they’re caught.”
“That’s not surprising,” Liev says.
“No,” I agree. “But it makes it harder to prove anything directly. I tapped into a few of his communications,” I say.
His brow furrows. “You what?”
“I had someone listen in on calls,” I clarify. “Encrypted lines, burner phones, the kind of setup that rotates too fast to track consistently. We’ve caught fragments, patterns, but nothing concrete enough to act on.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
It’s not a question. With those deceptively calm blue eyes leveled at me, it’s not hard to imagine this being the last thing dozens of men have seen before their lives are snuffed out. But his thumb only strokes over my knuckle as the heat of his thigh presses closer.
“I needed more information first.”
“That’s not your call to make alone. We work together, Ryder.”
“I know,” I agree quietly. “But I made it anyway.”
Silence stretches between us, a different kind of tension threading through it; it’s softer and tempting.
This bed and the two of us in it isn’t an unfamiliar scenario anymore.
Images flash through my mind—Liev pulling a t-shirt over his head, his bare torso flexing.
His big hands gripping my jeans and sliding them down my hips.
His tongue—
“I found something else,” I blurt out, ignoring the heat of a blush soaking into my cheeks. “Not through him directly. On Backscatter.”
His expression sharpens again. “What kind of something?”
“Another listing. It was vague at first,” I continue. “Anonymous. No names. Just a target description, enough detail to narrow it down if you knew what you were looking for.”
“I didn’t think it was you at first,” I admit. “There are a lot of men in this city who fit the general profile, but then I dug deeper.”
His hand hasn’t moved. Neither has mine; I’m afraid to let go.
“What did you find?” he asks.
I meet his eyes, holding them steady. “A listing for a hit,” I say. “Five hundred thousand.”
Silence follows. Liev exhales slowly, wincing, and I remember his lung is still healing. The whole reason I came up here was to harass him back into resting.
“Should I be flattered?”
A broken laugh slips out of me. “It’s not bad for Miami, but could be higher.”
“Mmm. I’ll have to work harder to be a threat, then.”
But we’re both avoiding voicing the truth: whoever wanted Liev dead still wants him dead. They think he’s a big enough threat to have kept this going for months now.
“Could you trace it back to the source?” he asks, but the tone in his voice tells me he already knows the answer. I’m not that good.
“No. But the pathways it’s moving through overlap with networks my father used to be part of.”
That’s the part that matters. The part that ties everything together in a way I can’t ignore.
“It’s likely someone I know,” I add. “Too close to be a coincidence.”
“And the man at the docks?” he asks.
I react before I realize, and that’s what gives me away; my hand slips from Liev’s. I could ask what man he is talking about, but that would be stupid.
“You saw that?”
“I saw you react,” he replies.
Of course he did. No lying my way out of this one, but it’ll have to be another half-truth. “He had a tattoo I recognized. It’s connected to a group Papa used to run with years ago. Not officially tied to him anymore, but loyal in the way those kinds of men tend to be.”
“That’s not proof,” Liev says.
“No,” I agree. “It’s not. But it’s enough to make me want to dig further. "
I hold his gaze, steady, waiting for his response, for the shift that comes when he decides what to do with information like this.
“You should have told me,” he says finally. “It’s my job to handle these things.”
“I know. But I’m trying to make sure you’re still alive long enough to handle everything.”
His jaw tightens slightly, but it doesn’t escalate into anger. Instead, he moves quickly, a hand on my chest, pushing me back so quickly I gasp.
His thighs settle on either side of me, one hand braced next to my head and the other stroking my cheek. I swallow, letting my fingers ghost over the sliver of skin where his t-shirt has ridden up and immediately remembering—
“You should be more careful, Liev! You could pull a stitch—”
“I’m fine,” he murmurs, his eyes searching my face. Slowly, he leans down, lips ghosting over my jaw. I take a deep breath to try and stay calm, try to fight the fuzzy warmth filling my head and my veins as one of my hands unconsciously grips his thigh.
“I’m not staying out of this.” He says the words quietly as his hand wraps loosely around my neck. I almost miss them.
“I didn’t ask you to stay out of it,” I counter, squirming beneath him. “I asked you not to make it worse.”
His brow furrows. He pulls back. “By doing nothing?”
“By healing,” I correct. “Whether I’m the one digging or you are, being half-healed makes you a liability.”
“Careful, wife.”
“I mean it practically,” I reply with a smirk. “Not personally, old man.”
Liev’s smile almost breaks my heart. Would it be so bad if I told him now?
I can’t do it with threats hanging over us, with unfinished business. I just told him he needs to heal, and if Liev finds out I’m pregnant, he’ll go on a blind rampage and likely pop that lung all over again.
“I have people on this,” I add. “I’ve already started pulling threads. If I stop now, we'll lose momentum.”
“You think I’m going to sit here while you do that alone?”
“I think you’re going to sit here because your lung collapsed a week ago,” I say, not softening it. “If you tear something open trying to prove a point, I will personally make sure you regret it.”
For a second, he just looks at me. Then a dark, thick brow lifts mockingly. “And just how are you going to do that, kotyonok?”
I half-sit up, tempted to press my lips to his, but holding myself back. “You told me once that you would tell me what that word means. I think it’s about time, Liev.”
His thumbs slip under my shirt, rub slow circles at the spot just above my hip bones. Indecision darkens his eyes, and my heart twists in my throat. Is it something mocking? Embarrassing?
“Do you promise not to slit my throat if you don’t like it?”
That surprises me, and I laugh. “I… guess. We’ll see.”
He considers, then concedes. “It means ‘kitten,’ or something like it. It’s a term of endearment.” The last sentence is rushed out as my mouth drops open.
“Kitten!? Do I look like a kitten to you!?”
Liev laughs, rolling off me so we’re both lying side by side, but I don’t miss the grimace on his face at the movement. It’s quiet for a few moments between us. Then he explains, “That night at the church—”
“When I said no.”
“When you called your father Kazimir’s lapdog,” he says with a smirk. “I spent almost four hours looking for you, Ryder. I kept thinking that you were like a feral cat.”
Embarrassment burns in my chest until he continues, “Like something untamable. Everyone wanted you to do their bidding, settle down, and be complacent. And you wouldn’t do it. You fought and escaped, and I’m pretty sure you only let me catch you because you wanted to be caught.”
That’s not true, but I can’t help smiling at the implication.
“How could I resist?” I murmur.
We lay like that for a while, our hectic past finally settling between us. Making sense. This is how we got here, I think, surprised by the overwhelming sense of happiness blooming in my chest.
“You’ve been making a lot of decisions lately,” Liev says eventually.
“Someone had to.”
“That someone is supposed to be me.”
“And it will be again. When you’re not half-recovered and pretending that doesn’t matter.”
He studies me for another moment, then exhales slowly, like he’s making a decision he doesn’t entirely like.
“Fine,” he says.
I blink. “Fine?”
“For now,” he adds. “You follow this. You pull whatever threads you think are there. Keep Oleg,” he tacks on with a roll of his eyes. “He’s your man, apparently. I shouldn’t be surprised.”
There’s a catch. There’s always a catch.
“And?” I ask.
Liev rolls onto his side, and I copy the movement, concern knitting my brows. He’s not putting weight on the bad side, but still. I’d rather he was resting—reading reports or looking at maps or shipping routes. Something quiet.
“You don’t do it alone,” he says. “Vivienne goes with you.”
“I don’t need a shadow, but maybe that’s not the worst idea. Just in case.”
“Just in case,” Liev echoes. “I know that the hit on Backscatter is for me. But they’ve made it clear, Ryder, that they don’t mind you being collateral.”
He rolls away, his eyes on the ceiling. “Whoever it is has already figured out that you’re the easiest way to get to me.”
It’s a confession, and an admission that I mean something to him.
I look away for a second, but turn back, drawn by—what?
What’s this new thread tying the two of us together?
The sensation I had earlier, of falling, comes back, and to ease it I reach for Liev and press my lips to his.
The kiss isn’t hungry or demanding. It’s quiet, and there’s more behind it than I want to admit.
I let out a quiet breath, shaking my head slightly. “I won’t run away again,” I say, the words slipping out before I can stop them. “Though, apparently, it’s still tempting in your mind.”
His hand on my hip tightens just enough to pull my attention back to him.
“That’s not what this is,” he says.
“Then what is it?”
“Safety.”
The word is simple. But the way he says it isn’t.
“I’m not worried about you leaving,” he continues, his voice lower now, steadier. “I’m making sure you’re alive to choose not to.”
I study him, really study him, looking for the angle, control, and calculations that usually sit behind everything that every man in his kind of position says and does.
It’s not there.
“Okay.” The word comes out so small that I’m worried he’ll take it for submission. But all I see is relief in his eyes. His grip loosens slightly, not releasing me entirely, but easing the balance between us.
“For now,” I add.
“For now,” he agrees.