Chapter 37
Ryder
The feed cuts in just as the van door opens. For a split second, all I see is motion—shadows shifting, bodies moving with practiced efficiency. Then they drag him out.
Even knowing it’s planned, my chest tightens.
Liev’s head is covered, his hands bound, his body struggling just enough to make it believable without breaking the illusion. He doesn’t fight the way he normally would, doesn’t tear through them the way he’s capable of. He lets them control it, making it look like they’ve won.
It still doesn’t sit right.
“He’s fine,” Oleg says quietly from my left, like he can feel the tension pulling tight through me. “This is exactly how it was supposed to go.”
The feed is slightly fuzzy. “I should’ve checked it a few days ago,” I murmur in annoyance. The camera was planted the same night we finalized the plan.
“They would’ve caught you,” Oleg warns. “Everything is going according to plan. Liev knows what he’s doing, and Isaiah’s men agreed to the stipulations. Fingers only, no blood. Photos of his bagged face and binding.”
I don’t look at him.
“I know.”
But knowing doesn’t change what I’m seeing. And even though this was my plan, it’s hard to trust a man like Isaiah Ross. He’s a politician, one of the men he had me show around town. Younger than the others, but sharp and ambitious.
He most of all wants to get out from under my father’s messy business. He’s willing to cut ties, especially if it gains him the support of the Bratva. Ross plans on running for the Senate in two years, and he’ll need financial backing. From us.
His men shove Liev forward, rough enough to sell it, calculated enough not to actually damage him beyond what we agreed to. My gaze flicks to his right hand as they force him into position, the barely visible from the warehouse camera I’ve tapped into now.
One of the men crouches next to my husband, obscuring most of his body. They seem to be having a conversation; Liev’s head tilted in his direction.
Then there’s a sharp movement. Liev’s head jerks back, one of his feet kicking out in pain.
My breath catches, anxiety coiling in my gut. Oleg reaches out and wraps a hand around my bicep, keeping me from standing and bolting the four blocks down the street to the warehouse. Keeping me from wrecking havoc on these men who I agreed to let harm my husband.
“He’s fine,” he murmurs.
We watch the man on the screen, still crouched, slip a cell phone out of his back pocket. The others are milling around, holding guns that are likely loaded. Fuck, I think, biting my lip. Why didn’t I negotiate no ammo?
What if—
No. I need to trust the plan. Ross’s men will only break Liev’s fingers and keep him tied up until my father gets here. They’re putting the bait in the trap.
The man with the phone rises and steps away, likely shooting off the text that will summon Papa from wherever he’s been hiding to Miami once more. Casually, he walks toward the others and starts chatting, though there’s no audio for me to hear what they’re saying.
Liev is moving. Clenching his good fist, tipping his head back. Probably taking deep breaths.
Two fingers on his right hand are bent at dangerous angles. Broken.
My stomach turns, even though I signed off on it. You’re doing this for your family, I remind myself. I’m fourteen weeks pregnant today. In six more weeks, we’ll go in for the anatomy scan. When this is all over, Liev and I will shop for everything we’ll need for a nursery.
It seems an impossible future. A twist of fate I don’t deserve, haven’t earned.
But I’m earning it tonight.
I force my focus back to the screen. The van is stifling hot, and Oleg is sweating, dark stains under his arms as he curses quietly next to me.
“How long?” he grumbles.
I pull up an encrypted message thread with Vivienne and Viktor. Viktor is anxious, has been since we decided on this plan, but he’s watching private flights out of Savannah—nothing so far. That is, if my father actually went back there.
Vivienne has an ear out in the darker corners of Miami. Boats coming in, contacts she hunted down and threatened with a gun to the head who were working with my father before. They work for us now.
They’ll tell us if he’s coming and when.
Hopefully.
“I don’t know,” I admit, sitting back and resigning myself to a long, hot night. “Now we wait.”
* * *
My father thinks he’s careful. He’s better than he’s ever been in the past, but he’s not invisible. And it’s my people who cover his tracks now.
So I know what to look for.
“He’s active,” I say, my voice steady despite the tension coiled in my chest. “Three separate lines just lit up. He’s coordinating arrivals.”
Oleg shifts closer, glancing at the data. “How long?”
We’ve been in the van for over an hour. Liev is still in the warehouse, still on the screen—surrounded by three men now, all waiting listlessly. Like the rest of us.
“He was off-shore somewhere. Coming in on a boat, so not long. He’ll hit the southern marina and probably come in by the service roads.”
“He’ll want to end this quickly,” Oleg murmurs. “That’s no more than a twenty minute drive.”
I’m already checking for the necessities. There’s a gun at my hip, but I rarely use guns. What’s more reassuring is the knife tucked into my boot and the other I keep in a specially designed holster just under my left arm.
On the screen, one of the men turns his head, talking to someone off-screen. He rises quickly, as do the others.
Liev perks up. His fingers are still oddly bent, tied down at the wrist to the chair’s arm. It’s too real, and an overwhelming rush of heat and anxiety hits me all at once. I take a deep breath, reminding myself—this is what we wanted.
This is what we built.
A trap he won’t see until it’s already closed.
My phone rings and I pick up, not getting a word out before Viktor says, “He’s coming in hot from the south road. Two SUVs.”
“He’s in a rush,” I reply, fighting the urge to roll my eyes. “He’s not being careful, el estupido.”
“Good. That’s to our benefit.”
“He thinks he’s in control,” Oleg adds, even though he can only hear one side of the conversation. “He’ll go in blind, not pay attention.”
Which means he won’t notice our people, won’t flag the too-quiet street or the fact that Ross’s men haven’t done much more to my husband than inconvenience him.
My father is used to people reacting to him, not anticipating him.
“We should get ready,” I say, starting to stand and trying to hide the worried edge in my voice. Oleg puts a hand out to stop me, but I shoot him a glare. He’s out of his mind if he thinks I’m not stepping foot in this warehouse.
“We’ll be there in two,” Viktor says curtly before the line cuts.
It takes mere minutes to get into place. In a fenced lot a block down from the warehouse itself. It’s drizzling, still hot but humid now too, and the scent of the ocean hangs in the air.
Oleg and I wait, breath held, in the dark crevices between unused vehicles and rotting trash.
Not much longer and headlights cut through the night. They approach quickly, swinging hard into the warehouse’s loading dock. My heart pounds; my father is only meters away from Liev now, and I feel too far away to stop anything if it goes sideways.
He’s here.
Olena’s text comes in, silent but thundering in my head.
Ready, comes Viktor’s quick reply, and my pulse drops at the thought that we’re all near, at least. Close by and waiting.
“I can’t see anything,” Oleg complains, leaning around the side of the crumpled blue van we’re tucked next to. From the direction of the warehouse, I can hear the sounds of low voices and car doors shutting.
Ears straining, I try to search out that all-too-familiar voice. The one from my childhood, the voice that has always criticized or been dismissive or callous.
“Hey!” Oleg hisses as I dart around the corner of the van, crouching low and moving quickly toward the fence.
From here I can see two SUVs and dark shadows moving toward the warehouse doors. Good. There are only two men with him, and the drivers waiting in the loading dock. I know what that means; one of those SUVs is meant to take my husband’s body, dump it somewhere.
Not tonight.
Papa walks toward the entrance like he’s collecting something that’s been waiting for him, head high and stride anything but humble.
He expects a prisoner. Helpless. Broken. Someone he can control and eliminate.
“You shouldn’t go in,” Oleg warns, now beside me as the warehouse door opens with a creak and the trio disappear inside.
“I’m going.”
“Ryder—”
I don’t bother answering. As I run across the street, my footfalls are completely silent—a chill drizzle sending a shiver down my spine. The sense that this is it, this is everything settling over me as I slip through the door.
* * *
“What the fuck is this?”
My father’s voice is flat, and that’s how I know he’s scared.
I can’t see him—not yet—still tucked back in the hallway, around the corner from the massive room where they took Liev.
I know what he’s seeing, though, because my cell is tapped into the camera now. Oleg stands next to me, breathing slowly, his gun drawn, attention fixed.
On the grainy screen, Liev is standing. The bag that was on his head is discarded on the ground, the ties that were never really tied around his wrists and ankles draped loosely over the chair.
And Ross’s men are close by, weapons drawn and trained on my father.
Okay, maybe it’s good I didn’t demand there be no ammo.
“Hinto,” Liev greets, and the sound of his voice sends a thrill of relief through me.
“It’s too hard to see what’s happening,” I murmur in annoyance, ignoring Oleg’s whispered warning as I lean around the corner.
Liev holds a gun in his left hand, the safety off. His right hand is already bandaged. The two ruined fingers back in place and probably throbbing, bound against the others to keep them still.
My father’s shoulders are tight. One of his two men takes a step back, and unsurprised, I realize he’s new blood. My idiot father brought a gang-member-in-training to this.
The illusion is gone. Papa’s fingers twitch, but he almost never has a weapon on him. Too proud, too good to do the “dirty work” as he calls it.
But not Liev. Not my husband.
The men who came in with him react a second too late.
They reach for weapons that aren’t going to save them, turning toward threats they didn’t see coming as our people step out of the shadows and take them down with quiet, efficient force.
Viktor enjoys it a little too much, maybe, cracking the butt of his pistol over the head of the clearly inexperienced young man.
The other puts up a decent fight, except that Vivienne ends him quickly with an arm around his throat and a knife in his back.
Hinto doesn’t move right away.
He stands there, taking it in, recalculating, trying to understand how the ground shifted under his feet without him noticing. How one of his men is dead and the other unconscious. His gaze flicks once to the side, toward Ross’s men, then back to Liev.
“Impressive,” he says, his voice steady despite everything.
Before Liev can answer, there’s a loud buzz, and I can’t hide anymore. My father whips around, his eyes lighting up in anger finally as I step into the room, phone in hand.
“It’s done,” I say, meeting Liev’s eyes.
Olena has just confirmed that two of my father’s accomplices, we knew we wouldn’t be able to turn, have been taken out.
One has been eliminated, and the other has been sufficiently threatened with the torture of his wife and teenage sons.
He understands just what will happen if he tries to come to my father’s rescue.
“You,” Hinto hisses. “You little bitch—”
Liev strides forward, holstering his gun as he moves, his fist coming up fast and unexpected. It catches my father across the jaw. A crack and the sound of teeth—or shards of teeth—hitting the concrete.
“Argh!”
Blood dribbles out of Hinto’s mouth, thick with spit. He bares his teeth at me before turning back to Liev, and I can see where one of his front teeth has cracked diagonally, a chunk gone.
“Your allies are being eliminated,” my husband warns, quiet and firm. “Except for Ross, who has decided that security is a safer bet than what you were offering him. And Skinner. He’ll be taking his business elsewhere, too.”
The Texas mogul who wanted to play in Miami. He’ll still have a place for his yacht here, but after a brief conversation days ago, he understands who really runs Miami.
Spitting again, Papa’s gaze scans the room quickly. He knows he’s outnumbered, caught in a trap he never anticipated.
So he turns to the only way out he thinks he has.
Me.
“This is what you’ve become?” he sneers. “Standing behind him like a good little wife. Controlled. Owned by a butcher.”
I don’t flinch. “If you think this is control,” I say evenly, “then you’ve never understood me at all.”
His jaw tightens, but I don’t give him time to speak.
“You chose this,” I continue, my voice colder now. “Not tonight. Not when you walked in here. You chose it months ago, when you decided I was expendable. When you threw me aside like I didn’t matter.”
Something flickers in his expression—recognition, maybe—but it’s gone just as quickly, replaced by anger.
“You’ll regret this,” he says, his voice low and certain. “When he turns on you, when this all falls apart—you’ll wish you’d stayed with me.”
I hold his gaze.
“No,” I reply. “I won’t.”
The room stills for half a second.
Then he moves.
It’s sudden and violent, a burst of motion as he lunges for me, everything he has left thrown into it.