Chapter 18 - Raya
That’s it. Classic Matvei communication—he has never used three words when two would do. Matvei wants the home-court advantage; the warehouse belongs to our family. His territory, his rules.
I hand the phone to Yakov without a word.
He reads the text, gives a nod of his head, and silently walks back to the counter to pour the coffee.
I stand frozen in the kitchen doorway, watching the solid line of his back.
It’s not my brothers I’m afraid of. It’s watching him walk into that room and offer everything he has to people who don’t really know him or his motivations.
But I know why he’s doing it; he told me.
He’s doing it because of the way his father treated him and his siblings.
For the way he abused Selene and her twins.
For what he’s done to me. If Matvei doesn’t take the deal, then I don’t see how any of this gets fixed.
My chest squeezes as I feel the clock ticking on the next few hours.
By half past nine, we’re in his car, cutting through the morning traffic. The anticipation of the looming confrontation is suffocating, and I don’t even realize my hand is squeezing Yakov’s knee until he glances down at it.
He keeps his eyes on the rearview mirror—the fact is, until we get to my brothers, we are exposed like this.
He doesn’t think his father is looking to get to us right now, believing he’s got my brothers to do his dirty work for him, but Yakov never lets his guard down.
My stomach is a tangle of anxiety, though admittedly drinking two cups of coffee probably hasn’t helped.
Without breaking his gaze from the windshield, Yakov reaches down and covers my hand with his.
He presses his fingers down firmly, his thumb dragging in a slow, grounding line across my knuckles.
I stare straight ahead at the freeway, drawing a steadying breath into my lungs.
Simon’s office is actually a sprawling brick monolith that looks like a derelict shell from the street but operates as the unofficial nerve center of our entire family business.
It’s the exact spot where Alek Mykros orchestrated a sniper attack against my family months ago.
Walking through the familiar steel doors with Yakov’s towering frame at my shoulder now feels like walking into a den of lions.
They’re all lined up around the long wooden table.
Matvei is sitting at the head, radiating the stone-cold authority of a Bratva boss.
Simon is seated to his left, his expression a complicated, rigid mask; Selene has clearly been in his ear all morning.
Adrian and Egor flank the sides, their postures defensive, surrounded by a dozen stone-faced Volkov soldiers.
The room feels tense; the energy is volatile, like a bomb ready to explode.
We take our seats, and Yakov leans forward, resting his forearms on the wood, and starts talking.
I brace myself for him to launch into some sort of pitch about his cyber network, the encrypted information he has, or the weapons he could offer our family alliance. Instead, he starts with me.
“I didn’t take your sister to insult your family name,” Yakov says, his deep, gravelly voice cutting through the atmosphere like a blade.
He looks directly at Matvei, his demeanor devoid of fear.
“My father had already deployed Yaroslav to snatch her. Alek wanted Raya dragged into his compound, stripped of her dignity, and forced into a marriage with one of my brothers that would have ended with her throat cut the second she stopped being politically useful to him. He wanted to break her the same way he broke my sister, as retribution not only for Selene’s defection to your family, but the slight he feels as a result of your alliance with the Nikolais. ”
A hush falls over the room. Simon’s jaw hitches, his knuckles turning white as he grips the table—hearing exactly what Alek had planned for me, laid out plainly in a room I’m sitting in, and hearing his wife’s name mentioned alongside the word ‘broke,’ clearly lands somewhere he hasn’t fully healed from
“I didn’t have time to negotiate through back channels,” Yakov continues, his voice dropping into a low, uncompromising rumble.
“The timeframe was hours, and I had to work fast, and in a way that wouldn’t raise any suspicion.
Yes, I took her. Yes, I hid her away, and yes, I forced her to sign a marriage license; it was the only way to permanently tank my father’s plan.
I’m not here to beg for your forgiveness for the parts of this that were brutal.
We don’t live in a civilized world. You all know exactly what Alek is capable of, and he is becoming more unstable by the day.
I did what was required to keep Raya safe. ”
I sit frozen in my chair, my heart hammering violently against my ribs. I lived through every single second of this nightmare from the inside out—the safe houses, the gunshots, the frantic escape. But hearing it laid bare like this, plainly, in front of my own blood, hits me like a physical blow.
He was orchestrating a desperate, calculated rescue mission to protect me before I had even met him. He risked his life, betrayed his own bloodline, and took a bullet to his shoulder to ensure I stayed whole.
I keep my eyes glued to my hands on the table, desperately fighting to keep my breathing even and hold back the tears warming my eyes. I can’t let my brothers see the emotion threatening to choke me; they are far too good at reading me.
Yakov seamlessly shifts the conversation to what he’s been working on, opening his laptop and sliding it across the table toward Matvei.
He lays out the full map of his father’s hidden financial assets, and the bank accounts he’s spent the last forty-eight hours bleeding dry.
He delivers the facts coldly, offering the alliance a variety of weapons lethal enough to dismantle the Mykros empire.
Matvei studies the screen for a long, agonizing minute.
He asks a series of sharp, biting questions that Yakov answers without a hint of hesitation or deflection.
He isn’t dodging the threat; he’s meeting it head-on.
Adrian presses him on the network infrastructure, and Yakov handles it all flawlessly.
Finally, Simon turns to us.. Simon and I have always been close, so I try to let him see in my eyes what I don’t have the words to say out loud in this room—that this is my choice now, not something done to me.
That I need him standing beside Yakov in the next few minutes, not against him.
That if this deal falls apart because nobody in this room trusts me to know my own mind, I will never forgive any of them for it.
He turns back to our oldest brother and gives a slow, deliberate nod.
Matvei closes the laptop with a heavy, definitive snap.
He looks at Yakov, the silence stretching.
“Alright,” Matvei says, his voice flat and final.
“The files check out. We fold your network into ours. I’ll speak with the head of the Nikolais later.
Mikhail will want to be involved with the delivery of the guns.
” He leans back, a slow tilt of his chin signaling the end of the interrogation.
“Take my sister straight back to the estate. I hope you brought all your gear from the safe house, because you’re both going on a total lockdown inside the compound gates for the next few days while we get the lie of the land with your father.
If you need anything else to set up your tech, let one of us know.
You don’t step foot outside without my explicit permission. ”
Adrian lets out a low, dry grunt from the side, a ruthless glimmer in his eyes as he adjusts his cuffs. “Welcome to the family, brother. Try not to make us regret it.”
Simon gives a solitary nod from across the wood. Yakov is officially one of us.
When we step back outside, the afternoon air is gray and cold. I stand on the asphalt next to the passenger door, taking a deep, shuddering breath of winter wind as the heavy adrenaline finally begins to drain from my system. My hands are perfectly steady.
Yakov walks around the hood and opens the passenger door for me. I slide into the seat, and he ducks inside the driver’s side a second later, turning the key. The engine rumbles to life, filling the quiet cabin as he shifts into drive and heads toward our family estate.
As the building fades into the rearview, my body finally remembers the exact state it’s in.
My skin is still humming from the reckless, violent heat of last night.
My thighs ache slightly with every shift of my weight against the leather seat, a reminder of the way he pinned me down and claimed me.
I reach up, my fingertips lightly brushing the collar of my sweater, tracing the sensitive skin where his teeth left a dark, bruising bite on my neck.
I look over at his large left hand resting on the steering wheel, his profile giving nothing away as he scans the road.
I reach across the console and take his hand properly this time, fingers laced through his.
He looks down at our joined hands, his grip instantly tightening, crushing my fingers against his palm before he turns his face to me.
“Let’s go home,” I say.
He doesn’t let go of my hand as we drive into the gray afternoon.