Chapter 4 - Alexey
Morning light filters through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the penthouse, turning the marble kitchen island into a slab of cool white veined with gray.
The city below is already awake, traffic humming faintly twenty-eight floors down, but up here the only sounds are the soft gurgle of the coffee maker and the occasional clink of a mug.
I stand at the counter, sleeves rolled to my elbows, watching the black liquid fill two heavy ceramic cups. Black for me. One sugar and a splash of oat milk for her. I noticed the half-empty carton in Fadir’s fridge during the background sweep.
Anja sits across from me on one of the tall stools, elbows on the marble, with her shoulders slightly hunched.
Exhaustion clings to her like a damp cloth.
Obscure circles bruise the skin beneath those sparkling green eyes, and her long hair is twisted up in a messy knot that looks like it was done with impatient fingers.
She wears the gray sweatpants and light blue t-shirt I left in the guest suite. It’s too big on her frame, with the sleeves swallowing her arms down to her elbows.
Yet even rumpled and hollowed out from last night’s chaos, she holds her spine straight. Determined. Like someone who has decided the only way forward is through the fire.
I slide the mug across the island. Steam curls between us.
“Rules,” I say without preamble, keeping my voice level and low.
There’s no need for theatrics. “Public appearances will be convincing, but they stay professional. Hand at your back for cameras, shared glances, the occasional quiet word in your ear. Enough to sell the image that you’ve moved on.
Nothing more. You share any intel you have on Fadir.
I want his habits, daily routines, accounts, passwords, and anything you picked up while you were with him.
In return, I provide safety, resources, a roof over your head, and money when it’s over.
No expectation of anything physical. Ever. That line stays in place.”
She wraps both hands around the warm mug, staring down into the coffee like it might hold answers.
For a moment, the only sound is the distant hum of the city. Then she lifts her gaze to mine. Her green eyes are still wary, still carrying last night’s fury, but something in them eases just a fraction.
The rigid set of her shoulders softens by a degree. Not trust. Not yet. Relief, maybe, that I’m not another man turning the situation into something uglier.
“Professional,” she repeats, almost tasting the word. “Good. Because if you try anything else, I’ll find a way to make you regret it.”
The corner of my mouth twitches into almost a smile, but I kill it before it forms. “Noted.”
“Fine. Rules accepted. Now what?” She takes a slow sip from her mug, winces at the heat, then sets it down.
I lean against the opposite side of the island, arms braced on the cool marble. “Start talking. Anything you remember about his operation. Even small things.”
She hesitates only a second before the words begin to spill. At first, they come careful and measured, like she’s testing whether I’ll use them against her. Then the dam cracks. She tells me about the late-night phone calls he took in the study with the door locked.
The way he’d disappear for “supplier meetings” that never seemed to happen during normal business hours.
A hidden folder on his laptop labeled “Charity Projections” that actually contained spreadsheets of shell companies and wire transfers/ She mentions accounts routed through offshore entities with names that sounded too clean.
She recites partial passwords she’d glimpsed over his shoulder when he thought she was asleep on the couch. Routing numbers scribbled on the back of a takeout menu she found in his jacket pocket once.
I listen without interrupting, committing every detail to memory. My mind sorts them automatically, cross-referencing with the intelligence Andrei and I have already gathered.
Some of it overlaps. Some of it is new.
But all valuable.
The kind of granular, intimate knowledge that comes only from living in the enemy’s space.
She leans forward as she speaks, both elbows on the marble, the messy knot of hair slipping slightly so a few auburn-streaked strands fall against her cheek. Her voice gains strength with every sentence, her exhaustion giving way to something sharper.
More focused.
She points out patterns I have not caught yet, like how Fadir always used the same two burner phones for certain contacts, and how he’d get twitchy and controlling after any mention of the Sokolov name.
How he kept a secondary ledger in a safe behind the abstract painting in his living room. The numbers she remembers are precise enough that I can already see the threads I’ll pull to unravel his legitimate fronts first.
By the time she finishes her coffee, the mug empty except for a faint ring of sugar at the bottom, I realize the young woman sitting across from me is far sharper than her circumstances suggested.
Most people in her position, freshly betrayed, jobless, and terrified, would still be curled up in the guest suite trying to disappear. But Anja is leaning into the fight. Her mind works like a scalpel, cutting through Fadir’s chaos to hand me the exact weaknesses I need.
She’s not just a pawn anymore. She’s becoming a willing participant in the slow dismantling of the man who tried to own her.
The slow erosion has officially begun.
I note her beauty the way I note tactical details… objectively, without letting it linger. The way the morning light catches the auburn highlights in her hair. The sharp line of her jaw when she’s concentrating. The quiet fire in her eyes refuses to dim even after everything she’s lost.
She’s striking in a way that could distract lesser men. I file the observation away and lock it down tight.
This is business. Strategy. Nothing more.
The age gap alone is enough reminder with thirteen years and an entire world of difference between a sheltered twenty-one-year-old still reeling from betrayal and a thirty-four-year-old enforcer whose hands have been bloody for years.
I refuse to become another man who takes advantage of her vulnerability.
“Good,” I say when she finally falls silent. I top off her mug without asking. “That gives us several clean entry points. We start with the suppliers. Leak just enough to make them nervous about his reliability. Then the charity fronts. Make them look like the laundering operation they are.”
She watches me over the rim of the fresh coffee, as something unreadable flickers across her face. “You really do this kind of thing calmly, don’t you? Like it’s just another Tuesday.”
“Raising my voice doesn’t make the knife cut deeper. Patience does.” I shrug one shoulder.
A small, reluctant huff of air escapes her, maybe a laugh, but not quite.
She sets the mug down and uses her fingers to tuck stray strands of hair behind her ear.
Then she loosened the knot a little. For the first time since she sat down, the exhaustion in her posture looks a little less heavy.
Like sharing the intel has given her back some measure of control.
The dismantling of Fadir Klem has begun in earnest, and she is no longer just the girl I pulled out of that warehouse. She is a partner in this, whether either of us planned it that way or not. It’s amazing what twelve hours and the promise of freedom that money can buy can do to a person.
I’m about to suggest she get some proper rest when my phone vibrates on the island. Andrei’s name flashes on the screen. I glance at it, then back at Anja.
“Give me a minute,” I say, already moving toward the hallway for privacy.
She nods, but her eyes follow me, curious and still guarded.
I step into the short corridor that leads to the bedrooms, answering as I go. “Talk.”
“Fadir’s already moving. Made three frantic calls this morning trying to lock down his remaining accounts.
Word from the street is he’s rattled. He thinks you took the girl as a trophy.
He’s spreading noise that she’s unstable, that she ran off with sensitive information.
Trying to get ahead of whatever we’re planning.
” Andrei’s voice comes through low and clipped.
“Let him talk. We use it. Start feeding the suppliers the first anonymous tip this afternoon, and make it look like it came from inside his own circle. I want him looking weak by tomorrow night.” I lean against the wall, one hand rubbing the back of my neck.
The scar along my jaw pulls slightly with the motion.
“Already on it. You need me to send a team to sweep the penthouse again? Extra security on the girl?”
I glance back toward the kitchen. Through the open space, I can see Anja still at the island, fingers tracing the rim of her mug, lost in thought. The morning light catches her profile, highlighting the quiet steel in her posture even as exhaustion tugs at her shoulders.
“No extra team yet,” I answer. “She’s contained here. But keep eyes on Fadir’s known associates. If he tries anything desperate, I want a warning.”
Andrei grunts in agreement and ends the call.
I slip the phone into my pocket and stand there a moment longer, the weight of the night and the morning pressing in. The plan is shifting faster than I anticipated.
Anja Kuzmin is supposed to be leverage, nothing more.
A visible symbol of everything Fadir lost. Instead, she’s handing me precise intel with a sharpness that surprises me.
And that small relaxation in her shoulders when I laid out the no-physical-expectations rule…
it did something unwelcome to the careful distance I maintain.
I push the thought down hard. Professional. Tactical. There will be nothing more.
When I return to the kitchen, Anja looks up, one eyebrow slightly raised in question. Her calculation is still there, burning quietly behind the exhaustion.
“Everything all right?” she asks as she stands to refill her mug again.
I nod once and reclaim my spot at the island, picking up my own coffee. “Just the first moves falling into place. Your information helps.”
She studies me for a long beat, emerald eyes searching my face as if she’s trying to decide whether I’m the lesser evil or simply a different kind of predator. Then she leans forward slightly, voice dropping with new purpose.
“There’s more,” she says, sitting back on the stool at the island.
“Fadir kept yet another phone in the nightstand drawer. A burner. He thought I never noticed him switching SIM cards when he thought I was sleeping. The contacts are coded with numbers instead of names. But one of them ended in 47. He called it every Thursday at 2 a.m. like clockwork. I never heard the conversations, but afterward he’d always pour himself a double whiskey and pace the living room like something was closing in. ”
I file the detail away, already calculating how we can use the pattern. Thursday calls. 2 a.m. Regular enough to exploit.
Four and seven.
The slow squeeze on Fadir has officially started, and the young woman across from me is feeding the fire with a steady and precise kindling.
I watch her take another sip of coffee, the steam curling around her face, and feel that unwelcome pull again. It’s the instinct to protect what’s now under my roof, mixed with the colder knowledge that she could still complicate everything if I let the lines blur even a fraction.
For now, I keep it locked down. Business only, I need to keep reminding myself.
Motherfucker!
But as the morning light continues to pour through the windows and the city moves on below us, I can’t shake the quiet sense that Anja Kuzmin might prove to be more than either of us bargained for in this war.