Chapter 36
ROLAN
Anya doesn’t eat.
This is the other weight that has settled inside me, separate from the fury, heavier in a way that defies comparison.
She sits at the breakfast table each morning, and her gaze drifts to the chair where Elizabeth used to sit.
She no longer cries, which is infinitely worse.
I lie down next to her for two hours while she’s trying to sleep.
Her small fingers curl around mine. Mr. Whiskers is wedged between her arm and the pillow. The crescent moon nightlight casts pale shapes across the ceiling.
The guards are on their routes, the staff retired, the machinery of my life temporarily set to idle.
She shifts beside me.
“Was it something I did, Papa?” she asks in a small voice.
The words cut into my heart.
I turn to face her. She’s not looking at me. She’s looking at Mr. Whiskers, tracing the stitching along his ear with one fingertip.
“Look at me, malyshka . ”
She hesitates. The finger pauses on Mr. Whiskers’ ear. Then she lifts her gaze.
“No,” I say. “It was not something you did.”
“But she left?—”
“She didn’t leave.” I keep my voice steady. “She was taken, Anya. Someone took her away. It was not her choice, and it had nothing to do with you.”
Her chin trembles. The effort of holding it still is visible.
“But Mrs. Kaufmann left because of me. She said I was difficult.”
“Mrs. Kaufmann left because she found—” I stop before I tell my daughter that the woman found a gun in Alexei’s coat. “A mouse, and she was afraid of it. That was about Mrs. Kaufmann, not about you.”
“And Miss Soto?—”
“Miss Soto left because she was afraid of me. Also not about you.”
“And—”
“Anya.” I take her face in my hands gently, tilting it until she has no choice but to see my eyes, and I have no choice but to see hers.
“Listen to me. Every person who has left this house left because of adult problems. Complicated, messy, grown-up problems. None of them left because of you. Not one.”
She searches my face.
“Ellie didn’t leave because of you,” I repeat. “Ellie cared about you more than — more than almost anyone in this house. And she didn’t choose to go. Someone made that decision for her, and I am going to fix it.”
She studies me until the tension leaves her features. Not completely. But enough.
She leans into me.
I stay. Long after her breathing has settled into the deep, even cadence of sleep. I stay, and I hold her hand, and I vow to the quiet room that I will bring Elizabeth back to this house if it costs me everything I have.
It’s been four days since we managed to salvage the video footage from the ruptured security cameras by the west gate.
They watched helplessly as Landon materialized behind Elizabeth, coiled one arm around her waist, and used the other hand to deliver a needle to the side of her neck.
Her body surrendered in stages, a stiffening, a shudder, then the terrible loosening of every muscle as consciousness abandoned her. He caught her before she reached the ground and carried her through the gate.
I watched the footage three times before my fist connected with the monitor, and the screen collapsed. The wall behind it still bears the crack from where the equipment struck.
The void she left is not an absence. It is a presence — a dense, gravitational emptiness that has rearranged the air of every room she occupied.
Her jacket still hangs on the hook beside the kitchen door.
A glass she used three days before the attack still sits on the counter beside the sink because I told the staff not to touch it, and no one questioned the instruction.
The footage does not depict a woman who fled — at least, not entirely.
Elizabeth ran from the chaos and the violence. She reached the west gate, but she paused, and before she could decide what to do next, she was taken.
Whether she truly intended to leave or not, I don’t know, but the distinction has ceased to matter.
Two days ago, Alexei’s network produced a lead: a hotel in the southern district, one of Dushku’s peripheral properties. I mobilized every man I could spare and drove there myself, the speedometer buried past one-twenty, my knuckles bone-white against the steering wheel.
We arrived forty minutes too late.
The room was immaculate, completely stripped, sanitized, every surface wiped clean of evidence.
But the staff confirmed what the emptiness denied: a dark-haired woman matching Elizabeth’s description had been there for approximately two days.
She departed in the company of two men flanked by additional figures who carried themselves with the unmistakable posture of private security.
I commandeered the surveillance recordings.
The footage rendered in grainy monochrome: Elizabeth walking through a corridor between two of Dushku’s operatives, her chin lowered, her arms pressed against her sides.
Moving under her own power. No visible injuries.
No visible surrender either. The set of her shoulders, the placement of each step, communicated a resistance that the camera could capture but not quantify.
Calm down, moya koroleva. I’m coming for you.
The fifth hotel yields nothing.
The fury I’ve been sustaining for the past few days — the hot, propulsive variety that carried me through raids and interrogations and sleepless hours bent over surveillance maps — curdles into a colder and substantially less productive feeling.
I could incinerate every remaining property Dushku controls in this city. I’ve been compiling them systematically: addresses, structural vulnerabilities, accelerant requirements.
The logistics are simple. But the thought of Dushku receiving a phone call about burning buildings and turning his frustration toward Elizabeth extinguishes the fantasy before it fully forms.
I despise the vulnerability. The sensation of being tethered to another person’s safety in a manner that constrains every tactical impulse I possess. A person other than my daughter.
I’ve spent fifteen years ensuring that no one else could be used as leverage against me. I severed connections and maintained distance, constructing an empire predicated on the principle that attachment is a liability.
Until a woman with dark hair and steady hands dismantled every wall I built, and I let her. Now her absence is an open wound I can’t cauterize.
Enough .
I extract my phone from my pocket. The number I dial is one I have had stored for three years and utilized twice. The first occasion was a warning. The second resolved a territorial dispute that would have otherwise escalated into an expensive and public problem. I never anticipated a third call.
It rings four times.
“Rolan.” Dushku’s voice carries the warmth of satisfaction. “I was wondering how long you’d take.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s fine. Comfortable, even. Don’t worry. Your girl has spirit, I’ll give you that.”
The insinuation sends a spike of undiluted rage through me.
“Cut the shit, Dushku. Leave her out of this. What do you want?”
“Let’s meet.” His tone shifts from pleasantries to commerce. “Discuss the terms of your surrender. Then you can have your precious Elizabeth returned to you.” A calculated pause. “I can understand the appeal, Rolan. She’s fierce. Quite... memorable.”
My jaw locks so tightly the pressure radiates into my temples. “If you’ve touched her, if a single mark exists on her body that wasn’t there when she entered your custody, I will rip your hands off. Not metaphorically.”
“Let’s not discuss ripping things, Rolan. You’re giving me ideas.” His amusement is genuine. “East warehouse. Two hours. Come alone. Your girl will be there as well. Consider her an incentive for your good behavior.”
The line dies before I can respond. The silence that follows is absolute, and into that silence I feed every ounce of restraint I’ve been rationing for days .
I dial Alexei.
“Dushku. East warehouse,” I spit. “Two hours. Position teams on all four perimeter approaches. South and east entries are the breach points. No one moves until I give the signal.”
“That’s an ambush,” Alexei states the obvious. “You understand that, right?”
“I understand it perfectly.”
“Rolan—”
“He has Elizabeth.” I deliver it without inflection. “I’m walking in alone. Your teams hold position until the signal.”
Silence.
“And, Alexei.” I pause. “If Landon Webb surfaces during the operation, keep him breathing. I want him last.”
“Copy.”
Two hours later, I step through the warehouse entrance.
The space unfolds before me in rusted geometries, corrugated walls climbing thirty feet toward a ceiling latticed with exposed steel beams and defunct industrial lighting. The air carries the metallic bite of oxidized iron and the subterranean chill.
Concrete pillars stand at regular intervals, casting angular shadows beneath the sparse fluorescent strips that remain operational.
Pallets and crates line the periphery in disordered stacks.
The floor is poured concrete, cracked and stained, stretching toward the center of the space where two figures wait.
I count fourteen weapons trained on me before I even finish crossing the threshold. Handguns, mostly. Two rifles positioned on elevated platforms to my left and right — snipers, angled to create overlapping fields of fire.
I keep walking.
Dushku occupies the center of the space, and Landon stands slightly behind and to his left, communicating everything I need to know about the hierarchy of this arrangement .
“Rolan.” Dushku opens his palms in a gesture of manufactured welcome. “I’m glad you came.”
“Where is she?”
He tilts his head with a yellow smile. “Of course.” He inclines his chin toward someone positioned behind me.
I don’t turn. I hold Dushku’s gaze and wait, and then, at the periphery of my vision I detect movement. Two men emerge from a doorway at the far end of the warehouse, and between them, Elizabeth.