Chapter 12 Two Worlds
Two Worlds
Anton:
Power isn't in the taking. It's in the waiting. And when the craving hits, she'll know exactly who she wants.
I watch her from the doorway. Fee shifts in my bed, one bare leg escaping the sheets.
I carried her from the table to my bed, her body still trembling against my chest. The memory of last night hits hard, how I'd laid her on these sheets and took my time until she was pleading for more.
"Please, Anton." Her voice. Raw. Breathless. Fingers running through my hair, pulling me closer even as she begged.
But I'd held back. Made her come apart while she clawed at my shoulders, desperate for all of me. The restraint nearly killed me, watching her arch off the bed, hearing my name break from her lips.
She said she's leaving. Providence. Her sister. Her father wants her home.
Nothing forced ever lasts, and Fee's had her fair share of chains. Every man in her life has decided what's best for her. I won't be another.
I want her to stay, but only if it's her choice.
I set the small box beside her pillow, which I should've given her on our first date. The card holds what I should've said sooner.
Reality never stays gone for long. Months of preparing, of getting ready for her, and this is how it happens. Not how I wanted her to remember it.
She's open just enough to let me in again, and now I have to walk away. Not because I want to, but because I have to.
I just want the chance to prove to her that this could be real. But wanting doesn't change the world we live in.Three a.m.—that hour that belongs to neither night nor morning. Manhattan exhales its heat and holds its shadows close.
I dream of a morning that might not exist: waking her with my mouth, making her coffee, guarding nothing but the curve of her smile.
Time's up. I leave her sleeping in sheets that still smell like us and walk into a city that will never understand why that scent makes me want to burn everything down to keep it.
She sleeps like peace. I wake like war.
But our world doesn't pause. Connor and Patrick are waiting, and the Chicago shipment won't clean itself.
The Quinns want me at tonight's meeting. Not for muscle, but because they trust me to put a bullet in someone's head if something goes wrong.
The Chicago shipment's worth more than money; it's new tech, prototype weapons no one's supposed to touch except the Basovs and the Quinns. We've been working on this run for months. Morrison was clearing the way, making sure every manifest, every crate, passed through customs untouched.
I didn't like him. Never did. But I watched him, and he was solid. A gambler, sure, but the kind of debt they said he had? Yuri would've seen it long before it hit bottom.
So, this story about gambling, it's theater. Someone's using it to hide what really happened.
Morrison's death left more than a body; it left a position wide open. A strategic channel that could be exploited by anyone ambitious or reckless enough to reach for it.
For now, the Quinns are working with another of our contacts, someone from Morrison's circle.
Hartley. A government type. Polished, polite, careful about the company he keeps.
He sat in on a few of Morrison's meetings, handled those art transfers that required the right paperwork and the wrong favors.
I've seen his name before, attached to art shipments that passed through customs untouched when they shouldn't have.
Yuri's been digging, but if he couldn't trace what buried Morrison, then we're dealing with something that changes data but doesn't live in it. The kind of truth that hides in people, not servers. That means old methods, eyes, hands, and pressure.
That's where Ruslan comes in.
Brutal. Precise. The kind of man who believes pain is a language, and he's fluent. He doesn't ask questions twice. Doesn't need to.
With Ruslan, men would rather die than lie again.
I'm no stranger to that work myself. Killing is cleaner, but truth extraction...that's an art of a different kind. Between Ruslan's needles, Yuri's reach, and my patience, there's not a secret in this city we can't drag into the light.
When I exit the elevator, the doors part like a curtain on a stage I've played a thousand times. My jacket settles against my shoulders, the familiar weight of the gun beneath my arm, and another at my ankle.
Fifteen rounds and more ghosts than I care to count.
Dominic and Alexei wait in the lobby's marble expanse, their postures shifting from casual to alert the moment they see me.
"There's going to be a special delivery today." I check my watch, which reads 3:15 AM. The florist opens at seven. "Flowers. Nothing else goes up to the penthouse without my direct approval."
Alexei's eyebrows lift slightly.
"Call me first," I tell him. "I don't care if it's the Pope delivering communion wafers. You call."
"Copy that." Alexei nods, but I catch the glance he exchanges with Dominic. They're wondering why their notoriously controlled boss is micromanaging flower deliveries.
Yuri leans against the wall next to my car, cigarette smoke curling around his face. He straightens when he sees me, drops the cigarette, and grinds it out with his shoe.
My phone vibrates against my ribs. Connor's message cuts through the night like a blade: North warehouse. Twenty minutes.
I glance at the text, then delete it. Connor and Patrick want me to observe from afar.
I slide behind the wheel with Yuri at my side, and the engine purrs to life like a predator stretching awake. The city blurs past in streaks of neon and shadow as I navigate toward the docks, where honest work ends and our kind of business begins.
Manhattan at this hour belongs to garbage trucks and insomniacs, the city's pulse slower but never stopping. Steam rises from manholes like ghosts of the day's heat.
"What have you found so far?" I ask, settling into the familiar rhythm of operational planning.
Yuri scrolls through his phone, eyes half on the road.
"What we know already, he's the Cultural Commission Director, David Hartley.
Law degree, thirty-eight, divorced twice, no kids.
Still relatively new in this scene. Good government connections, Morrison being one.
A few hookers, minor vices. Nothing that screams problem. "
"Nothing screams until it does."
I keep my eyes on the road, the leather wheel warm beneath my hands. The city slides by in slow blurs of yellow light and shadow. "I need everything there is to know about him."
"I'm still digging. His secrets will surface."
"Maybe." I don't look at him. "Or someone's already changed them."
"You're thinking someone's altering the data?"
"Not just data. Reality." I can almost feel it—threads moved, timelines rewritten, stories tweaked to erase the wrong truths. "Whoever's behind this didn't just change files. They changed perception. Made sure every trace of what Morrison touched looks ordinary or really fucked up."
Yuri exhales. "Our assassin's crafty with his tech. But it could be a her. Can't discount a woman. Look at Fee."
My fingers tighten on the wheel. "On that, I want you to meet with her today. Teach her what you know. Everything."
He glances at me, reading between the lines. "That's not basic training, Anton. That's a lifetime of work."
"Then make it a long lesson."
Yuri smirks, catching on. "You want to keep her here."
"She's not going anywhere. Not yet."
Having access to Yuri's knowledge will tether Fee here longer than any chain could. She's too smart to trap, too curious to let go.
There's no controlling a mind that hungry, and I'm not trying to. I fucking love that about her.
The warehouse district spreads before me like a graveyard of broken dreams and rusted metal. The pier stretches into darkness like a concrete finger pointing at secrets. Water laps against the pylons with the rhythm of the city, and fog rolls off the water thick enough to hide sins.
I kill the lights and let the Camaro disappear into shadow. Twenty yards ahead, Connor Quinn's Lincoln idles, engine low and steady. Patrick steps out first, checking his watch like time's ever saved a man in our world.
I scan the pier through the windshield. Empty.
A silver BMW glides into the lot, engine low, movement too smooth for this part of town. Government plates flash under the sodium lights before the fog swallows them again. The driver steps out in a suit designed to blend in anywhere and mean nothing.
"That's our boy." Yuri squints through the fog. "Cultural Commission Director, David Hartley."
I watch Hartley approach the Quinns with the careful steps of someone walking through a minefield.
"Can you hear them?"
Yuri lifts a small device, its blue light pulsing like a heartbeat. Static hums, then voices thread through the noise.
"...paperwork you've been waiting for."
Hartley's voice carries the practiced ease of a man who's lied for a living and learned to sound proud of it. "Your Chicago shipment clears customs tomorrow morning. Clean manifests. Sealed containers."
"About fucking time." Patrick's impatience slices through the fog. "We've been sitting on millions in inventory."
"Morrison's death complicated things," Hartley says, straightening the papers in his hands. "He had debts, as you know. Tried to keep that part of his life buried. Not surprising, given the circles we move in. But it left the route exposed."
His tone stays smooth. Too smooth. "I worked with Morrison often—mostly art shipments, not ordnance—but I've made sure this one is covered. Everything's handled."
He sounds certain. Men like him always do. They lie with posture, not words—shoulders relaxed, gaze steady, the small smile that says they've convinced themselves.
I watch him hand over the files. The tremor in his fingers gives him away.
"He's nervous," Yuri murmurs beside me.
"He should be," I say. "He's standing in blood and pretending it's paperwork."
"Maybe he's the one Morrison hired the shooter for," Yuri says, eyes narrowing. "Wouldn't be the first time a man tried to clean up his own mess by outsourcing it."
I keep watching through the scope of fog. "Maybe. Or he's the reason Morrison needed the shooter in the first place."
Hartley closes the folder, then steps back toward his car. "You'll find everything in order. Your contacts at customs are briefed. Consider it done."
"Done." Patrick's tone makes it sound like a curse.
The meeting ends with polite smiles that smell like fear. Hartley returns to his BMW; the Quinns move toward their Lincoln.
Connor's car pulls away first, disappearing into the streets of Manhattan's late-night commerce and early-morning ambition.
Hartley sits in his BMW too long—checking messages and rehearsing his words, maybe working up courage for his next lie. When his taillights finally fade into traffic, Yuri and I exchange a look that says the same thing in any language.
We follow Hartley's BMW through Manhattan's arterial maze, keeping three cars between us. The city's pulse thrums beneath my wheels as we navigate toward the Upper East Side, where honest money mingles with laundered bills and nobody asks uncomfortable questions.
His brake lights flare at East 73rd Street. The BMW slides into a parking space outside a brownstone that screams old money and older secrets. Federal architecture wrapped in ivy and privilege.
"Interesting neighborhood for a cultural commission director," Yuri mutters, checking the address against his phone. "Place like this runs eight million, minimum."
I park across the street, engine idling. Hartley emerges from his car, briefcase in hand, and climbs the brownstone's steps with the confidence of someone who belongs. No fumbling for keys, no hesitation. He punches in a security code and disappears inside.
Lights bloom in second-floor windows. Then the third floor. He's not just visiting.
"Run the property records," I tell Yuri.
Yuri's fingers dance across his phone screen. "Shell company, incorporated in Delaware three years ago. Registered agent with a law firm that specializes in anonymity."
"Creative." I watch shadows move behind expensive curtains. "Morrison dies, and his replacement already has an eight-million-dollar safety net?"
Something isn't right.
"Keep digging." I tap the dashboard, my mind already drawing connections that don't fit. "I want everything on Hartley. Find what he's hiding."
Yuri nods, already typing.
Maybe Morrison really did have a debt. Maybe he was the distraction. Either way, someone wanted him gone, and I need to know if Hartley helped pull the trigger or just stepped in to collect what was left. Morrison's seat in this operation wasn't small. It was leverage.
Morrison's killers swore Fee was off the list. The Quinns, too. I've heard vows like that before. They last about as long as the man who makes them. We'll see soon enough.
"Something's not clean about this guy," I say. "Morrison's contact steps in overnight with paperwork ready and a fortune in real estate? Someone's buying protection, or buying a grave."
I pull out my phone and scroll to a name that doesn't need an introduction.
Ruslan answers on the first ring. His voice is rough, half-asleep, but steady. He knows I don't call unless it's work. And work at this hour only means one thing.
"Truth extraction," I say.
A low laugh. "Old-fashioned way? Early morning hit to keep them off balance?"
"The only way that works."
"Where?"
"I'll pick you up."
"I'll be ready."
Ruslan cuts, nips, injects, whatever the truth requires. He's a surgeon without ethics, a butcher with purpose.
We'll hit them after a night that looks like any other: men stumbling home drunk, stories soft. The syringes he uses loosen memory the way heat loosens glue. Some drugs don't let a man wake up; sometimes a man doesn't leave at all.
Not this time. Too early to start the killing. Tonight, we want witnesses who remember nothing. We'll leave them high, confused, mouths full of static. Strategic mercy.
Keep the bodies off the books and the threads intact.
For the first time in two years, I have something that matters more than the job.
So no, I'm not backing down for a minute. The moment I touched her, she became mine to protect, my war to fight. Anyone who comes for her doesn't get a warning. They don't get to tell the story.
I grip the wheel. The engine hums beneath my hand, ready but waiting. City lights bleed across the windshield, echoes of motion we haven't made yet. Two worlds pulling at me: one I was born for, and one I'm afraid to lose.