Leonid
I sit back in the leather chair in my office, the one that smells like expensive cigar smoke and the weak fear of men who think money makes them untouchable.
Boris keeps his security feeds on a private network, separate from the compound’s standard system, because he is paranoid and sentimental about his own power.
He still believes he owns what he owns because he earned it.
Yet hacking into the feed, both looped and live, was a piece of piss.
The camera angle is perfect. The corridor is lit in sterile whites, the floor polished to a dull shine, the vault door waiting at the end like a sealed mouth. The loop plays smooth and seamless. No flicker. No lag. A feed any of his idiot men would trust.
But I know what lives under the lie.
I glance at the second monitor, the one that shows the live feed that I pulled the day after the annual Masquerade party thrown by the Vasiliev’s. It shows the real corridor.
And there she is. Boris Andreev’s niece.
Victoria.
She moves like she was poured into the shadows and taught to breathe quietly. Black clothes. Black hair pinned tight. A small black backpack that is utilitarian, not designer. No jewelry. No vanity. A woman stripped down to pure intention.
Her hand touches the panel. It hesitates, as if it recognizes her blood.
Then it lets her in.
My mouth curves, slow.
Interesting.
There have been rumors circulating for the last six months or so…rumors I put no weight in until my watch went missing at the Masquerade.
The ghost thief. A thief who disappears into crowds at Bratva parties and leaves men lighter than they were when they arrived.
Whispers and suspicions about who it could be circulated in the weeks that followed.
Maksim Vasiliev was furious but Roman found it hilarious.
Every family denied any involvement. I heard the stories, and I dismissed them as drunken bravado.
Until it happened to me.
Honestly, my ego was bruised. I don’t care about the loss of the watch as much as the fact that someone managed to take it from my wrist without me noticing until after the fact.
I’d assumed that it had been a man, but quickly realized it had to be a woman…
weeks of research and digging and trying to get Maksim to part with his guest list, and I finally landed on a name that made something blow at the base of my skull.
Now I’m watching her on a monitor and it’s difficult to imagine she is the same woman from the masquerade.
She wore gold that night. The kind of dress that looks as though it was poured onto her while it was still molten metal.
Her mask was black. Her uncle introduced us in a way that made my skin crawl.
But she smiled and nodded, and moved on.
With my watch.
Now Victoria steps inside the vault with the quiet confidence of someone who has been planning this betrayal for a long time.
Not a crime. A liberation. I can see it in the way she holds herself.
In the way her shoulders don’t curl inward, even here, even now, even under the weight of what she is about to do.
She doesn’t look over her shoulder or stretch her neck to look around corners.
She is not afraid of the vault. But she is afraid of the man who built it.
Boris Andreev.
I tap my finger once on the desk. That’s all it takes to summon one of my men.
Bogdan appears soundlessly, tall and composed in his charcoal suit cut to conceal a devastating number of weapons. His eyes flick to the screens and then to me.
“She’s inside already,” he says quietly.
“I can see.”
His gaze lingers on Victoria’s image. She crosses the vault floor like she has a map carved into her bones. Straight past the boxes. Straight to the pedestal.
I watch her hands. They’re steady. This is pure, perfectly honed skill.
“She’s not improvising,” Bogdan murmurs.
“No.”
A thrill slides down my spine, sharp and clean. Fascination and want tangle together in a way I haven’t experienced before. Interesting.
Because despite suspecting someone from Boris’ estate was responsible for the thefts, she was the last person I thought capable of this. Capable of stealing from her own uncle.
Boris keeps his niece close, like a possession, not a person.
A pretty piece of family branding, dragged out at events to remind everyone that bloodlines matter.
I have seen her from across rooms, a quiet, little thing in expensive dresses, her eyes always lowered, her smile carefully practiced but never quite reaching her eyes.
I try not to feel awe and respect towards her, because if she can’t get out of this, it would be reckless stupidity that drove her tonight.
And for some reason, I need her not to be recklessly stupid.
I need to know what I’m seeing is more than a spoiled brat throwing a temper tantrum and trying to hit her uncle where it’ll hurt him most.
Victoria opens the pedestal’s control panel and works it like she was born with lockpicks in her fingers. Her focus is absolute.
When the shield retracts, she exhales like the world has finally cracked open just for her.
Then she lifts the case.
Diamonds. Enough to finance a war. Enough to buy a small country. Boris is greedy, but he is also sentimental. He hoards pretty things the way he hoards people. I know because I’ve seen his taste for ownership up close, and if my suspicions are right, those aren’t actually his diamonds.
The moment she slides the case into her bag, I feel something settle in my chest.
Mine.
Not the diamonds. Her.
Bogdan watches me with that still, careful expression he reserves for moments when I am about to do something violent or stupid or both.
“You’re letting her take them,” he says.
“I am.”
“Boris will raise hell.”
“Let him.”
Bogdan’s mouth tightens. “If she disappears, we’ll lose her.”
I glance at him. “Do you think she can disappear from me?”
He pauses, and I enjoy the way he thinks before he answers, because Bogdan isn’t an idiot, and he has kept me alive for years by telling me the truth.
“No,” he says finally. “But she might try.”
“That’s the whole point.”
The point is the chase. The point is the spark in her blood that makes her brave enough to steal from her own uncle. The point is the way she moves through a place built to cage her, and she does it with her head high, like she would rather die than stay small.
I want to see how far she runs. How well she can handle a situation when it one-eighties right beneath her feet.
I want to see what she does when she thinks she has won and the world shifts to throw her off balance.
Because women like this don’t exist in our world. They are forged. Sharpened until they become weapons. And so fucking rare, my gut feels tight at the anticipation of having her. Claiming her.
I have always had a weakness for rare things.
Victoria turns to leave.
I could end it now. One call to Boris, even at this time of night, and he would be there in seconds.
But I don’t.
I let her reach the door. I let her step into the corridor. Then I trigger the alarm.
The sound screams through the compound, ripping the quiet apart. On the screen, Victoria freezes for a fraction of a second, then she bolts, fast and clean. She doesn’t stumble or hesitate. She already has her escape route mapped, likely a secondary one for back-up in case of this exact event.
Bogdan watches her disappear into the maintenance hatch. “She knew where that was.”
“I told you,” I say softly. “She’s not improvising. She has planned this every possible way.”
The guards flood the stairwell. Voices shout. Boots thunder. Chaos blooms exactly the way I want it to. I can already imagine Boris upstairs, waking in anger, barking orders, convinced he is the center of the universe being attacked from all sides by his enemies.
Enemies from the outside. Not his own niece.
I watch her throw the bag into the duct and then shimmy into the tight space. The feed changes with a press of my finger on the touch pad, and I cycle through the images until I see her appear through the top of a vent and drop down to the floor, swinging her backpack onto her shoulders.
She is beautiful like this. Not dressed up. Not curated. Not quiet for other people.
She is vibrant and alive. Moving like a dancer in the darkness. Trusting that the steps she has planned will be there to catch her before she falls.
“She has a motorcycle,” Bogdan says, the faintest edge of surprise in his voice.
I smile. “Of course she does.”
Victoria yanks on a helmet and starts the engine. A guard bursts through the doors and shouts her name, but she doesn’t even turn her head. She rockets into the night like the city owes her a way out.
She thinks she is escaping Boris. She doesn’t know yet she has just stepped into my line of sight.
And I’m never letting her escape it.