Chapter 11 Volk #2
But I'm hoping I won't need to apply pressure and can just make this go away quietly. Cleanly. Without adding more bodies to the pile Sofiya and I are creating. My phone buzzes again.
Sofiya: Are you okay?
Three words. That's all. But they carry weight.
The acknowledgment that what we did—what we shared—changed things between us.
I shouldn't respond. Should focus on the job instead of the woman who's currently destroying everything I've built.
But she was in my bed last night, body pressed against mine.
Her scars under my fingers, and her trust offered up like something precious.
Me: Fine. Stay low today. Don't go to Lush.
Sofiya: Why?
Me: Pakhan's investigating Igor's death. Interviewing everyone.
Sofiya: I'm scheduled for tonight.
Me: Call in sick.
Sofiya: That'll look suspicious.
She's right. Dammit. Changing patterns now would raise flags.
Me: Fine. But stay visible. Stay in public areas. Don't go anywhere alone.
Sofiya: You mean don't kill anyone else?
Me: Exactly.
Sofiya: Where's the fun in that?
Despite everything, the danger, the investigation, the tightrope we're walking,I smile.
Me: Save it for who deserves it.
Sofiya: Planning on it.
I pocket my phone and head to my car. The city stretches out before me—Phoenix in all its sprawling, ugly glory. Full of violence it pretends doesn't exist.
I've spent fifteen years serving the Pakhan. Over a decade building his empire. Bleeding for it. Killing for it. Becoming the weapon he needed me to be. Now I'm using everything he taught me to destroy him. The irony isn't lost on me.
I drive to the warehouse. The scene is still secured, yellow tape and bored cops on our payroll going through the motions. The file will soon be marked unsolved , and life will go on. Except for Igor. His life stopped on a dirty warehouse floor with Sofiya's knife in his throat.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
The security guard, Ben, is easy to find. Sitting in his car, smoking, and looking like a man who saw something he wishes he hadn't.
I knock on his window, and he jumps, nearly dropping his cigarette.
"Ben Hawthorn?" I ask.
"Who's asking?"
I show him my Bratva tattoos marking me as Vor v zakone. The ones that mean I'm untouchable. The kind of man you answer honestly or don't answer at all.
"Oh." His face goes pale. "Yes, I'm Ben." He rises slowly to his feet as he exits the car, his age showing on more than just his face.
"I hear you saw something last night, someone leaving through the back."
"I...yeah. Maybe. It was dark."
"Describe them."
"I don't know. Short, moved fast, a wearing dark clothes. Could've been anyone."
"Man or woman?"
He hesitates. That hesitation tells me everything.
"I couldn't tell," he says finally.
Good boy.
"Your daughter," I say, conversational and friendly. "Madison, right? Studying engineering at ASU?"
His jaw tightens. "Leave her out of this."
"I'm not threatening your daughter, Ben. I'm just making conversation." I casually lean against his car. "It's expensive. College. Gotta pay for books and housing. Takes a lot of money to support a kid through that."
"Yes…" His voice trails off, the What do you want remains unspoken but clear.
"I want you to…be a little forgetful. Man your age, not a hard thing, am I right?” I chuckle, and he returns the sound, though he sounds nervous. “I want you to tell anyone who asks that you don’t remember any suspicious activity. Just a normal night until someone found the body."
"And when I have?"
Smart man. He knows he doesn’t have a choice, it's when, not if.
"Then your daughter finishes school, gets her degree, and builds a life far away from men like me. Far away from violence and warehouses and bodies on floors. And best of all, you both walk away debt free."
"And if I don't?"
I don't answer, just look at him, letting the silence carry the threat. Let his imagination fill in the blanks. He's smart enough to understand.
"You’re right," he says, voice steady and choice made. "My memory, it's just not too good anymore."
"Good." I push off the car and reach into my pocket. I hand him a stack of bills. "For your daughter's future."
His hand shakes slightly as he takes it. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me. Just remember what happens to people who don’t keep their word." I level him with a meaningful glare before turning away.
I leave him there and get back in my car. Another item crossed off the list of loose ends that need tying. My phone buzzes.
Pakhan: Come back to the office. Now. We need to talk.
I swear to God this day is never ending. That's not good. That's the kind of summons that precedes either promotion or execution depending on which way the wind is blowing.
I drive back, park in my usual spot and take the elevator to his floor. Trying not to think about Sofiya, about what happens if he's figured it out. I can take him out, but I know I’ll never make it out of the house alive. Maybe that will be enough.
The Pakhan is sitting behind his desk when I enter, smoking a cigar despite the woman standing sideways in front of the desk, her pregnant belly on display.
His new wife— the replacement for the one he married weeks after murdering his first. She’s a beautiful woman, but I know she will just be another in a long line of discards before too long.
"Volk," the Pakhan greets. "Sit."
I sit on the overstuffed leather sofa against the right wall of the office. I keep my face neutral as I wait.
"I've been thinking about Yelena," he says. "About what you said , whether she could have survived."
"Yes?"
"And I realized something , something I should have remembered sooner." He looks at his wife. She looks back with the blank eyes of someone who's learned not to question. Not to care. He’s already broken her. "I lied that day."
The words drop like stones into still water. Ripples spreading outward. Implications I can't quite grasp.
"I don't understand," I say.
"Her mother's affair, the reason I killed her.
I said Yelena wasn't my daughter, that she was his.
" The Pakhan's voice is flat like he's discussing the weather instead of the murder of his wife and attempted murder of her child.
"I lied when I told her she wasn't mine.
I wanted her to think her mother betrayed us both. But the truth is more complicated."
"What's the truth?"
"The truth is she had to have been mine.
" He laughs. Dark. Bitter. The sound of a man who's lost something he didn't know he valued.
"There is no possible way she had Yelena with Thomas, he didn’t even work for me then.
Damn Irina finally confessed too. Apparently getting diagnosed with cancer makes you want to be honest. She made up the whole affair, wanted me to fuck her in retaliation.
I don't know, don't care, but Yelena is mine. My daughter. My blood."
The room spins. Everything I thought I knew shifts. Realigns.
"You killed your wife and child over a lie?" I ask.
"Apparently." He shrugs like it doesn't matter. Like murdering an innocent woman and torturing her daughter means nothing in the grand scheme of his empire. "Which makes finding the killer even more important. If Yelena’s alive—if she survived—she’s a major loose end. I don’t need her coming after Dimitri and trying to seize his inheritance.”
No. No, she's not his. She's not anything to him except a target. A threat. Another piece on his board to control or eliminate.
She's mine. The thought comes unbidden. True in ways that terrify me.
"Why tell me this?" I ask.
"Because if she's alive, I want you to find her and bring her to me. I can decide what to do with her then. If she’s pretty enough, I can sell her to someone and get a nice penny for her." His eyes bore into mine. “I can trust you to do that, right, Volk?”
Every instinct screams at me to say no. To refuse. To put a bullet in his skull right here and end this entire nightmare. But my hands are tied.
So I nod. "Yes, Pakhan. You can trust me."
The second biggest lie I've ever told.