Chapter Ten
Dmitri
The days that followed the wedding settled into a rhythm I didn’t fully trust. Rhythms like this one rarely lasted long in my line of work.
On the surface, everything was stable. The casino floors ran smoothly.
Dealers were back to their usual routines.
The private lounge reopened under tighter security than before but otherwise functioned the way it had for years.
The internal investigation into the raid had slowed to a crawl, mostly because nobody had turned up anything new to chase.
Val was adjusting, slowly, to the strange new architecture of her life.
I kept my usual responsibilities running.
I had meetings with my men about security protocols and calls with partners who were nervous about the federal attention still circling our operations.
Mikhail had asked twice already whether the marriage had settled the perception problem the way I’d promised it would, and twice I’d told him yes without fully believing it myself.
Nikolai had run the numbers on our exposure following the raid and pronounced the family financially stable enough to weather whatever scrutiny came next, though even his usual flat certainty carried a note of caution I didn’t like hearing from him.
My attention split in ways that frustrated me more than I let anyone see, half of it always tracking back to the penthouse. Back to Val and whatever she might be doing at any given hour.
Because something was wrong.
I felt it in a way I couldn’t shake. In the way I felt most things wrong in my world before I had proof enough to name it.
I found the proof three days after the wedding as I sat alone in my office, reviewing security logs I checked out of habit more than suspicion.
At first it looked minor. Just a handful of encrypted files related to financial routing, accessed outside normal hours. I assumed it was residue from the earlier breach, some cleanup process still working through the mess the raid had left behind.
Then I cross-checked time stamps against device logs, and the pattern that emerged made something in my chest go cold.
The access hadn’t come from outside our systems.
It had come from inside them. Specifically, from a device tied to my network credentials.
Instinctively, I ran the search again to be certain I hadn’t misread something in my suspicion or exhaustion.
The result didn’t change. Someone had used my access, my clearance, to pull files over the last several days.
It was careful and precise in a way that told me exactly what kind of person I was dealing with.
Someone working with structure, not chaos. Not a smash-and-grab looking for whatever they could find before getting caught. Someone methodically pulling exactly what they needed and nothing more, patient enough to spread the access out over days instead of hours to avoid tripping any obvious alarm.
Financial routing documents. Private meeting schedules. The kind of information that told a person not just what we did, but when, where, and through whom. The precise information of how this family actually moved money and made decisions.
I pulled up the full access history and forced myself to read through it slowly instead of scanning for the parts that frightened me most. Whoever this was had been careful about timing, pulling files during hours when routine maintenance traffic would have masked the activity from anyone doing a casual review.
They’d touched three separate document clusters over five days, never more than a handful of files in any single session, spread out enough that no automated alert had ever tripped.
This wasn’t someone panicking, grabbing whatever they could before getting caught.
This was someone with time, patience, and a clear sense of exactly what they needed.
For one brief, unwelcome second, my mind went to Val.
I dismissed it almost as fast as it arrived, disgusted with myself for even letting the thought surface.
Val didn’t have the technical skill for something like this.
She didn’t have the years of experience required to navigate systems this deep without leaving obvious traces everywhere.
She still flinched at raised voices and relied on me to walk her through basic pieces of this world that everyone else around her had absorbed by osmosis over decades.
The idea of her quietly extracting sensitive documents through my credentials while sitting beside me every night was absurd on every level I examined it from.
And yet the timing bothered me in a way I couldn’t fully talk myself out of.
I chose not to bring it to anyone yet. Not Roman, not Nikolai, and certainly not Mikhail.
Raising internal suspicion around Val again, so soon after the last accusation had nearly gotten her locked in a room and interrogated, wasn’t something I was willing to do without confirming exactly what I was looking at first.
Instead, I started quietly tracing the breach backward myself, checking access points one at a time, building a picture before I let anyone else near it.
I’d learned long ago that half-formed suspicions, spoken too early in a room full of people already inclined toward the worst interpretation, had a way of hardening into conclusions nobody could walk back from afterward.
Roman came in when I was hunched over a second monitor I’d set up specifically for this and read my expression correctly before I’d said a word.
“You look like a man who found something he didn’t want to find.”
“Maybe.”
“You want to tell me what it is, or are you going to sit on it for three days before finally admitting you need help?”
I glanced up at him, almost scoffing. His expectant expression made me reconsider keeping this entirely to myself. He was my right-hand, after all. I didn’t need to ask for his discretion; it was implied on a primary level.
“Someone’s been pulling documents through my credentials. Financial routing, meeting schedules. Careful, patient extraction, not a smash-and-grab.”
His expression sharpened immediately. “And I didn’t find it? How long?”
“Days.”
“You don’t think it’s her,” he said, carefully neutral.
“No.”
“But you thought about it.”
“For about four seconds, yes. And then I remembered she can barely operate the thermostat in the penthouse without asking Nadia for help, let alone navigate encrypted financial systems well enough to extract exactly what she needs without tripping a single alarm.”
Roman considered that, nodding slowly. “Fair. Though you should know that’s not actually evidence; that’s just you falling for her enough to want it to be true.”
“Who said anything about falling?” I queried.
“Okay, boss,” he conceded. “We’re going to test a new security installation in the third lounge. Matvey and Harry are on standby here, with their soldiers.”
I nodded in acknowledgement, and he left.
I hadn’t found the thread by the time the security alert came in.
One of our affiliated clubs further down the Strip flagged unusual federal activity building around it.
Pressure that suggested a raid within hours rather than days, likely connected to the same investigation that had never fully died down since the poker lounge.
The location handled a chunk of our financial disruption work, quiet transactions that didn’t need public attention, and a raid there risked both money and exposure in ways that demanded immediate attention.
I started moving before I was done reading the full alert, already pulling on my jacket, already running through who I’d need with me and what needed to happen in the next hour to minimize the damage.
Val was sitting near the windows when I came through the living room, curled into the corner of the couch watching the city.
She looked calmer than she had in days, some of the perpetual tension finally starting to ease out of her shoulders, though I could still see the underlying wariness of someone learning to live inside a life she’d never asked for.
I could see her still listening for every unfamiliar sound, though she thought no one saw her do it.
For half a second, I considered simply telling her to stay put without explanation and heading straight for the door, my old instinct to manage rather than explain rising out of habit before I could catch it.
Then I stopped myself.
Val didn’t respond well to being managed, to decisions made about her without explanation, however well-intentioned. I’d learned that the hard way more than once already. She responded to truth—even if it was uncomfortable—better than she responded to control.
“I need to handle something at one of the clubs,” I told her, crossing toward the door.
She looked up immediately, alert in the way she’d developed since the raid.
“What kind of something?” she inquired.
“Federal activity building around one of our locations. Possibly a raid within the hour.”
“Another one.”
“Not like the lounge. Smaller. Different circumstances.” I kept my answer honest without handing her more detail than she needed.
“Are you going to be okay?”
The question landed differently than it would have two weeks ago. Before the wedding, a shared bed, and the vulnerability of watching someone worry about whether I came home.
I could have given her an easy response. But it wouldn’t be the truth.
“I don’t know,” I said instead.
Something flickered across her face, surprise mixed with respect. “That’s not exactly comforting.”
“I guess it isn’t.”
She was quiet a moment, studying me.
“A month ago you would have made a joke out of this. Told me not to worry my pretty head about it, something charming and useless like that.”
“Maybe that’s because I didn’t have a reason to want you to actually believe me a month ago.”
“And now you do.”
“Now I do.” I crossed back toward her, just long enough to press a brief kiss to her forehead, quick but deliberate.
She held my gaze, and I could clearly see something steadying behind her expression despite the fear in her eyes. “Come back.”
“I intend to.”
I left her there by the window and took the elevator down with my mind already splitting in two directions at once—half running through every contingency for whatever waited at that club, and half circling back to the breach still sitting unresolved in my own systems.
Someone inside my protected space had spent days quietly extracting exactly the kind of information that mattered most. They had done it carefully and patiently in a way that told me they understood what they were looking for and how to avoid getting caught doing it.
A raid outside was a known danger, the kind I’d handled a hundred times over and understood how to manage. But whoever was moving quietly through my own systems frightened me in a way the raid waiting at that club simply didn’t.
The city stretched out as we pulled away from the building.
Somewhere out there, someone was watching my family’s operation with patience and precision.
And somewhere behind me, in a penthouse I’d never once considered vulnerable until tonight, the woman I’d married to keep safe sat waiting for me to come home, unaware that the danger closest to her might not be the one she already knew to fear.
By the time the club came into view, its facade lit up against the dark, I already understood something. Whatever waited inside that building tonight, the more dangerous problem was still sitting quietly in my own systems, waiting for me to identify it.