Chapter Twelve
Dmitri
Morning brought clarity I didn’t exactly want.
I’d left Val asleep in our bed and gone down to the security office before the rest of the building had properly woken up.
The wound along my side ached with every movement, serving as a dull reminder of the night before, but it hadn’t stopped me from wanting answers to the question that had followed me home from that club.
I’d given up on rest entirely and gone through the access logs one more time in the dark, hoping to catch something my thinking had missed the day before. It hadn’t. The pattern held steady no matter how many times I ran it, precise and damning in the same way each pass.
The leak was no longer a vague concern sitting at the edge of my attention. It was confirmed, laid out in front of me on the monitor. Someone had extracted sensitive operational files from my private device across multiple sessions, spaced carefully.
Roman stood across from me in the security office, arms crossed, his expression tight.
“You confirmed it,” he stated.
“I confirmed it.” I turned the monitor slightly so he could see the timeline laid out, showing him the careful, patient extraction I’d been tracing for days now fully mapped.
“Three sessions. Financial routing, meeting schedules, and now personnel files. All pulled through my own device credentials, all timed to blend into routine maintenance traffic.”
He studied the screen for a long moment. It was all the same as what was on his tablet screen, of course.
“I know I already asked and—”
“You’re wondering if it could be her,” I cut in.
“Any other name could be linked to all this, but it’s hers.”
“No.”
I said it without hesitation, the certainty in my voice surprising even me slightly, though it didn’t waver once it left my mouth.
“Dmitri—”
“No, Roman,” I interrupted again. “I told you. You’ve seen it.
Val doesn’t have the technical skill for something this calculated, and more than that, she doesn’t have the mindset for it either.
Everything about how she’s handled the last month has been fear and confusion, real fear, real confusion, not deception.
If she were involved, I’d have seen it by now. ”
He accepted that, though not fully relaxing. “So what’s the play?”
“Expand internal checks. Quietly. Every employee with penthouse access, every staff member across the clubs, every security contractor who’s touched our systems in the last six months.
I want it reviewed properly, but no public escalation or even internal panic.
Controlled verification, nothing that tips whoever’s doing this into knowing we’re actively hunting them. ”
“That’s a lot of people to check quietly.”
“Then start with the ones closest to the access points that got hit. Financial routing touches fewer hands than most departments. Work outward from there.”
Roman nodded slowly, then asked, “What exactly are we looking for?”
“Someone close enough to touch the system,” I said. “Not just access to it. Proximity to the specific documents that got pulled, and enough trust built up over time that nobody thought to question their movements.”
He held my gaze a moment, something calculating behind his eyes. “That description fits about a dozen people, myself included.”
“I’m aware. Check yourself too, if it makes you feel better about the process.”
“Not particularly, boss, but I appreciate the offer.” A ghost of his usual dry humor slipped through despite the tension in the room, and I felt my shoulders loosen slightly at the familiarity of it. “I’ll get started this morning. Quietly, like you asked.”
“Good.”
He headed for the door, then paused, glancing back at me with something more serious settling over his expression. “For what it’s worth, I harbor no secret doubts about her.”
He left before I could answer, and I sat in the quiet of the security office, grateful for something I hadn’t expected to need from him.
Alone, I pulled the encrypted logs back up and stared at them, falling into another old habit of studying a problem until it revealed something new.
The pattern bothered me more than I’d let on to Roman, not because of what had been taken—though that mattered a lot on its own—but because of how it had been taken.
Someone was aiming at structure.
And that meant someone understood us at a level that unsettled me more than I wanted to think about without having their identity pegged.
For a second, my mind drifted back to Val again.
I forced the thought away deliberately this time, walking myself back through the same logic I’d given Roman.
If she were involved, the pattern would look different.
Sloppier. More emotional, shaped by panic or desperation rather than calm, methodical patience.
This breach carried none of that. It carried calculation.
Intention. The signature of someone who’d spent years, not weeks, learning how this family actually functioned.
Val had been inside my world for barely three weeks. Whoever was doing this had clearly been watching us far longer than that.
I thought of Varley. I thought of the smoothness with which he’d suggested locking Val away and interrogating her the moment her name came up in that boardroom meeting.
But I dismissed the thought. I knew well that a man that quick to point suspicion elsewhere mostly did it because he genuinely believed the accusation. It didn’t make him a suspect.
Alexei called me, entering the office the second I spoke.
“How is the latest Golovin husband doing?” he inquired, pulling back the chair opposite my desk and sitting with no hint of humor on his face.
“I didn’t think I’d see you today. Or anytime, for that matter. I heard Isla got back yesterday,” I teased back.
“Yeah, she’s back.” Even a blind man could see the tenderness that flashed across his face for a second at the mention of his wife. “You look like you haven’t slept.”
“I haven’t, much.”
“I see. Roman tells me there might be a breach.” He set the tablet down on the desk between us, pulling up his own analysis of the financial exposure.
“I’ve run the numbers on what was actually taken.
Whoever did this didn’t touch anything that would show up as immediately missing.
No funds moved, no accounts drained. Just information. ”
“Reconnaissance.”
“That’s my read as well,” Alexei revealed.
“Reconnaissance this careful usually precedes something larger. Whoever is building this picture of us isn’t finished collecting information yet, which means we likely have some time before they act on whatever they’re planning. Not unlimited time. But some.”
“How much? That’s the thing.”
“Weeks, most likely, based on the pace of extraction so far. Could be less if they sense we’re onto them.”
He studied me carefully, almost prompting me silently.
“I need more before I bring it to Mikhail or the rest of the family.”
Alexei nodded slowly, something I knew signaled approval. “That’s more discipline than I expected from you, given everything else happening in your life right now.”
“Marriage apparently improves a man’s patience,” I answered, my lips curving into a smirk as I chuckled.
“Apparently.” A rare, small smile appeared on his face. Then he stood. “Say hi to Val. Isla is planning this big makeup visit. Expect her soon.”
And then he left the office.
Over twelve hours later, I left the office and found Val in the kitchen.
“I didn’t know you took coffee at night, too,” I said, realizing too late that it would startle her.
She jumped a bit but caught herself almost immediately. “Dmitri,” she uttered, a small frown on her face.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly.
“You look like you’ve been awake since before dawn,” she said, studying me carefully.
“Something like that.”
“Of course, I know. I wasn’t asking,” she said, chuckling as she got off the chair and walked up to me with her mug.
“Right.”
She handed the cup to me. “It’s tea. Not coffee.”
I took it from her, partly because I suspected she would bring it to my lips herself if I didn’t take it.
“Not bad,” I commented, taking another gulp.
“It helps your body relax.”
I gave her back the mug, and she placed it on the countertop. She was about to move back to her chair when I wrapped my arms around her waist from behind, pulling her back into my chest.
“You’ve barely slept. You have an injury that has to heal. You should rest before you run yourself into the ground chasing whatever it is you’re chasing.”
“I will. Once Roman has something concrete to bring me.”
“That’s not the same as resting.”
“No,” I admitted, kissing her left shoulder. “Come to bed with me?”
“To sleep,” she pointed out, her voice playfully stern.
“Yes, ma’am.”
As we went to our bedroom, a decision settled into place inside me that had nothing to do with exhaustion.
I wasn’t simply reacting to this anymore. I was no longer chasing a threat after it had already struck the way I had with the raid, the way I had with the men in her hallway.
This time, I was hunting.