Chapter 56
Maksim
Morning cuts through the slats of the blinds in hard white lines, too bright for what this room holds.
Too bright for the blood on Gabriel Kaya’s mouth.
Too bright for the chair he’s tied to.
Too bright for the fact that the sun is already up and Ayla is still out there.
I stand in front of him with my hands braced on the table and try not to kill him before he finishes being useful.
He sits tied to the chair in the middle of the room, wrists bound behind the metal, one side of his face swollen from where I introduced him to my fist outside. Dried blood streaks down from his brow into his beard. One eye is starting to darken. Good. Not enough, but good.
He lifts his head slowly, like he’s the one with all the time in the world.
I want to break every bone in his body for that alone.
“If you know where she is,” I say, voice low enough to sound calm, “tell me.”
He spits blood onto my floor.
I stare at it.
Then at him.
“You don’t get to drag me in to your house, tie me to a chair, then ask for favors like we’re friends, Korsakov.”
My teeth grind.
Favors.
He thinks this is a favor.
I take one step forward, then another, until I’m close enough to see the burst vessels in the white of his eye.
“Ayla is missing,” I say. “Arsen Sarkisian has her. The sun is up. Whatever you think this is—” I lean in until my face is inches from his. “It’s not a negotiation.”
Something flickers in his expression then. Not fear, not quite. Just the recognition that I mean every word.
He swallows, slow, blood catching at the corner of his mouth.
“It is if you want her alive.”
The room goes dead still.
Behind me, I hear Vaska shift near the wall. Dimitri says nothing. Pietro’s fingers stop moving over the keyboard he’s set up on the table in the corner. Even Ivan, leaning broad-shouldered and silent by the door, goes still.
I straighten slowly.
The urge to put my fist through Gabriel’s teeth is so violent it makes my vision pulse for one black second at the edges.
“You’re going to use her,” I say softly.
Gabriel lifts one shoulder as much as the restraints let him.
“I’m going to survive.”
My hand closes around the back of the chair so hard the metal creaks.
“You failed her once. Then you put your hands on her when she came back to you. And now you think you get to sit in my house and use her life to buy yourself peace.”
His split lip pulls into something almost like a smile.
“You think this is about peace?”
I don’t answer. Because no. It isn’t.
It’s about pressure.
He’s bleeding.
I know it. He knows I know it. His routes have been hit. Product’s been coming up short. Men have been disappearing from corners they used to hold clean. Every time he pushes, I push harder. Every time he reaches, I cut off the hand.
And now Ayla is gone, Arsen has her, and Gabriel Kaya walks into my house with blood on his teeth and terms in his mouth.
He wants relief.
He wants me off him long enough to breathe again. I hate him for being smart enough to choose now.
I hate him more for being right.
The door opens behind me. No one in this room is stupid enough to flinch, but the air shifts anyway. Heavy steps. Controlled. Familiar.
Angelo Amato.
He walks in like he owns the silence, dark suit half-buttoned. He looks like he came straight from hell and would’ve come half-dead if that’s what it took to get here faster. Scythe isn’t with him.
Good.
Let him stay with Vasilisa. She needs him there more than I need another pair of hands in this room.
Angelo’s gaze flicks to Gabriel in the chair, takes in the damage, then lands on me.
He doesn’t ask how bad it is. He can see it.
“What’s he got?” he asks.
My eyes stay on Gabriel. “A location.”
Angelo steps further into the room. “Then why are we still standing here?”
My laugh comes out low and sharp. “Because he wants something for it.”
That gets his attention. His expression doesn’t change, but I know him well enough to see the shift in his eyes.
“What.”
“A truce.”
Silence.
Gabriel tips his head back against the chair like he’s already tired of repeating himself. “Your men stay out of my territory. Off my routes. Off my product. Mine will stay the fuck away from yours. No more games. No more bleed. No more back-and-forth.”
I look at Angelo then. His face gives me nothing. Stone. Calculation.
Gabriel keeps talking, because he still thinks he’s in control of this.
“You want Arsen, you need me. You need to know where he’s holding her, how many men he has there, what kind of place it is, how close you can get before they smell something wrong. I give you that. I help you get her back clean.” His gaze cuts to mine. “And in return, this ends.”
I say nothing.
Because the truth is there, waiting.
We can’t storm a place blind in broad daylight without turning it into a fucking spectacle. Not with city eyes everywhere. Not with police response times. Not with Arsen being exactly the kind of bastard who’d use chaos to move her, kill her, or make her disappear before I ever got inside.
Every hour matters. Every bad move matters more.
Angelo looks at Gabriel for one hard second, then back at me.
“Give it to him.”
I stare at him. He stares right back. The room seems to narrow around the three of us.
“That easy?” I ask.
“Yes.”
The word drops flat and final.
Something hot and fast moves under my skin.
“A fucking truce,” I say, like the words taste rotten. “Because he finally got desperate enough to walk into my house with his tail between his legs?”
Angelo doesn’t blink. “Because Ayla is in Arsen Sarkisian’s hands.”
The room goes quieter somehow. My chest rises once. Falls. He steps closer, voice still calm. Still even. That almost makes it worse.
“When he had Adriana,” he says, “I was willing to give up a hell of a lot more than a truce.”
I look away from him. Straight ahead. Past Gabriel. Past the wall. Past the daylight stabbing into the room like accusation.
He’s right.
That’s the problem.
And I hate that he’s right because he says it like it’s simple, like this isn’t splitting me open right down the middle.
I built everything I am in opposition to a weak man. A disloyal man.
A man who put his own appetites, his own secrets, his own selfishness above the Bratva and called it leadership while other people bled for it. I have spent years making sure no one can ever say that about me.
Not once.
Not ever.
The Bratva comes first. The machine comes first. The name comes first.
That’s what a Pakhan is.
That’s what I made myself into.
But all I can see is Ayla hanging limp between those men on the screen. Ayla with her head fallen back. Ayla unconscious. Ayla still with him while the sun climbs higher over the fucking city.
Territory can be taken back. Routes can be rebuilt. Product can be replaced.
She can’t.
“She matters,” Gabriel says, voice rough with blood, “but not enough to break your own rules for her?”
The words are barely out before I move.
I slam my fist into his face. His head snaps sideways against the restraint, blood spilling from his mouth onto his shoulder. The chair shudders against the tile with the force of it. Pietro looks away. Dimitri curses under his breath. Vaska doesn’t move.
“Don’t,” I say softly, breathing hard, “speak to me like you know a fucking thing about her.”
Gabriel spits blood again, this time with a grimace. “Then decide.”
My pulse hammers.
The room stretches thin. And from the wall, Ivan finally speaks.
“If it were my wife, Pakhan,” he says, voice flat and certain, “I’d make the truce before you finished arguing with me.”
I turn my head.
He pushes off the wall, broad arms folding across his chest. He doesn’t look away from me. Doesn’t hesitate.
“And if you tried to stop me,” he adds, “I’d go through even you to get her back.”
Silence fills the room, no one breathes. It’s a dangerous thing to say to me.
A dangerous thing to admit out loud.
But nobody argues.
Because every man here understands exactly what he means.
Vaska’s gaze flicks to me at last, steady and unreadable. “He’s right.”
I let out one slow breath through my nose.
It doesn’t help.
Nothing helps.
The daylight is brighter now. Higher. Meaner. Every second of it feels like a knife dragged over nerve.
I look at Gabriel in the chair. At the blood in his teeth. At the swelling on his face. At the smug edge he keeps trying to wear over desperation.
This is not power.
This is a man trying to crawl out from under the boot on his throat by offering me the only thing I can’t afford to refuse.
I hate him for it.
I hate myself more for standing here still thinking about pride when Ayla is somewhere with Arsen Sarkisian.
When I finally speak, my voice is calm enough to chill the room.
“You’ll have your truce.”
Gabriel goes still. I step closer until I’m standing right in front of him again.
“But hear me carefully.” I lean down, close enough that he can smell the violence on me. “You get one chance to make this worth the oxygen you’re wasting in my house.”
His throat works once.
“You lie to me, stall me, send me somewhere dirty, tip him off, play both sides, or do anything—anything, that makes this harder than it already is…” I let the threat hang there between us like a weapon. “The truce dies with you.”
Gabriel’s gaze stays on mine. Blood-red. Hollow. Tired.
Then he nods once.
“Done.”
“Not yet.”
I straighten and look at Pietro. “Map.”
He’s already moving, spinning the laptop around, keys clicking fast. Street maps flash up. Warehouse grids. Industrial pockets. Transit routes. Shipping lanes. Security overlays where we have them.
Angelo moves to the table beside me. Dimitri comes off the wall. Vaska steps closer without a word. Ivan stays where he is, but the room has changed now—less argument, more purpose. The air sharpens.
“Talk,” I say.
Gabriel licks blood off his lip and looks at the screen.