Chapter 3
RAPHAEL
Her scent wouldn’t leave me.
Twenty-four hours since I’d stood in Richard Hughes’s office and watched his daughter walk through the door. Twenty-four hours since she’d placed her hand in mine and the wolf had surged against my ribs like a beast trying to claw its way out of a cage.
Mine.
The word had exploded through my skull with such force I’d nearly staggered.
I’d felt my eyes threatening to shift, felt the wolf’s howl building in my throat.
It had taken every ounce of control I’d built over fifteen years to keep my face neutral.
To shake her hand like a civilized man instead of dragging her against my chest and burying my nose in her throat.
Apples and cream. That was what she smelled like. Sweet and soft and utterly untouched. Innocence wrapped in a body that made my cock ache.
I’d spent the past twenty-four hours trying to drown that scent in work. Contracts. Negotiations. The Blackmore acquisition that should have felt like triumph. None of it mattered. The wolf paced beneath my skin, relentless, demanding I return to that hotel and find her again.
I gripped the steering wheel harder as I pulled through the gates of Max’s estate. The leather creaked under my fingers. In the rearview mirror, I caught the flash of gold in my own eyes.
Not now. Not here.
I forced them to shift back. Forced my fingers to relax.
Control. I was in control.
Liar, the wolf snarled. You haven’t been in control since you caught her scent.
The Ivankov compound sprawled across fifty acres of forest north of Paradise Peaks. To the outside world, it was simply the private estate of a wealthy businessman. To those of us who ran beneath the moon, it was pack territory. Sacred ground.
Two of Max’s security wolves flanked the main entrance as I parked. I nodded to them as I passed, catching the subtle tilt of their heads in acknowledgment of my rank. Vor. Second only to the Pakhan himself.
I’d earned that rank in blood and loyalty. I wouldn’t throw it away for some human girl with eyes like morning sky.
Not just some girl. Ours.
I shoved the wolf down and walked inside.
The compound smelled like pine and old money. I moved through the familiar halls without seeing them, past the oil paintings of Russian landscapes, past the trophy room with its mounted heads, until I reached the study at the back of the house.
Max was waiting, a glass of vodka already poured for each of us.
At sixty-two, Maksim Ivanovich Ivankov still moved like the predator he was.
Silver streaked his dark hair, but his eyes missed nothing.
He’d built the Ivankovskaya Bratva from a small crew of outcasts into an empire that stretched from coast to coast.
He’d also saved my life.
“Raphael Antonovich.” He rose to embrace me, the formal use of my patronymic a sign of respect between us. “Congratulations are in order.”
I accepted the vodka and raised it in his direction before drinking. The burn was familiar. Steadying.
“The Blackmore Building,” he continued, settling into his leather chair. “Six hundred sixty-six million. The news is calling you a devil.”
“Let them.”
He laughed, a low rumble that reminded me of distant thunder. “I taught you well. From nothing to billions in fifteen years. Your enemies thought you were just muscle. A guard dog with good instincts.” His eyes glinted with pride. “They never saw the wolf beneath.”
No one ever did. That was the point.
I took the chair across from him, letting the familiar scent of old books and woodsmoke settle my nerves. This room was where Max had found me at eighteen. Feral. Raging. A wolf without a pack, half-mad with grief and fury.
The boarding school had cut off my funding the day I turned eighteen.
Threw me out with nothing but a duffel bag and a decade of abuse carved into my skin.
I’d been shifting for three years by then, alone, terrified each time that I’d lose control the way my father had. That the monster would finally win.
I’d ended up in a bar fight outside Boston. Four men against one. They hadn’t known I wasn’t human. By the time Max’s people pulled me off them, two were unconscious and one had a shattered jaw.
Max had looked at the snarling creature I’d become and seen something worth saving. A weapon worth sharpening.
“You’re distracted tonight.” Max swirled his vodka, watching me over the rim. “Something on your mind?”
The girl’s face flashed through my thoughts. The way her pulse had jumped in her throat when I touched her. The way she’d tried so hard to hide her fear.
And her arousal, the wolf purred. She wanted us. Even then.
“Business,” I said.
“Ah.” Max nodded slowly. “The Hughes situation. You’ve been patient, Raphael. Very patient. Most men would have moved years ago.”
“Most men are fools.”
Patience was the lesson Max had taught me first. Before the business strategy, before the real estate acquisitions, before I’d transformed myself from a broken boy into something powerful enough to destroy the people who’d thrown me away.
Patience, and control.
I’d needed both in abundance. Building an empire took time. First the security contracts, providing protection for businesses that couldn’t go to the police. Then the clubs and entertainment venues, washing money through legitimate operations. Finally, real estate. Buildings and land and leverage.
All of it leading to this moment. To the debt I’d quietly acquired through shell companies so deeply layered that no forensic accountant could trace them back to me. Apex Lending. A name that meant nothing, connected to nothing, owned by no one anyone could find.
The perfect trap.
“Paradise Peaks is the next step,” I said. “The hotel. The surrounding properties. Once I control the Hughes legacy, I’ll have everything I need.”
Max’s eyes narrowed slightly. “And the senator?”
My grandfather. The word tasted like poison, so I never used it. Senator William Prescott had made his choice thirty years ago when his daughter brought home a Russian painter with wild eyes and no pedigree. He’d made it again when that painter turned out to be something worse than foreign.
Something with fangs.
“The boarding school he sent me to wasn’t unique.
It was part of a network.” I kept my voice flat.
Clinical. “Reform schools. Therapeutic institutions. Places where wealthy families pay to make problem children disappear. My grandfather didn’t just use the network.
He invested in it. Shell companies, silent partnerships.
He’s been profiting from institutionalized child abuse for thirty years. ”
Max’s expression didn’t change, but I caught the subtle tension in his jaw. Even among wolves, some lines weren’t crossed.
“Richard Hughes was his fixer. When parents asked too many questions, Hughes made the questions stop. When journalists got too close to the story, they had accidents.” I finished my vodka.
“Hughes kept records of everything. The investment trail. The cover-ups. The bodies. And he kept copies at the hotel as insurance.”
“You’re certain the evidence is there?”
“Hughes ran his operation from that hotel for decades. Hidden cameras in guest suites. Recording equipment in the walls. He captured every dirty secret that passed through his doors.” I set down the empty glass.
“Including proof that my grandfather knew exactly where I was for fifteen years. Knew what was happening to me. And chose to leave me there.”
Max was quiet for a long moment. He knew my history. Knew what had been done to me by the people who should have protected me.
“You’re expanding quickly,” he said finally. “Paradise Peaks, Huntington Harbor, now this building in New York. Don’t let ambition become obsession, Raphael. Overreach has destroyed better men than us.”
“I’m always strategic. Always cautious.”
The lie came easily. I’d been telling it to myself for days.
She’s a pawn, I reminded myself. A tool. Nothing more.
She’s ours, the wolf disagreed.
My phone buzzed before I could respond. Parsons.
“What is it?”
“Sir.” My driver’s voice was clipped, professional. “Richard Hughes was just admitted to Paradise Peaks General. Massive stroke. He’s in a coma.”
I went very still.
“When?”
“Within the hour. His daughter found him. She’s at the hospital now.”
I ended the call and looked at Max. Something hot and dark was spreading through my chest. Satisfaction. Anticipation. The pieces I’d spent years arranging were finally falling into place.
Richard Hughes would die. His daughter would inherit nothing but debt. And she would have no choice but to come to me.
Good, the wolf purred. Let her come. Let her kneel.
But underneath the satisfaction, something else stirred. Something sharper. I thought of her sitting alone in that hospital waiting room. Twenty years old. No mother. Her father dying. No one to help her, no one to hold her, no one who understood what she was about to face.
She needs us, the wolf insisted. Go to her. Protect her. She’s ours to protect.
I ignored him.
“The first domino just fell,” I said.
Max refilled our glasses. The vodka caught the lamplight as he poured. He didn’t rush me. He never did.
I told him everything.
The debt. The trap I’d laid. The revenge I’d been planning since I was old enough to understand what had been done to me.
My father had been a wolf. A painter from Moscow with more passion than sense, who’d met a senator’s daughter at a gallery opening and fallen for her between one heartbeat and the next. Fated mates. The bond that was supposed to be sacred.
They’d married against her family’s wishes. Had a son. For three years, they’d been happy.
Then my father’s wolf had broken free.
I didn’t remember much of that night. Just flashes. Screaming. Blood. My mother’s body on the kitchen floor. My father standing over her, still half-shifted, horror dawning in his golden eyes.
He’d put the gun in his mouth before the police arrived.