Chapter Thirty-Four
Arkady
The house is quiet by midnight.
Wrong kind of quiet—the kind that sits too heavy.
Mirabel is upstairs with Debra, asleep or pretending to be. Aleks is in the nursery with Fanny. The last of the guests cleared out hours ago, ushered into cabs and Ubers by men with earpieces and holstered weapons, sent home with a story nobody will believe and an evening nobody will forget.
Oh, the Laurov engagement? Lovely catering. Bit of a shooting. Pass the butter.
I haven’t slept. Won’t sleep. My fucking father isn’t finished.
The attack today was a statement—a declaration, not a conclusion.
My father doesn’t make declarations unless he’s already planning the next act.
And whatever that next act is, it will be worse.
He’ll come better armed, better prepared, and with the savagery of a man who has been publicly humiliated.
I need my men.
They gather quickly. The conference room fills in under twenty minutes, which tells me everything about the state of this house tonight. Nobody was sleeping. Nobody was even trying.
Stefan arrives first—always first, dropping into his usual chair at my right hand. He’s changed out of the suit he wore to the engagement and into a dark Henley and tactical boots, and I know without asking that there’s a Glock in his waistband and a blade strapped to his ankle.
Yanis comes through the door with Mikhail a step behind.
My brother looks drawn—pale beneath the stubble, eyes carrying the flatness of a man who’s spent the last four hours holding a traumatized woman together and is running on whatever fumes remain.
Mikhail, my cousin, has his tablet under his arm and a Red Bull in his hand, his default operating configuration.
The kid could hack into the Kremlin from a toilet cubicle and probably has.
Leo is next. He sets a worn leather notebook on the table and flips it open. Unlike Mikhail, Leo has never trusted digital notes. Says a bullet can’t corrupt a notebook. I’ve never argued the point.
The twins arrive together. Aleksei and Andrei take chairs at the far end of the table and sit in that unnerving mirrored stillness of theirs—same angle, same posture, same flat surveillance in their eyes.
Last through the door is Yuri. Our medic. He’s been with Kolya for the past two hours, patching the shoulder wound. There’s dried blood on his forearms—Kolya’s, Pasha’s, maybe both—and he doesn’t bother rolling down his sleeves before sitting. We’ve all seen enough blood not to worry about it.
I wait until the door is shut. Lock it.
Seven men. The seven I’d trust with my life, with Mirabel’s life, with my children’s lives. Every other person on my payroll is a resource. These men are family.
I plant my hands on the table, leaning over the spread of security schematics Stefan pulled from the system an hour ago. Ashwater Heights in blueprint—every gate, every wall, every blind spot I swore didn’t exist until tonight proved otherwise.
“The old bastard will be back.” My voice is flat, carrying no heat. This is no time for hotheadedness. “What happened today was the opening move. He’ll escalate. Different approach, more men, worse timing. That’s how he operates.”
The room absorbs this without reaction. Nobody here is naive enough to argue otherwise.
“What’s the plan, boss?” Stefan asks. Same question he’s asked me a hundred times before raids, before extractions, before nights like this.
I straighten. “Full security lockdown. Effective now, running indefinitely. Nobody enters or exits this property without clearance from Stefan or me.” I look at Mikhail.
“The surveillance systems failed today. Not completely—but enough. We didn’t spot the convoy until it was at the gate.
That’s too late. I need thermal cameras on every approach road within a mile radius.
Motion sensors along the perimeter wall—not the commercial garbage we’ve got now, military-grade.
Seismic sensors at the gate foundations.
If a rabbit crosses our property line at three in the morning, I want to know about it before it takes its next hop. ”
Mikhail is already typing, the tablet balanced on his knee. “I can source the thermals from my contact in Tallinn. The seismic sensors will take forty-eight hours—I’ll have to pull them from a defense contractor I’ve worked with before. But the motion array I can install myself by tomorrow night.”
“Do it. Budget is irrelevant.”
Mikhail nods without looking up. Numbers are already scrolling across his screen.
I turn to Yanis. My brother has been quiet, and not the quiet that comes from facing an enemy. The situation with Debra is weighing on him.
“The women,” Yanis says. “Mirabel is pregnant. Debra is—” He stops. “Debra is managing. But tonight set her back. If he comes again and she’s anywhere near it, we could lose months of recovery. Harrison’s work, the stability we’ve built—all of it. Gone.”
I’ve already thought about this.
“Panic buttons,” I say. “Both of them. Wearable, not phone-based—something they can activate without having to unlock a screen or find a device in a bag. Direct line to Stefan’s team with GPS coordinates. And I want the response time under ninety seconds from any point on this property.”
Stefan is writing it down. “I’ll have them fitted tomorrow. Custom units. Natalia can do the housings so they look like jewelry. Mirabel won’t want to wear something that screams I’m a target.”
“Good.” The last thing I need is Mirabel throwing a fit about this.
She needs to stay calm for the baby’s sake.
“Armored vehicles. Every car on this property gets swapped or retrofitted. No more standard transport. I don’t care if it’s a trip to the hospital or a run to the fucking shops—ballistic glass, reinforced chassis, run-flat tires. ”
“I’ve got a contact at a specialist firm,” Stefan says. “They do diplomatic fleet conversions. I can have two vehicles within the week. More after that.”
“Make it three. One for Mirabel, one for Debra, one for general use.”
“Done.”
I shift my attention to Leo, who hasn’t spoken yet.
“Weapons cache. Double it,” I say. “I want secondary armories established in the east wing and the basement. Sealed cabinets, biometric access—me, Stefan, and Leo only. If we get hit again, I don’t want anyone running across the house to the gun room in dress shoes.”
Leo makes a single notation in his notebook. Looks up. “Kolya and Pasha need replacing on the rotation while they recover. I can pull two from the outer team, but they’ll need briefing on the interior layout.”
“Do it today. And Leo—” I hold his attention. “Safe handling protocols. Written, drilled, no exceptions. Every weapon on this property accounted for and secured.”
He nods.
“Aleksei, Andrei,” I say.
The twins’ eyes turn to me in unison.
“Round-the-clock perimeter sweeps. Four-hour rotations, staggered so there’s always overlap. Countersurveillance on every vehicle that parks within a quarter mile of the property. I want to know if someone’s watching us before they decide what they’re watching us for.”
“And the road cameras?” Aleksei asks. Or Andrei. After a decade, I still can’t tell their voices apart.
“Mikhail will loop you into the new thermal feeds once they’re live. Cross-reference anything that flags with the plates database. Gavriil’s men aren’t creative—they’ll use the same vehicles, same routes. Find the pattern.”
The twins exchange a look, two minds operating as one processor. They’ve never let me down. Not once.
“What about backup?” one of the twins asks. “If he comes with more than he brought today, we’re stretched.”
Stefan answers before I can. “I’ve got contacts who owe me favors. Reliable men—ex-military, vetted. I can have twenty here within an hour of a call. Forty if I make it two hours.”
“Set it up,” I tell him. “Phone tree, rally points, the works. And pay the retainer in advance. I don’t want anyone hesitating because they’re worried about the invoice.”
Stefan nods, already reaching for his phone.
I look around the table one more time. Seven men. Each one capable of extreme violence and absolute discipline. Each one here not because I pay them—though I do, well—but because we have history.
“One more thing,” I add. “Yuri… medical supplies. I want a full trauma kit in every wing of this house. Field-grade. Tourniquets, chest seals, hemostatic agents, whatever else is needed. And I want Mirabel’s prenatal emergency bag packed and in the armored vehicle at all times.
If something goes wrong and we need to move her fast, I will not have us scrambling for equipment. ”
Yuri’s expression doesn’t change—it never does—but he writes it down.
“Anything else?” I ask the room.
Silence. The right kind this time. The kind that means understood.
“Then go. Mikhail, start tonight. Everyone else, zero-six-hundred tomorrow. Stefan, stay.”
Chairs scrape. Boots on hardwood. The door opens, and bodies file out in the order they arrived.
Yanis pauses at the threshold and gives me a look that says a dozen things: be careful, don’t push yourself, call me if you need to talk, you’re my brother, but you’re a stubborn prick. And then he’s gone too.
The door shuts. Stefan and I look at each other across the table.
“The message,” he says. Not asking. Confirming that we both know what’s coming.
“Not tonight.” I pull the phone from my pocket, stare at the screen for a second, then set it face-down on the table. “Tomorrow. After I’ve spoken to Mirabel.”
Stefan watches me for a beat longer than comfortable. Then nods. Stands. Puts his hand on my shoulder—brief, firm, the only kind of physical affection Stefan has ever been capable of—and walks out.
With the room empty, the quiet returns. I pour myself two fingers of vodka from the bottle in the sideboard. Don’t bother with ice. Drink it standing, staring at the blueprint of my own house spread across the table like an autopsy report.
I should go upstairs. Mirabel is there, probably sleeping on her side now that the bump makes it uncomfortable lying on her back.
I want to be there. Want to press myself against the curve of her spine and feel our daughter shift beneath my hand.
Want to breathe her in and let the simple miracle of her existence make this night more bearable.
But I can’t go to her like this. Not with the smell of gunpowder still in my clothes and the memory of the gunsight trained on my father’s head still burned onto the backs of my eyelids. Mirabel deserves to sleep in absolute safety. So does her sister. And the babies.
So I stay.
I never want to see Gavriil Laurov again.
The thought is crystal clear. Not I want to defeat him, or I want to stop him, or I want to bring him to justice. I don’t want to see his face. Don’t want to hear that voice. Don’t want anything about him to touch my world.
Next time, I might not stop myself.
The crosshairs on his skull today. The slow, measured breathing. The trigger waiting for a command my finger refused to give. I had the shot—clean, certain—and I let it go. Watched the Mercedes disappear with my father still alive inside it.
If I’d made that shot, there would be no next time.
No escalation. No need for thermal cameras and panic buttons and armored vehicles and twenty men on standby.
One shot and the threat would be gone. One shot and Mirabel sleeps without fear, and Debra never hears that voice again, and my children grow up without the shadow of a grandfather who trades in human misery.
One shot. And I couldn’t take it.
Maybe some rotted, stubborn part of me still sees him as my father. Maybe some fucked up part of me still wants what that represents.
But Gavriil Laurov was never father material. And I don’t know why I can’t come to terms with that.
Yobany v rot.
I pour another vodka. Don’t drink it. Just hold the glass and stare at the liquid catching light.
I already killed part of my family. All this time, and I still hear the click before the crack. Still feel the recoil traveling up my arm. Still see Mishka’s face… not the pain but the surprise. The pure disbelief of a boy who trusted his brother with his life and got a bullet instead.
It was an accident. I know this. Yanis knows this. Even my father knows this, though he’s spent years converting that knowledge into a weapon. You killed your brother. You broke your mother. You’re the reason this family is destroyed.
Accident or not, the outcome is the same. Mishka is dead. My mother ended her life. And I carry both of them—in my chest, in my hands, in the compulsive checking of every chamber twice because I will never again be the boy who assumed something was safe.
Killing Sergei Tulikov was a different kind of accident. It wasn’t pleasure—I’m not that far gone, not yet—but it was deliberate in the way all violence becomes deliberate when someone threatens the people you love. He came at me, and I put him down.
And then Rosanna.
I didn’t kill her. I know this, rationally.
She was already drowning—had been for years, depression pulling her under long before I entered the picture.
But I took her father away. Destroyed the last anchor she had, and without Sergei, she stopped fighting.
Drove her car into a wall—or off a bridge, or into oncoming traffic, the reports conflict—and left a baby in a hospital bed with no mother and a father who isn’t sure he’s earned the title.
Every time I look at Aleks, I see the cascade of consequences. My role in Sergei’s death, Sergei’s death in Rosanna’s despair, Rosanna’s despair in a motherless infant who grips my finger and doesn’t know yet how much wreckage preceded his existence.
I set the glass down. The vodka is warm now. Untouched.
God help me.
I don’t believe in God—haven’t since I watched a priest tell my mother that Mishka was in a better place—but the words come anyway.
God help me so I don’t have to kill my own father.
Because if Gavriil comes back—and he will—then the crosshairs will find his skull again. And next time, my loyalty to a fucked-up father won’t be enough to keep my finger off the trigger.