Chapter 13 #2
"Try again," I say, and my voice is still calm, still controlled, because this is what I do. "Tell me about Svetlana’s father."
He talks. They always do, eventually, when they realize that the pain is only going to get worse, that there's no rescue coming, that their only choice is between a quick death and a slow one.
When he's done, when he's given me everything he knows and is just sobbing against the wall with blood running down his chin, he looks at me pleadingly.
"Please," he whispers, and there's genuine terror in his voice now, the understanding that he's not walking away from this, that all his talking has only bought him a few extra minutes of life. "Please, I have a family, I have kids, I was just trying to make some money, I didn't know—"
"You knew enough," I interrupt, and I pull the knife from my belt, the blade catching what little light filters into the alley.
"You knew she was running from something.
You knew she was scared. And you were going to take her back anyway, because the money was good and you didn't care what happened to her after you collected your payment. "
"I'm sorry," he sobs. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please—"
The knife slides between his ribs, angling up toward his heart, and his words cut off in a wet gasp as his lungs fill with blood.
I hold him there, pinned against the wall, watching his eyes go wide and then glassy as the life drains out of him and his body goes slack and heavy in my arms. It takes less than a minute, efficient and clean.
When he's gone, I lower him to the ground and get to work.
I need something to send to Morozov, something that will make my message clear and show him exactly what happens to men who threaten what's mine. I consider taking his head, but it’s messy and will take too long.
Instead, I settle for his right hand, using the knife to separate it at the wrist.
The hand goes into a plastic bag. I wipe the knife clean on the dead man's jacket, then drag his body deeper into the alley, behind a dumpster where it won't be found for at least a day, probably more.
By the time someone reports it, I'll be long gone, and there will be nothing to connect me to this scene except the vague description of a man in dark clothes, which could be anyone in this city.
I leave the alley, the hand tucked into my coat, and walk three blocks to where I parked my car, moving with the same casual pace as everyone else on the street, just another person going about their business on a cold Boston afternoon.
No one looks at me twice. No one ever does.
That's the trick to this work, the ability to be invisible in plain sight, to be so unremarkable that people's eyes slide right past you.
The drive to the address I was given takes twenty minutes, and I use the time to plan my approach, to think through the risks and the potential complications.
I can't go in as myself. I can't let Morozov see my face or hear my voice, can't leave any trace that might lead back to me or, more importantly, back to Ilya.
This has to be clean and untraceable, has to look like the work of someone else entirely, someone who has their own reasons for wanting him to leave his daughter alone.
I stop at a convenience store and buy a cheap hoodie and a disposable face mask, the kind that people have been wearing for the past few years and that no one thinks twice about anymore.
In the car, I pull the hoodie on over my jacket and adjust the mask to cover the lower half of my face, then add a pair of sunglasses that hide my eyes.
It's not a perfect disguise, but it's good enough for what I need.
It will make me unrecognizable in any security footage and keep Morozov from being able to identify me later.
The house that the man was meant to bring Svetlana to is exactly what I expected, a rundown two-story with peeling paint and a chain-link fence that's more rust than metal.
There's a car in the driveway—an old sedan that's seen better days—and lights on in the front windows that suggest someone's home.
I park a block away and walk back, the plastic bag bumping against my side in the inner jacket pocket.
The front door is locked, but the lock is cheap and old, and it takes me less than thirty seconds to pick it.
I slip inside, closing the door quietly behind me, and pause to listen.
There’s no sound from anyone, and I wonder if Mikhail is here alone.
I slip through the back hallway and through a kitchen that smells of cigarette smoke and old cooking grease, past a living room that's cluttered with empty beer bottles and overflowing ashtrays, until I reach what looks like a home office.
Mikhail Morozov is standing in front of an old bookcase, looking at the waterlogged titles on the shelf.
He seems to be waiting for the man he hired, and he looks entirely out of place in this shoddy room.
He’s wearing a finely tailored grey pinstripe suit with no tie, his greying hair combed back, and I can smell a hint of aftershave and cologne in the air—both smell expensive.
He turns at the sound of my footsteps, and when he sees that I’m not the man he hired, his hand goes to his jacket, undoubtedly to go for a gun.
I'm faster than he is by a good bit. My gun is out first, and I close the distance between us, the barrel to his head, before he can get his own clear of his jacket. “Don’t think about it,” I say harshly, thickening my accent to the point that he wouldn’t recognize my natural speaking voice.
"We need to have a conversation about your daughter. "
His face pales slightly. “Who are you?” he snaps. “You’re not the man I hired. If Iosef thinks he can threaten me like this—”
“I’m not from Iosef.” I throw the plastic bag onto the desk in front of him, and it lands with a wet thump that makes him flinch. "Open it."
He doesn't want to. I can see the resistance in his eyes, the desire to talk or pay his way out of having to continue this interaction. But I press the gun harder against his temple, and his hands shake as he reaches for the bag, then opens it and looks inside.
His face grays out, and he drops the bag, the wrist poking out with the tattoo on it visible, and the cheap watch still attached. It’s clearly the hand of the man he hired, and he knows it.
"He failed." My voice is cold, empty of anything except the promise of violence. "He failed because I was watching her. Anyone who tries to touch her is going to end up like him. Do you understand?"
Morozov’s jaw tightens. He’s staring at the hand, and I can see him trying to calculate what he’s going to do next.
"Your daughter is not coming back.” I lean in close, close enough that he can feel my breath through the mask and see the absolute certainty in my eyes.
"She's not your property. She's not your asset.
She's not yours to sell or trade or use.
She's done with you, done with this life, and if you send anyone else after her, if you even think about trying to find her again, I will come back here, and I will take pieces off of you.
Fingers first, then toes, then other things, things you'll miss more.
And I'll keep you alive through all of it, keep you conscious so you can feel every cut, every break, every moment of pain. Do you understand?"
The fear in this rich asshole’s face is so satisfying that it’s almost orgasmic. “I—” He takes in an unsteady breath. “I won’t send anyone else after her. You have my word.”
That’s not worth much, but it’s something. “You’ll stop looking for her?”
He nods. “She’s worth nothing to me now,” he says flatly. “But you should watch out for Iosef. I don’t control him.”
“I’ll deal with him if he tries.” I step back, the gun still leveled at him. "If I hear that you've broken this promise, if I hear that you've even spoken her name, I'll know. And I'll come back. And next time, I won't be this merciful."
I keep an eye on him as I back out of the room, gun still in hand, and then I leave the house almost as quickly as I came.
No one stops me. No one else even sees me.
The street is empty and quiet, and by the time I reach my car, I'm already pulling off the disguise, stuffing the hoodie and mask into a bag that I'll burn later, returning to the version of myself who works for Ilya Sorokov and has no connection to what just happened in that house.
The drive back to downtown is long enough for the adrenaline to fade, for the cold calculation that carried me through the violence to give way to something else that feels uncomfortably like fear.
Not fear for myself, but fear for her, fear that her father won't listen, that he'll be stupid enough to try again, and that next time I won't be there to stop it.
That I've made things worse instead of better, that by threatening him I've only escalated the situation, that he'll reach out to people with more resources and more skill than the tracker I killed.
Fear that I can't protect her, not really, not when there are so many threats and I'm only one man.
That fear keeps me mostly awake all night, tossing and turning until I finally get up, punish myself with an especially brutal workout, and take a cold shower to try to drive the ever-present lust for Svetlana out of my head long enough to get to my meeting with Ilya without getting derailed by the need to satisfy the arousal that never seems to fully go away since Russia.
I need to focus when I’m around Ilya. I can't let him see that anything's wrong. Especially since I’m doing the opposite of what I told myself I would when I got back, and following Svetlana instead of leaving her alone.
Ilya is at his desk when I arrive. He gestures for me to sit and wait while he finishes whatever he's working on, and then he looks up at me, his jaw set.
"We have a problem," he says finally. His voice is calm, but there's an edge to it that puts me on alert. "Or rather, we had a problem, but I've dealt with it."
"What kind of problem?" I ask, keeping my tone flat.
"Mikhail Morozov contacted me this afternoon." Ilya’s expression is unreadable. "He was very upset. Apparently, someone broke into one of his meeting places, killed one of his men, and threatened him. He seemed to think I might know something about it."
My heart is pounding, but I keep my face blank. "What did you tell him?"
"I told him to fuck off." Ilya's smile is cold and sharp.
"I told him that there's no business between us anymore, that whatever problems he's having are his own to solve, and that if he contacts me again, I'll consider it a hostile act.
He wasn't happy about it, but he got the message. I don’t know why the fuck he called me when things between Svetlana and me ended months ago.
I have no reason to have anything to do with her or her family. "
"Why would he think you were involved?" I ask, genuinely curious.
"Because he's a pompous idiot who thinks everyone operates the way he does, who thinks that every act of violence must be connected to some larger power play.
" Ilya moves to his desk and sits, leaning back in his chair.
"He mentioned something about his daughter, about someone warning him to leave her alone.
I didn't ask for details. I don't care about his family drama.”
The mention of Svetlana makes my chest tighten, makes the words I've been holding back for days threaten to spill out.
I want to tell him everything, want to explain what her father did to her, want to make him understand why she matters, why she deserves protection, why I can't just walk away and pretend I don't know what happened to her.
I want to tell him that she was trafficked, that she was sold by her own father to men who hurt her in ways that still make me sick to think about, that she's not just some random woman but someone who survived hell and deserves a chance to rebuild her life.
But I can't. Because if I tell him that I know what happened to her, he'll ask how I know, and I'll have to admit that I was there, that I saw her in that cell, that I'm the one who got her out.
And once he knows that, once he understands the full scope of my involvement, he'll put the pieces together.
He'll realize that I didn't just extract her from a bad situation, that I kept her with me for days, that I brought her back to Boston myself, that I've been watching her ever since.
He’ll know I lied. That I misled him. That I blew up a mission for a woman he no longer cares about.
He’ll know that I've been keeping secrets, that I've been operating outside his authority for my own purposes.
And Ilya doesn't tolerate that kind of betrayal, no matter how loyal I've been in the past. He'll see it as a threat to his control, his power, to the carefully constructed hierarchy that keeps his organization running smoothly.
He might kill me for it, especially if he thinks my feelings for Svetlana might compromise my judgment or my loyalty to him. Which, clearly, they already have.
And if I'm dead, who will protect her? Who will watch over her and make sure that her father and Iosef don't send more trackers, that they don't find new ways to hurt her and drag her back into the nightmare she's trying to escape?
Who will be there to intercept the threats before they reach her, to stand between her and everyone who wants to use her, break her, or destroy her?
No one. Because no one else knows what she's been through, no one else understands what she needs, no one else gives a fuck about whether she lives or dies except as it relates to their own interests.
No one else needs to atone for what’s happened to her the way I do.
So I stay silent and swallow the words that are burning in my throat, because that's the only way I can keep protecting her.