Chapter 5
PIPER
The meeting ended this morning, and my legs still ache from standing through it.
Nearly an hour on my feet while four strangers and the two men who’d caught me argued about whether I deserved protection or punishment, and I refused to sit down and give Vera the satisfaction of watching me fold.
They put me in a locked guest room afterward, and I spent the day listening to the house move around me and marking exits I have no intention of using yet.
Nikita’s private office is smaller than the study, tucked behind the kitchen where the windows face the garden wall.
Darkness has swallowed the garden beyond the glass now, and the only light comes from the desk lamp and his laptop screen.
Everyone else has gone. Adrian left the verification timeline on the dining-room table on his way out this afternoon, and Nikita sent for me an hour ago, after Platon’s lender trace came back.
Now it’s just Nikita and me in a room that smells like dust and cold coffee.
“Platon confirmed the connection an hour ago,” he says, turning his laptop toward me. The diagram runs from Callum’s lender through two intermediaries to a name I don’t recognize. “Your brother’s lender doesn’t operate independently. The debt traces to Shilov’s lower-level money chain.”
I keep my face still because I’ve spent the last two hours practicing that skill, even as the cold sinks into me and my hands want to curl. “Callum doesn’t know that.”
“Callum borrowed money from a lender, and that lender borrows from Rahil Shilov’s people.
” Nikita turns the laptop back toward himself.
“Shilov knows your name through the estate sale and forged marriage. He also knows the Voss name because your father created provenance records and asset-transfer documents for his network. Your brother’s lender gives Shilov a second path to your family. ”
The mention of Dorian stops me. “My father worked for Shilov?”
“Your father provided forgery services for Shilov’s art and luxury-goods operations.
The connection predates your estate work by years.
” He waits for a second so I can absorb that.
“Platon didn’t guess it. Two of the recovered provenance packets in Shilov’s old network carry the same construction as the marriage certificate you forged for me.
Once Platon had your father’s name, the pattern matched work that’s been moving through Shilov’s people for a decade. ”
I consider that for a moment, and it rearranges things I thought I understood about my father.
He taught me to forge because he loved me.
He also forged for the man now hunting my brother, but he never mentioned his client list. The curriculum he left me came with debts I didn’t know I’d inherited. My father was generous that way.
“You’re telling me my brother was already exposed before I robbed your estate.”
“Yes, but Rahil had no reason to personally look at him then. The exposure has layers, and your estate job activated the layer Shilov was watching most closely.”
I get to my feet, needing to do something.
I’m angry at Nikita for delivering this like a briefing.
I’m angry at Dorian for dying and leaving his connections behind like buried ordnance.
Mostly, I’m angry at myself for walking into a trap that was half-built before I was old enough to read. “You’re using my family as leverage.”
“I’m showing you the chain so you can see it for yourself.” He opens the file box beside his desk and pulls out the buyer route, the Shilov-linked broker profile, and Adrian’s estate alert. He sets each document on the desk between us. “You can verify every connection.”
The chain is documented and undeniable, and the anger I want to aim at Nikita has nowhere to go, because he didn’t create the danger. I activated it, and Callum was already standing inside the blast radius before I filed a single document.
My phone rings. Callum’s name fills the screen.
Nikita watches me but doesn’t reach for the phone, and he waits while it rings a second time. Every man I’ve ever known who held power over me used it the first chance he got. Nikita keeps giving me the choice instead, and I hate how much that matters.
I answer. “Hey, what’s going on?”
“Piper, some guys came by the shop again today.” Callum’s voice carries the forced casual tone he uses to hide panic.
“They knew my shift schedule. They knew my manager’s name.
One of them asked whether I’d talked to my sister recently, and when I said no, he smiled like he already knew the answer and wanted to see if I’d lie. ”
I grip the phone harder. “Did you tell them anything?”
“I told them I don’t keep track of my sister’s address.
They didn’t believe me, but they left.” The shop compressor runs in the background.
“Pipes, these aren’t collection guys. Collection guys threaten to break your legs and smack you around.
These guys knew things they shouldn’t, and they didn’t touch me, but they will next time. ”
Nikita holds out his hand but doesn’t reach for the phone. “Do you want me to move him?”
I pass him the phone.
His voice drops into the controlled pitch I’m starting to recognize as his operational mode.
“Callum, this is Nikita, a…friend of your sister’s.
You need to stay inside the shop and lock the front door right now.
I’m sending someone named Platon to pick you up.
He’ll come through the service road behind the building in a black sedan, and he’ll tell you Piper still owes Maren coffee.
You don’t open the door unless they say those exact words. ”
“I can’t just abandon the shop in the middle of my shift,” Callum says, loud enough for me to hear.
“It’s not safe to finish your shift. You’re staying behind the locked door until Platon arrives. He’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
Callum argues for another few seconds, then stops and agrees. Nikita hangs up and texts the code phrase and pickup details to Platon before handing my phone back.
I stand in the middle of Nikita’s office holding a phone that just proved his entire threat assessment correct.
I aim the anger at myself. I thought I understood how far the danger reached.
I was wrong. Nikita leads me across the hall into his bedroom and through to the closet.
It smells like cedar and stale air. He moves the coats aside, unlocks the safe, and swings the door open.
Platon transferred the documents into a locked file box this morning, and Nikita sets it beside the safe and removes the folders one at a time.
“There should be a separate set of storage contracts for the Manhattan units,” he says, checking the bottom shelf. “Three facilities, all leased under the trust.”
I kneel beside the safe to check the lower compartment. The third storage contract is wedged behind a metal divider in the back, and when I reach past Nikita to pull it free, I brush his arm with my shoulder. He holds completely still instead of moving away.
The folder comes free, and I sit back on my heels. His refusal to move makes the accidental contact harder to ignore. “You can move.”
“I know I can.”
“Then you should move.”
He turns his head, and his face is close enough that I can count the darker flecks in his gray eyes. He smells like coffee and clean wool with something warm underneath both that I can’t name.
“You should tell me to walk out of here,” he says.
“You haven’t done anything yet.”
His voice drops. “I’m about to.”
“Then you should mean it.” My own voice comes out steadier than I expected, because Dorian taught me to sound confident even when I’m shaking, and right now, I’m definitely shaking. “I’m not interested in being a distraction you regret in the morning.”
“You’re the worst complication I’ve had in four years, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since I found you sitting on this floor.”
One clear second passes where the distance between us is still a choice.
I could stand up, walk to the guest room, and close the door.
I could preserve the arrangement, keep the boundaries intact, and spend the night reminding myself that sleeping with a bratva boss I met yesterday is the single most reckless decision available to me.
I don’t leave.
He kisses me, and everything I’ve been thinking about since he walked into this bedroom last night empties out. His mouth is warm and firm, and he tastes like the coffee he never finished.
He cradles the back of my head and pulls me closer while I grab the front of his shirt and pull him toward me. The safe door scrapes against the closet wall when I slump backward into it.
I kiss him harder because stopping would mean admitting I’ve wanted this since the phone handoff in the study made me wonder what his mouth would feel like.
He makes a low sound against my mouth when I bite his lower lip, and the ache in my pussy sharpens into something insistent.
He kisses deliberately, unhurried, giving nothing away, and I want to be the thing that finally makes him lose control.
We don’t make it to the bed gracefully. He lifts me, I wrap my legs around his waist, and the storage contracts scatter under his feet as he carries me out of the closet and across the bedroom.
He closes the door with his foot and sets me on the edge of the mattress seconds later. He pulls his shirt over his head as I drag my sweater off and drop it.
He’s broader than I imagined, which is annoying because it means I was imagining.
Scars mark his left side and right shoulder, faded white lines I haven’t earned the story of yet.
He reaches behind me and unhooks my bra with one hand, and when it comes off, he stops moving for a second to just look at me.
“You’re staring,” I say.