Chapter Twenty-Three - Damien
The door to Emery’s office glides open on a whisper of hinges. I expect the soft click of keys, the glow of the screen, the steady, focused presence that has become as familiar as my own shadow.
Instead, I’m greeted by absence: an empty chair, a dark monitor, a mug half drained and cooling on the desk. The air feels off, too still, as if the room itself is holding its breath.
A small, sharp warning spikes in my chest. I cross to her desk, scanning for notes, signs of movement, anything out of place.
Nothing. No clutter, no jacket, no tablet charging in its cradle.
I check the adjoining conference room, the storage alcove, the glass-walled nook where she sometimes sits to think.
“Emery,” I call, voice quiet at first, more command than question. No answer. My pulse ticks up, knuckles whitening as I push through the suite again. “Emery.” Louder this time, clipped and cold.
Still nothing.
The first hint of real panic bites down—hot and acid. I pull out my phone, dialing security.
“Where is she?” My tone is low, deadly.
The guard on duty stammers, tells me she hasn’t left her floor, that the system hasn’t registered any exit.
“Check again,” I snap. “Pull the feeds. Right now.”
I move, rapid and methodical, down the private hallway, scanning every room. I find nothing but silence and the stale scent of her perfume. Each empty space ratchets the tension tighter.
By the time I reach the main corridor, fury simmers under my skin.
I hit the security channel, summoning every available body to the operations room. The team scrambles, knowing better than to waste a second.
On the monitors, I watch the last hour of footage—Emery at her desk, eyes fixed on the screen, hair pulled back, jaw set with concentration. She stands, stretches, moves out of frame.
Thirty seconds later, the camera in the hallway flickers, goes black. The timestamp freezes.
My jaw locks.
“Get me that feed, frame by frame. Now,” I bark at the lead technician. He fumbles, rewinds, brings up an alternate angle. Emery never reappears.
Staff assemble in the outer office, faces pale, eyes wide. I scan the group, reading guilt, confusion, fear.
“Who saw her last?” I demand, voice cold enough to strip paint.
The housekeeper raises a hand, trembling. “She asked for tea, sir. Fifteen minutes ago. She was alone.” I turn to Anton. “What about alarms? Sensors?”
He shakes his head. “No alerts, nothing triggered. The elevator logs show all security codes intact.”
I grit my teeth. No forced entry, no sign of a struggle, no electronic flag. She didn’t run. She didn’t fight. Someone walked her out. Or convinced her to walk out herself.
Panic and fury twist together, a spiral of calculation and threat. I pace, fists clenching and unclenching, pushing past staff, repeating my questions.
“Who came onto this floor? Who had clearance today?”
Names tumble out—cleaners, a tech from IT, one of my own men from the Bratva’s finance team. All background- checked. All loyal. Except loyalty, I remind myself, is currency in short supply.
Dimitri appears, breathless, eyes wide. “Boss, I heard—there was a black SUV seen near the south entrance. Unmarked. Might be the Petrovs or the Koretsky crew. Maybe someone slipped her out during the shift change.”
I turn on him, rage sharp and unfiltered. “No. No one breaches this building, this floor, without inside help. Not the Petrovs, not Koretsky, not God himself.” My voice is low, lethal. “Someone handed her over.”
Dimitri shrinks under my stare, but tries again. “She’s got new access, right? Maybe they wanted her for—”
“Who was she speaking with at the last dinner?”
His eyes dart away, flickers of memory surfacing. “Igor,” he says finally. “They talked, just for a few minutes. He said it was nothing.”
My mind snaps back: Emery at the family table, Igor leaning in, a conversation too quiet to overhear. She smiled, tight and nervous. I dismissed it, then. Now it settles in my gut like poison.
I force myself to think, to move. I look at Anton, order a full review of all logs, all communications for the last twenty-four hours.
“Pull every message, every call, every pass in and out of this floor. Find the break.” My voice is sharp, a blade meant to cut through fear. The staff scatters, desperate to please.
As I stalk back into Emery’s office, dread claws up my spine. I remember her new access—files, transaction codes, the kind of information that can’t just be revoked if it leaks. I remember the quiet in her voice, the careful questions, the distance in her eyes these last few days.
Did she know what was coming? Did she try to warn me? Or is she already a pawn in someone else’s game?
On her desk, the screen is dark, but I tap the keyboard. A login screen glows to life—her username, waiting. I stare at it, seeing not just absence but erasure, a clean extraction.
This wasn’t random. This was surgical. Someone close used her—used my trust—to get what they wanted. Now she’s gone, vanished from a fortress built to keep the world out.
The fury inside me finds a new, colder shape: certainty. I know who I need to talk to. I know what I need to do.
Igor. The name rings in my head, a countdown ticking toward violence. I will find who took her. I will find who let them in.
I will make every last one of them pay for believing they could touch what is mine.
Underneath the rage, a fear I haven’t felt in years burns—raw, wild, impossible to cage. She is gone, and for the first time, control is nothing but an illusion. For the first time, I am the one who’s lost.
I swear: the city will burn before I accept her absence.
The city becomes a chessboard—my board, my war—when Emery vanishes. The moment I accept that she was taken, not lost, I unleash every weapon at my disposal.
Anton relays my first orders before the elevator even hits the lobby. My men are ghosts and hounds; they fan out through Manhattan’s arteries in black sedans and on foot, hitting every corner where Bratva money leaves a shadow.
By the time I stride through the main doors, I am already a storm in motion, my phone a constant pulse of violence waiting to be sanctioned.
“Shut down every account tied to the Koretsky crew and Petrovs—now. I want their cash flow at zero. Anyone calling for help, anyone moving money, flag and intercept.” My voice is cold, clipped, but no one mistakes the edge beneath it for calm. “Anyone who stonewalls gets a visit. Make it loud.”
Anton nods, face pale. “Yes, of course.”
I commandeer the armored car, tapping commands into two phones at once as we weave through downtown traffic.
By noon, word is out: the Rudenko organization is hunting, and the city’s criminal underbelly feels the pressure like a noose tightening.
My crew hits a Koretsky-owned restaurant on Houston—front door kicked in, employees lined up and questioned. No answers, only fear, which is almost as useful. We leave one of the managers weeping, the message sent.
By two, we raid a money-laundering front in the Bronx. I stand in the center of the back office, desk scattered with fake IDs and cash bundles, while my men tear the place apart.
“Who came through here this morning?” I ask the owner, voice so flat he flinches before I finish. “You think you can run without my permission?”
He stammers denials, but a single look—long, unblinking—breaks him.
“There was a woman,” he admits, “but I never saw her face. She never spoke.” He’s useless, but the fear lingers, leaking into the next contact, the next room.
I move from building to building, office to garage, my network folding around me like wings of iron.
Anton is always at my side. I let them handle the low-level intimidation, but I step in for the key players: a Petrovs lieutenant at a gambling den, a Koretsky cousin at a high-rise condo, a Bratva financial clerk who’s been too quiet for too long.
My presence alone—silent, still, inevitable—fractures loyalties.
When I finish, three men have begged for my mercy, and two have given me names. None are the ones I need, but I know how to use them to squeeze the truth from someone higher up.
Rumors race ahead of me. By sunset, everyone knows Rudenko’s searching, and that the thing he’s looking for is not money, not drugs, not revenge. No one says her name, but everyone knows.
The old guard is terrified; the upstarts try to capitalize, testing the new boundaries of my wrath. I crush them—swift, public, brutal—leaving bruises on egos and bank accounts that won’t fade for years.
Throughout the hunt, anger rides me, but underneath it, something sharper gnaws: fear. Every hour without her becomes a blade, cutting through my logic, making my decisions more personal, more ruthless.
I see her in the back of every limo, hear her voice in every silent hallway.
I remember the defiance in her eyes, the way she squared her shoulders when she was scared, the careful way she asked for what she needed.
I remember her laughter, rare but real, and the way she softened when she thought I wasn’t watching.
Every lead we chase that ends in nothing makes my hands ache for violence. I want to believe I am doing this for the organization, for order, for the rules I built from blood and compromise.
The lie won’t hold.
This isn’t about reputation or power anymore. I would burn my own legacy to the ground to get her back.
***
By nightfall, we have a name—one of Igor’s lieutenants, a mid-level broker with access to both accounts and private drivers. He’s holed up in a warehouse in Red Hook, surrounded by men who think their guns can buy them safety.
I show up in person, ignoring Anton’s warning looks. I walk straight through the line of guards, eyes on the man who’s been laundering money through my own channels for months.
He tries to talk, tries to bargain, but I cut him off with a single blow to the jaw. It’s fast, efficient, and very final.
“Where is she?” I ask, every syllable razor-sharp. When he hesitates, I nod to Dimitri, who drags him upright, twisting his arm until he screams.
The truth comes quickly, sweat and fear driving it loose. Igor orchestrated it, the man says. He wanted leverage—a way to secure his own position, maybe even move against me if the timing was right. He used my trust, my routines, my wife.
The confession is a poison that burns as it settles. I feel the city tilt, my entire empire trembling at the foundation. I order the man held—alive, for now. He’s more useful as a message than as a corpse.
I return to the penthouse long after midnight, boots tracking grime across the marble. I stand alone in my office, staring out over the city, the lights blurring through the glass. My hands shake, just barely. The room is too big, too empty, the silence a scream in my ears.
It’s not about power. Not about Bratva law, or territory, or legacy. I would trade it all for a single minute with her, safe and furious and alive in my arms. Emery is no longer a witness, or a possession, or an asset.
She has breached the walls I built to survive. She is the only thing in this city I cannot replace.
Obsession? No. It’s more. The need to possess has become the need to protect. The need to protect has become the need to have her, always, within reach.
Losing her is not an option.
I grip the edge of my desk, knuckles white, and swear aloud—swear by every line of code, every brick, every drop of blood in my domain: I will not let her be taken from me. Not by Igor. Not by anyone.