Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
M IKHAIL
The rain in Brooklyn hangs in the air like a wet grey sheet.
It smells like salt, dead fish, and the rusted iron of the shipping containers lining St. Jude’s Pier. I keep my arm locked around Irina’s waist as we walk on the slick asphalt. She’s shivering slightly under her black sweater, but her jaw is set so tight I can see the muscle jumping in her cheek.
Stubborn. She’s freezing, but she won't admit it.
"He’s not going to show if he sees you," she whispers, her breath blooming in a small white cloud in the damp air. "I told you, Aris is like a stray dog. You look at him wrong, and he’ll run."
I grunt, my eyes scanning the shadows near the edge of the pier. "If he’s as smart as you say he is, he would value keeping his head on his neck. He’s not going anywhere."
We stop near a stack of abandoned pallets.
A figure steps out from behind a rusted crane fifty feet away.
It’s a small, wiry man in a dirty canvas jacket, his hood pulled low over his face.
He takes three steps toward us, pauses when he catches sight of my shoulders, and instantly takes a step back.
"Irina!" the man shouts, his voice thin and trembling over the sound of the water. "You didn't say you were bringing him! I'm not doing this. This wasn't the deal!"
He turns to run, but I don't even have to move. Lev steps out from the shadow of the crane behind him, his hand resting casually on the butt of his piece. Aris freezes, his shoulders bunching up like a cornered rabbit.
"Sit the fuck down, Aris," I call out, my voice flat and low. I steer Irina toward him, my hand staying firm on her hip. "If I wanted you dead, we wouldn't be standing in the rain. Talk to my wife."
Aris swallows hard, his hood slipping back to reveal a pale, sweating face. He looks at me, his eyes wide with a frantic, chattering terror, then looks at Irina. "If Boris finds out I talked to a Morozov about the kid..."
"My father is currently trying to blow up my husband’s family," Irina says, her voice turning into that sharp, icy register she uses when she’s done playing games. "He doesn't have time to worry about you. What do you have? Give me the address."
"I don't have the full details yet," Aris stammers, reaching into his wet jacket with shaking fingers. He pulls out a plastic bag containing a single, damp piece of paper. "But there’s a house under a shell company in Boris Petrov’s name. He’s been paying the trust fund quarterly from his private account in Midtown. I’ve had people in New Jersey go to the location but they weren’t allowed in the gated estate the house is in.
It's almost like no one can come out of the place nor enter. "
A cold, heavy rage settles in my chest.
I look at the wet paper, then at the gray skyline of New Jersey across the river.
Boris didn't just hide the boy to protect his precious family name.
He didn't do it to clean up a sixteenth-year-old girl's mistake.
He did it to keep her on a leash. He kept her son within driving distance so he could check on his investment, keeping his finger on her deepest, most painful wound for a decade, waiting for the exact moment he needed to pull the string.
He’s a monster . A greedy, systematic monster who doesn't care about anything but money.
"Is there a guard rotation?" I ask Aris, my voice sounding like a rusted gate.
Aris jumps, his gaze snapping to me. "Yeah. Four men. Private security, not Petrov soldiers. They think they’re guarding a wealthy heir who’s home-schooled. The house is under a shell company called 'Verona Holdings.' That’s all I could find before Boris’s people started locking down the servers."
"You did well, Aris," Irina says, her voice shaking as she takes the plastic bag from his hand. "Now get out of New York. Go to Boston. Or Chicago. If my father finds out you gave me this, he won't use a court to settle it."
"I’m already gone," Aris says. He looks at me one last time, a pathetic note of plea in his eyes. "Mikhail... don't let him find me."
"Lev," I bark, not looking back. "Give him fifty grand from the safe. And make sure he gets to the train station."
"Copy that, Boss," Lev says from the shadows.
Aris doesn't wait. He turns and scurries away into the gray mist, his figure disappearing behind the rusted cranes within seconds.
I turn Irina toward me, my hands coming up to grip her shoulders. She’s staring at the plastic bag in her hand, her fingers trembling so hard she nearly drops it.
"Irina," I say, my voice softer than I ever use with anyone else.
"He was right there, Mikhail," she sobs, her forehead coming down to rest against my chest. "He was right there the whole time.
My father... he looked me in the eye and told me he had no idea where they took him.
He told me the records were burned. He watched me cry for weeks and he didn't say a word. "
"He’s going to bleed for it, Irina," I growl, my arms wrapping around her waist, pulling her tight against my chest. The scent of her—roses and wet silk—is the only clean thing on this pier. "I promise you."
"We have to go to Jersey," she says, her face burying in my shirt. "We have to go right now."
"No," I say, my grip tightening, keeping her anchored.
"We go when we have to be sure of the exact address. If we show up at a gated estate with our guns out without knowing which door to kick down, Boris’s security will have the boy out the back door before we hit the driveway. We do this right. We do it once."
She lets out a shaky, broken breath, her fingers clutching the back of my suit jacket. "Fine. You’re right. We do it your way."
"Let’s go home," I say.
As I start driving I look at Irina is sitting in the passenger seat. Her hair is still damp from the rain, her face pale and quiet, but the frantic panic from the pier has settled into a cold, hard resolve.
"I just spoke to Konstantin. He is narrowing down the addresses," I say. "There seem to be three private properties in Alpine registered under 'Verona Holdings.' One of them has an active trust account tied to a local private tutor. We’ll have the exact house number by tomorrow morning."
"And my father? He expects the weapon warehouse locations by tomorrow night."
"We’re going to give them to him," I say.
She looks up, her blue eyes wide and startled. "Mikhail, you can't. If he gets those weapons?—"
"We’re not giving him our weapons, dorogaya ," I say, a small, cold smile touching my mouth. "We’re giving him a ghost. There’s an old transit warehouse in Newark that we abandoned two years ago.
It’s empty, but the security grid is still connected to our main system.
We’ll have Konstantin leak the active codes to Boris's tech guy tonight.
We'll make it look like you stole them from my private desk. "
"He’ll send his enforcers to clear it out."
"Exactly," I say, placing my hand on her thigh. "The second his trucks pull into the lot, Konstantin’s tactical team will lock down the perimeter. We won't just protect our inventory; we’ll take out forty of Boris’s best soldiers in one sweep. It will leave him blind and deaf in the city while we’re in Jersey taking your son back. "
She looks at me, her gaze lingering on my face for a long beat. There’s a softness in her eyes that I haven't seen before, a quiet, deep-seated warmth that makes my chest tighten.
"You're good at this," she says quietly.
"I told you I’ll be here for you. But the plan only works if Boris believes the leak. If he thinks you're actually betraying me because you're terrified."
"He will believe me," she says, her voice turning hard. "He’s spent years believing I’m weak because of Oleg. He won't suspect a thing."
She leans into me.
Boris thinks he’s the one holding the leash. He thinks he can use her deepest wound to bring me to my knees. But as I look at my wife, her blue eyes dark with a quiet, lethal resolve, I realize that he’s just made the biggest mistake of his life.
He didn't just start a war with us.
He gave his daughter a reason to fight back. And this time, she’s not running away.