19. Aleksandr
ALEKSANDR
Every hour that drags on without her tightens the noose around my neck, strangling me until breathing feels impossible.
I pace the length of my office because stopping will only allow my thoughts to consume me further.
Early this morning, my intelligence network confirmed she had been taken back to her childhood home the night of the gala. Military personnel have been on a twenty-four-hour rotation guarding every centimeter of that property. No further movement has been recorded since then.
I have stared at that line of information so many times, the words feel etched behind my eyelids.
Every instinct I possess screams at me to storm that estate, tear the gates from their hinges, and rip through every guard standing between me and her.
The urge is primal, violent, almost animal in its intensity.
Deep down beneath the rage clawing its way through my chest, I know going in without a plan would be suicide.
Not just for me, but for her. For any man foolish enough to follow me through those gates.
As much as I despise admitting it, Ramil Borchin may be a coward, but he is not an idiot.
Men like him survive as long as they do because they understand exactly how cruel they need to be when cornered.
If he even suspects I am closing in on him, he will kill her without hesitation.
The thought makes my teeth grind together hard enough that my jaw aches.
Without the Iron Pact behind me—without the distraction of political pressure and the weight of their combined influence bearing down on him long enough for me to slip inside that estate and pull her out—my hands are tied.
For the first time in years, power means absolutely nothing.
Money cannot fix this. Fear cannot force my opponent to bend to my will. Reputation will not scare him into complying. He has nothing left to lose.
Every hour I do nothing feels like parts of me are being carved away, another piece of her slipping further out of reach.
The longer she remains under his control locked behind those walls, stripped of the protection my name once offered her, the more the distance between us begins to morph into something permanent.
I miss her.
Horribly.
Worst of all, I cannot stop replaying our last conversation.
Trying to shield her from the truth of who and what the Iron Pact is had seemed like the logical choice at the time. Keeping her outside of it and away from the men who decide the fate of entire regions with only a few carefully chosen words had felt like the only way to keep her safe.
Especially from Malyshko.
I told myself that keeping her in the dark was a mercy. That if she remained far enough from the Pact’s orbit, she would never have to see the parts of my life that have the greatest potential to swallow people whole and never let them see the light of day.
I never intended to hurt her.
But the thought that our argument might be the last words we ever spoke to each other cuts deeper than any blade I’ve ever felt sink into my flesh. I would give up almost anything to undo it and erase the bitterness from that moment to replace it with something else.
Before all of this, I have always known my life would most likely end abruptly, violently, sooner rather than later.
That is the cost of the position I hold and the choices I have made to maintain it.
There would be no point in deluding myself otherwise.
Growing up in this world strips that illusion away early.
You either accept the inevitable or spend your life pretending it won’t happen to you and being surprised when death finally catches up.
Now, the possibility of dying without reconciling with her is my greatest fear slowly coming to fruition.
And I only have myself to blame.
Bashir and Shkanova find me just after midnight.
I hear the door to the control room open behind me but don’t bother turning to greet them.
My fingers hover over the touchpad of the surveillance system spread across the monitors in front of me, the blue glow of the screens painting the room in a cold light. Every camera feed I’ve managed to pull up is displayed in neat grids across the wall.
At the center of it all sits the Borchin estate.
The mansion looms across the screen in eerie stillness. The feed is live, transmitted from two of my enforcers currently parked down the road in a nondescript van to keep tabs on the soldiers’ movements while they wait for my next plan of action.
This is the best vantage point I have right now, and I hate it.
Their equipment is top-tier, but even that only gets us so far.
This external surveillance is the only way I’ve been able to keep eyes on the property while my tech team works through the far more frustrating task—breaking into Borchin’s internal network.
So far, it has been a nightmare.
Military-grade security is exactly as difficult as it sounds to infiltrate.
It’s layers upon layers of encrypted firewalls, rotating access codes, and monitoring systems designed specifically to detect intrusion attempts before they even fully gain temporary access.
Whoever designed the cyber architecture inside that estate knew exactly what they were doing when they set it up and has only made this all the more complicated.
My jaw tightens as I watch the guards pass each other near the driveway. My thumb drags across the touchpad, zooming in. A pair of them patrol beneath the floodlights outside of the front doors, rifles pulled taut against their chests ready to aim at any shadow they believe to be suspicious.
“Still nothing?” Bashir asks from behind me.
I lean forward slightly in my chair, eyes still locked on the screen.
“No.” The word comes out flat.
He sighs.
One of the smaller feeds flickers in the corner of the screen.
At first I assume it’s just another camera recalibrating, one of the many systems running across my network adjusting exposure or signal strength.
Then the image stabilizes. The angle shifts to the infrared feed covering my own front gates.
I turn my head slightly, my attention pulled from the Borchin estate for the first time in hours.
A car sits just outside the attendant’s booth, its engine idling quietly beneath the pale wash of security lights.
The driver’s side window lowers as one of my gate attendants approaches the vehicle.
There is a brief exchange as I watch the attendant lean down slightly, listen, then straighten.
A second later, my attendant returns to the booth, his face washed in a pale color from the control panel.
The gates begin to move, the heavy iron panels sliding apart as the vehicle is waved through.
I lean forward slowly and tap the screen, expanding the feed until it fills the monitor. The car rolls past and up the driveway, its headlights cutting through the dark as it makes its way toward the main house.
My brow lifts when I catch the numbers on the back plate.
“Sokolov?” The name leaves my mouth under my breath.
For a moment I simply stare, then I lean back in my chair and pull my phone from my pocket, swiping the screen awake.
No missed calls or messages.
My gaze drifts back to the monitor again.
What would he be doing here at this hour? And more importantly, why didn’t he call first?
We haven’t spoken since he stitched me back together after the gala.
Truthfully, there wasn’t much left to discuss after Malyshko made it abundantly clear that I would be handling this situation on my own.
His refusal to involve the Pact had effectively closed that door indefinitely.
While Sasha has never been one to blindly follow orders when he believes someone is wrong, interfering in another member’s affairs without cause is not something he does lightly.
Not when Malyshko has already drawn the line.
Our relationship has never been what anyone would call friendly.
At best, it has always hovered somewhere between professional tolerance and open antagonism.
Our personalities have always clashed too easily.
Ironically, our ideals have always aligned more closely than any of the others in the Pact.
But similarity does not breed friendship among men like us.
If anything, it breeds friction.
I have never once deluded myself into believing that any members of the Iron Pact would become my lifelong friends.
In turn, they have never pretended otherwise either.
We are not brothers. We are four pillars holding up the same structure to prevent it from collapsing.
Four parts of a machine that only functions because our shared goal demands it.
Which is exactly why Sasha’s appearing here unannounced just past midnight is deeply concerning.
The car continues its slow crawl up the drive.
Behind me, Shkanova exhales softly. “I’ll go see what he wants.”
I push my chair back and stand. I shake my head once, already heading toward the door before either of them can first. My hand pauses, hovering over the handle as I glance over my shoulder. “Just keep an eye on things until I get back. If anything changes on the feeds, I want to know immediately.”
They both nod firmly.
I turn and leave the room.
The quiet hum of the surveillance monitors fades behind me as I step into the hallway, the tension in my shoulders tightening further with every step I take toward the main floor. My mind is already running through possibilities, none of them particularly comforting.
By the time I reach the entryway, he is already inside waiting for me.
And he is not alone.