Chapter 29
Lev
Baron is going to hit the roof and keep going into deep space. His fury will know no bounds when he finds out about this.
He is going to look at Varvara as the root of all of his fucking problems, and then he is going to order something that I’m going to have to refuse and probably end up making an enemy out of my own family.
For her.
All for her.
There is no question about it. I don’t have to weigh it even a little bit. It’s already been decided. She is my future. Now I have to deal with my family and be prepared to run with her or take a bullet for her. Maybe both.
“How fucked are we?” she asks after a beat.
“On a scale of one to ten? A million.”
“Fuck. Lev, I’m sorry.”
“What? What are you apologising for?”
“Putting you in the middle of this.”
“Don’t do that,” I growl, my fingers tightening around the steering wheel until the leather groans. “You didn’t ask for any of this. You didn’t ask for a father who plays god in the dirt or a detective who hunts women for sport. You’re the victim here, Varvara. Don’t you ever forget that.”
I risk a glance at her. She looks small in the passenger seat as she fights off the fear response she was spiralling into in the alley.
“He saw me,” she says.
“He saw both of us. I don’t care who he is or what he thinks he runs. He let Marika take a shot at you. That makes him an enemy of the Voronovs.”
I push the Ferrari harder, weaving through the late-night London traffic. My phone rings through Bluetooth.
Baron.
“You have to get that,” she says.
“Are you sure about that?”
She takes a deep breath. “Yes.”
I tap the steering wheel, and my uncle’s voice fills the cabin, cold and sharp as a winter frost.
“Lev.”
“Popov is down,” I state, my voice showing none of the adrenaline still surging through my veins. “Clean shot. But the board just got a lot more crowded, Pakhan. We have a new player in the centre of the ring.”
“Do I even want to know?” he asks.
I exchange a glance with Varvara. She nods because what else can she do?
“Konstantin Krestov. Varvara’s dad.”
There is a terrible silence for a few seconds before he speaks.
“Explain.”
I recount the visual at the bar. Konstantin didn’t flinch. He stood there with the authority of a man who owns the air everyone else breathes. Marika is his enforcer, his handler, and his wife. It’s a family business I didn’t see coming.
Baron remains quiet. I know that silence. He is calculating the cost of my obsession before he speaks.
“An accountant who builds a shadow empire that operates in my city. This is unacceptable.”
“Agreed.”
“What does she think of this?”
She. “Varvara is surprised but handling it well.”
“I want to kill them both,” she snarls.
Baron snorts in amusement. “I see. Get off the streets. Go home. Plan what you are going to do.”
“You’re leaving it to me?”
“This is your mess. Clean it up.” He hangs up.
“Right,” I mutter. I don’t trust Baron’s sudden hands-off approach. It isn’t a gift; it’s a test. He’s giving me enough rope to hang myself or pull the entire Voronov name into a war we weren’t ready for. I glance at Varvara, whose jaw is set in a line so hard it looks like stone.
“He’s letting you handle it?” she asks, her voice hollow.
“He’s letting me choose how I die,” I mutter. “If I fuck this up, he washes his hands of me. If I win, he takes the territory your father built in the dark.”
“My father doesn’t deserve a territory. He deserves a hole in the ground.”
I reach over and grab her hand, squeezing until she looks at me. “I’m going to give him exactly what he deserves. But we do this right. No more surprises.”
The house comes into view, the gates swinging open like the mouth of a beast. I pull into the drive and kill the engine, but I don’t get out.
I just sit there, the ticking of the cooling engine the only sound between us.
I have a DI who needs to die, a rival Pakhan who needs to die, and a family watching for me to fail.
“Lev?”
“I’m not letting them touch you again,” I say, and for the first time, it isn’t just a possessive growl. It’s a vow. “Not the law, and especially not your blood.”
I get out of the car and walk around to open her door.
The Mayfair night is hot and heavy with humidity.
The silence carries the weight of a threat.
I lead her into the house, my hand firm on her waist. Pyotr meets us in the foyer.
I ignore his questioning look and march Varvara straight to my office.
“Sit,” I say, gesturing to the leather chair.
She doesn’t move. She stands in the middle of the room, her gaze fixed on the dark monitors. I want to hide her away, but the world is already coming for us. “I need my old phone back. Whatever you did to it, undo it.”
“Why?” I ask, not because I’m not going to comply, but because she is adamant about something.
“Marika called me the day you followed me in the park. Insistently. It’s not unusual. When she or they try to call, it’s usually a few times. I let it ring. I ignore it and let them sit while it rings.”
“Petty,” I murmur with a smile.
She grins briefly. “I know. But then the phone was cut off. I want it back on to see if one of them calls.”
“Done,” I say and pull up the app to re-enable her phone. “It might need charging.”
She nods and goes upstairs, not commenting on what I did or how. It isn’t relevant. She wants the phone on to see if her dad calls. That’s all that matters.
Moments later, she returns. “Charger?”
I hold out my hand for her phone, and she gives it to me. I plug it into the charger attached to my laptop. We wait for it to turn back on in a simmering silence where unspoken words linger.
“What are you thinking?” I ask.
“Who the fuck knows? This man isn’t my father. He isn’t my dad. I don’t know that man. Not anymore. I…”
“What?”
“I don’t want this to be a problem. I don’t want it to be a thing. I don’t want to have a chat with him and forgive and forget. He was dead to me the second I found out about him and Marika. This doesn’t change fuck all. I don’t want to know who he really is. I don’t care.”
“Are you sure—”
“Don’t second guess me, Lev,” she says with a grimace. “I know my own mind. Nothing changes the fact that he betrayed me and my mother’s memory. Anything else is just another reason to never speak to him again. Kill him, don’t kill him. I don’t give a single fuck.”
I nod. “Good girl. That’s the Voronov way.”
“I’m not a Voronov.”
“Not yet.”
“Don’t,” she says, but I see the smile she’s trying to hide. “We have to survive your uncle first.”
The screen flickers to life. The bright light cuts through the shadows of my office.
It’s a cheap device, a piece of plastic holding the ghosts of a life she’s better off forgetting.
A string of notifications pings in rapid succession.
Missed calls. Messages. Most of them are from a contact she has saved as ‘Bitch’.
“Marika, I presume.”
She snorts. “Obviously.” She picks up the phone and starts scrolling. “These are all from the other day.” She sets it back down, and then it rings, making her jump. “Dad,” she says.
It rings.
“You have to answer it,” I point out after three rings.
“Why?”
I frown. “Because… yeah, I got nothing. What are we actually doing?”
Varvara watches the screen until it goes dark.
“I don’t know. Ignore him for now. Let’s go over what we know.
Dad is a pakhan, apparently. Popov worked for Dad.
Popov hired the blonde guy to get information on Voronov holdings to pass off to the handler, Marika.
Blonde guy fucked up and passed it to me instead.
You were sent to kill Marika, but realised I wasn’t her—lucky for me.
Marika then shot at us to get that drive.
Which means Dad wants Voronov holdings information badly enough to kill his own daughter. ”
“Or Marika acted on her own with that.”
“Either way, we were shot at because my dad wants your uncle’s business information.”
“Where are you going with this? Where does that leave us?” I have absolutely no qualms about asking her opinion on this because I need the help to figure it out where I’m not gunning down her dad and step-mum, along with Mercer, to fix this ungodly mess.
She shrugs.
“It leaves us with the only thing your father values more than blood. The data. If Marika’s the one who fumbled the hand-off, she’s desperate to fix her mistake before Konstantin decides she’s a liability.”
Varvara picks up the phone again, her thumb hovering over the glass. “He’ll call back. They always do.”
“Every time he rings, it’s a pinpoint on a map I’m already drawing.” I move around the desk, stopping when I’m close enough to touch her. “We don’t play by their rules anymore. We don’t wait for them to come to us.”
“What’s the plan, then?”
“We use the drive as a lure. If your father wants the Voronov secrets so badly, I’ll give him a version that’ll ruin him from the inside out.” I catch her jaw, my thumb brushing the skin near my mark.
The fire in her green eyes matches the burn in my gut. I see her processing the finality of my words. There’s no turning back. We’re targeting her blood to protect our future. “And what about Mercer?”
“He dies, but first I want to know who is blackmailing him.”
“How do we find that out?”
We. It makes my cold heart warm and fuzzy. “Voran Baranov. My cousin. He’s digging as we speak.”
She nods slowly. “Okay. Can you do me one favour?”
“Anything, moya sladkaya.”
“I don’t want to know what happens to my dad or Marika. They were dead to me before this. I don’t want to know anything about them, even if it’s that they are really dead.”
I study her for a long moment. “Are you sure?”
She nods. “Yes. My decision is made.”