Chapter 15 Lev
LEV
Vivika is already awake when I bring her coffee the next morning, standing by the window with her back to me as she pulls a sweater over her head.
The fabric catches on her dark hair and she tugs it free with an irritated motion that tells me something has shifted since last night when she fell asleep in my arms. Sex can't fix everything, but we connected. I know we did.
But I really hurt her by locking her in this room, and after that fiasco at the theater, I know she still has things to work through.
"Coffee," I say, setting the mug on the dresser.
"Thank you." She finishes adjusting her sweater and reaches for the jeans folded on the chair beside her without turning around. Her voice is polite but distant. She sounds like a complete stranger, not like the woman who moaned my name just hours ago.
I lean against the doorframe and watch her dress, noting the stiffness in her shoulders and the way she refuses to meet my eyes. She's been like this since the shooting at the Mariinsky, pulling away from me in small increments even as she lets me into her bed.
"Did you sleep well?" I ask.
"Fine." She pulls on her jeans and buttons them, still facing the window.
I know she's going to bring it up before she even says anything, so I brace myself for it.
Vivika is a powerful woman, stronger than she's shown me.
All I've seen is the meekness she shows me, but deep down, she has steel in her backbone like Ana does.
It's what gives her that advantage when she dons a dress and heels in her profession, and it's how she so easily plays the part of the missing Donna.
"Lev, I need to ask you something." She turns around finally, and I can see the dark circles under her eyes.
"Ask anything."
"Now that we're certain the hit was aimed at me," she says carefully, head still hanging, "can I just go home?"
Her question is a fair one, but it hits like a stone in water, creating a ripple effect.
Of course I'm frustrated that she's not settling in and staying happy, and it's not just about the job.
I want her to be happy because I want her to consider staying with me by her own will.
Forcing her won't bring me pleasure, but I need her.
Her going home isn't an option to me. And we need this job finished.
"We've discussed this, Vivika."
"I know we have. But things have changed.
" She wraps her arms around herself in a defensive gesture I've come to recognize.
"The family I'm pretending to belong to wants me dead.
Yaros knows I'm a fake, or at least he suspects it strongly enough to send shooters after me.
Your leverage over him is gone, Lev. I'm useless to you now. "
There's strong logic behind what she's saying. She probably stayed awake all night thinking through everything, and she isn't wrong. The situation has grown more complicated than I anticipated. But she's wrong about being useless.
"You promised to help me save those women," I say, and I watch her face carefully as the words land.
Something changes in her expression. The weariness gives way to frustration that creases her forehead.
Her jaw tightens and her eyes flash with an anger that makes me straighten up from my casual lean against the doorframe.
"Don't," she says, sharp enough to cut. "Don't you dare use that against me."
"Use what?"
"The women. The trafficking. The whole fucking story you fed me to make me cooperate.
" Her body language screams how upset she is, and she gestures with her hands, holding her palm up toward me.
"I heard you last night on the phone outside my door.
You were talking about weapons shipments, about getting them into Romania through trade routes.
Weapons, Lev? There is no slave trade, is there?
No women to rescue… It was all just a lie to manipulate me into playing your game. "
Vivika has never stood up to me or fought me.
I've seen her react in fear, and I've seen her try to flee, but she has never openly questioned or doubted me.
And the way she carries herself right now with her shoulders squared and her eyes narrowed on me shows hot contempt I know would turn primal if I so much as touched her.
It turns me on more than the meek, submissive waif I've fucked twice now. Pliable is good. Feisty is hotter.
I'm across the room before she can finish the sentence, my hands gripping her shoulders and spinning her around until her back hits the wall.
She gasps, her eyes going wide, but she doesn't flinch away from me.
Instead she glares up at me with that same fierce defiance, her chest heaving with angry breaths.
"You used me," she continues raising her voice. "I believed you because I wanted to believe I was more than just a pawn in your fucking—"
I kiss her to shut her up. There's nothing gentle about it, either. I take that kiss like I'm sucking the anger right out of her, and for a moment she resists. When she finally softens and stops fisting my shirt in anger, I pull back.
She isn't wrong about most of that, but the slave trade and Yaros's sickening fascination with stealing young women to fuel it are definitely happening.
I've witnessed it with my own eyes. I may not be trying to steal their trade routes to stop the slave trade, but that will be his very unfortunate side effect, and I can't say I'm sad about that.
I'll have the routes, and those women will be safe.
And now it will be my pleasure to prove that to the woman in front of me. "Let me prove it to you," I say, my forehead pressing against hers. "Let me show you I wasn't lying about the women."
She stares at me for a long moment, her body still pinned between mine and the wall. The fire in her eyes hasn't dimmed, but there's curiosity there now. If I'm reading her correctly, she doesn't want to hate me. She wants to believe me, but I'm going to have to work for it.
"How?" she asks.
"I'll take you there and show you what Veche trade routes really move, and then you can decide for yourself whether I was lying to you."
She holds my gaze for another beat, searching my face with a scowl. Then, slowly, she nods.
"Fine. Show me."
I release her and step back. The anger's still there, simmering beneath her carefully controlled expression, but she's agreed to come with me.
I can work with anger. What I couldn't work with was the passive resignation that had been creeping into her eyes, the slow acceptance of her fate that would have made her useless to me.
We leave the house twenty minutes later, Vivika sliding into the passenger seat of my car with a stiff posture. She hasn't forgiven anything but merely agreed to a temporary ceasefire, and she proves that by not speaking the entire trip.
I don't try to fill the silence. She needs time to process things, and I'm content to let the tension between us ride as the city gives way to industrial outskirts and then to the long, empty roads toward the border regions.
The drive takes nearly two hours, and Vivika doesn't say a single word the entire time.
I catch her glancing at me occasionally, but every time I look in her direction, she turns away and goes back to staring out the window at the landscape passing by.
The silence isn't comfortable, but it isn't hostile, either.
I start to feel the nagging concern that I've made a mistake by leaving the safety of my home.
Out here on the open road, we're exposed and vulnerable to attacks that could come from any direction.
But Vivika needs to see this to understand that whatever lies I may have told her about other things, the women are real, and the danger they face is real, and her role in stopping it matters more than she realizes.
The bus station appears on the horizon as we crest a small hill, a squat, gray building surrounded by cracked pavement and rusting chain-link fences.
It looks abandoned at first glance, just another piece of decaying Soviet infrastructure left to rot in the countryside, but I know better.
This place is one of the primary collection points for the Veche trafficking operation, where women are gathered before being shipped south into Ukraine and beyond.
I pull the car off the main road and park behind a copse of trees that provides partial cover while still offering a clear view of the station. Vivika straightens in her seat and scans the building and the lot surrounding it, looking confused.
"What's this place?" she asks. Her eyes are narrowed, brow furrowed as she turns to me, and it's a relief to hear her voice again.
"Watch." I reach into the back seat and grab the binoculars I keep there for exactly this kind of reconnaissance, handing them to her. "Tell me what you see."
She raises the binoculars to her eyes and adjusts the focus, her brow furrowing as she scans the station. For a long moment she's quiet, just looking, and I watch her face as the reality of what she's witnessing begins to register.
A bus pulls into the lot as we sit there.
Its windows are tinted too dark to see through, and the doors open to unload a group of men in heavy coats who stalk like predators.
They unlock a side door of the station and begin escorting women out of the building—young women, old women, some who look barely old enough to be called adults at all.
They walk with their heads down and their shoulders hunched, moving in single file toward the waiting bus like cattle being herded to slaughter.
"Oh, my God," Vivika breathes, and her jaw drops. "There are… there are so many of them."
"This is just one station," I say quietly. "There are dozens like it along the route, stretching from St. Petersburg all the way down through Ukraine and Belarus and into Romania. Every day, buses like that one carry women south to be sold in markets."
She lowers the binoculars slowly, and I see her pale face and the tears collecting in her eyes. "How do you know about this?"
"Everyone in our world knows about it. The Veche family's been running this operation for decades, ever since Ana's father established the routes. It's one of their primary sources of income, and they guard it jealously."
"Then why hasn't anyone stopped them?" Fury flashes through her eyes as she swipes tears away.
"Because stopping them requires access to the routes themselves, and the Veches control every inch of that territory.
" I take the binoculars from her limp hands and set them aside hastily.
I'm upset that I had to prove it to her in such a harsh way, and that translates to my abrupt movements.
"I tried to tell you I haven't been lying. "
Her head snaps toward me and anger scrawls across her face. "I don't understand. What do weapons have to do with saving these women?"
"Everything." I turn to face her fully, holding her gaze.
"The Veches won't willingly give up their routes—they're too profitable, too essential to their operation.
But if we can force them to let us move our weapons through those same routes, we establish a foothold.
Our men start traveling that road, our resources start flowing through those channels.
And once we have a foothold, we push. We widen our access, we bring in more people, we start taking control of key points along the route. "
"And then?"
"And then we shut the trafficking down entirely.
We take over the operation and end it, station by station, bus by bus, until there's nothing left of it but memories.
" I run a hand through my hair and sigh.
"I don't have authority to tell you this sort of shit, but there it is.
" I'm tense, chest tight as I sit back and rest my head on the seat's headrest. Yuri won't like that I've told her, but she needed to hear it.
She stares at me, processing what I've told her. The anger's still buried beneath layers of shock and horror at what she's just witnessed, but I can see her starting to finally understand what's at stake.
"Why didn't you just tell me this from the start?"
"Would you have believed me? You're right. I was covering up our real motive, but it doesn't make this any less true." I shake my head slowly. "You would always have had to see this part for yourself, anyway."
She looks back toward the bus station, where the last of the women are being loaded onto the bus. The doors close and the vehicle starts to pull away, carrying its human cargo south.
"I believe you," she says quietly, and her shoulders droop. "I believe you, Lev."
Frustrated that it had to come to this, I grumble, "Good. Now we can—"
But movement catches my eye at the edge of the station, a figure emerging from the main building and pointing directly in our direction. Even at this distance I can see the alarm in his posture, the way he reaches for something at his hip.
"Fuck," I say, my voice going hard and flat as I throw the vehicle into gear. "We gotta get out of here—"