Chapter 3
Laszlo
The shower water hits me like rainfall. Hot, scalding rainfall, and I close my eyes, letting it soak into my skin.
I lay awake for hours after Baron left, unable to get the sinking feeling out of my soul that he is about to blow my life apart in the worst possible way.
I open my eyes and brace both hands against the tiled wall, head bowed, water running over the ink on my arms.
Rusanov.
The name keeps circling.
Not because Viktor has the balls to make a move. Men like him know they do. Not because Baron is angry. Baron is always angry. It is the way he goes quiet that bothers me. The way he said he would find a better way.
That means strategy.
Strategy means sacrifice.
I shut off the water, step out, and wrap a towel around my waist. Steam clings to the glass. My reflection stares back at me from the mirror over the sink, dark hair wet, tattoos black against skin flushed from the heat, blue eyes harder than I remember earning.
I need facts.
I walk into my bedroom, the dark wood floors gleaming beneath Persian rugs, the massive four-poster bed still unmade.
I open the wardrobe, mahogany and faintly smelling of cedar, and dress quickly.
Black pants. Black shirt. My Patek Philippe watch catches the light from the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the garden.
Knife into the sheath at my back. Gun next. Habit. Religion.
By the time I step into the hallway, Leonid is already waiting outside my door.
“You hover beautifully,” I say.
“Pakhan called. You have a meeting with him this afternoon.”
“Figured.”
Leonid hands me a fresh espresso in a porcelain cup because he knows I turn homicidal—more homicidal—without caffeine. “He said not to keep him waiting.”
“As if I would.”
Leonid gives me the look he saves for stupid statements.
I take the coffee and head downstairs. I cross the marbled-floored entrance hall, past the dining room, and cut through to the back terrace instead of the study.
I need fresh air before family politics.
The morning is already warm. London is pretending it isn’t corrupt for a few hours.
Rusanov.
Viktor is not reckless. Ambitious, yes. Cold, absolutely. But not reckless. If he touched one of our routes, he did it for a reason. Men like that do not poke at a tiger to see if it still has teeth. They do it because they want to measure the bite.
Or because they want something else.
The problem is that Baron loves making use of opportunities that smell like insults. He takes offence personally but never acts personally. That is what makes him dangerous. He can hate you and still offer you wine while he decides which part of your life to remove.
I drink the espresso in three swallows and take the cup back inside.
I have business to attend to before Baron wants me, I’m assuming at his house in Belgravia, this afternoon.
I can use this time to be alone and reflect on how destructive this afternoon is going to get while I go over the files for the arms deal in two weeks.
I sit at my desk and spread the paperwork across it.
Invoices. Shipping manifests. End-user certificates forged well enough to evade a bored customs officer, but not well enough to withstand proper scrutiny. Standard work. Necessary work. The sort that keeps men rich and governments hypocritical.
I read every line anyway.
Leonid knocks once and comes in when I tell him to. He carries a tablet in one hand and a folder in the other. “The final figures on the Antwerp consignment,” he says.
I hold my hand out. “Tell me it got cheaper.”
“It did not.”
“Tell me it got easier.”
“It definitely did not.”
“Then why are you here ruining my morning?”
He drops the folder in front of me. “Because you asked for the information.”
Sometimes, I could curse myself. But I open the folder anyway. More numbers. More routes. More names of shell companies that exist only to help violent men pretend they are respectable importers of machine parts. “Any problems I should care about?”
“Yes. Two crates need rerouting. One of the drivers got arrested in Calais for drink-driving and possession of enough cash to interest the French.”
I look up. “Is he stupid?”
Leonid’s face stays blank. “Very.”
“Is he ours?”
“Technically.”
“That’s the worst kind.” I skim the page. “What did he say when they lifted him?”
“That he was visiting his mother.”
“In Calais.”
“Yes.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Shoot him later.”
Leonid inclines his head. “Noted.”
I flick to the next document. “And the crates?”
“One goes through Rotterdam instead. The other sits in storage until we decide whether we trust the replacement driver.”
“Do we?”
“No.”
“Good. I’d worry if we started trusting people.” He says nothing to that because we both know trust is how men end up in basements with their teeth in a jar.
I sign the bottom of the manifest, initial the route changes, and shove the papers back into order. Busy hands. Useless cure. Every time my thoughts return to the same conclusion, it’s like stepping into a bear trap.
Viktor Rusanov does not move without purpose.
Baron does not offer meetings without one.
That leaves me standing in the middle of a mess built by men old enough to call it diplomacy.
Leonid leaves me alone again, and I sit back in my chair, flicking my phone to silent so I’m not disturbed.
Turning towards the window, my mind keeps going back to this meeting with Baron later and what he plans to ask of me that will cost me opening my big fucking mouth.
With a sigh, I get up and, leaving my phone on the desk, I stride out of the office and head upstairs to change into my running gear.
I need to get out. The streets of Mayfair are busy with mid-morning traffic.
I run hard, feet hitting pavement in a rhythm that matches the pulse in my temples.
Down through Green Park, cutting along the edge where the trees line up in neat rows, past the Palace where the guards stand like ornaments pretending they aren’t bored shitless.
I run until my lungs burn and my thighs scream, and the name Rusanov stops bouncing around my skull like a trapped wasp.
It doesn’t work.
By the time I loop back, sweat is soaking through my shirt and dripping off my jaw. The gates open and I sprint through, hearing them close behind me as Leonid opens the door. He gives me a wide berth as I run inside and straight up the stairs to my bedroom.
It’s cool and dark in the bathroom, marble surfaces gleaming like ice under the recessed lighting.
I strip off, muscles still twitching with exertion, and dump the sweat-soaked running clothes in the mahogany laundry basket.
I flick on the rainfall shower, steam immediately billowing up to fog the glass.
I stand under the scalding cascade for a moment, letting it pound against my neck and shoulders, before lowering the temperature until it bites at my overheated skin.
The water sluices away the salt and grime, carrying the morning’s frustrations down the drain.
Turning the shower off, I step onto the heated floor and grab a plush black towel, rough against my skin as I dry off, then sling it low around my hips.
In the walk-in closet, I slide hangers across the rail with a metallic scrape, settling on what to wear.
Tom Ford dark suit, crisp white shirt, no tie—powerful but not trying too hard.
I select another Patek Philippe watch and snap it onto my wrist, before the weapons slot into place.
Staring at myself in the mirror, I take a deep breath. Pick up my phone from the dresser that Leonid has kindly moved to where he knows I’ll need it, and I check the screen.
Silence.
I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Then, it buzzes. “Think of the devil, and he shall appear,” I mutter and slide my thumb across the screen. “Pakhan,” I say formally, because I want to kiss his arse, so he doesn’t throw me to the wolves.
He sees straight through me. “Cut the shit, Laszlo. My house, half an hour.”
The line goes dead.
I pull the phone away from my ear and look at it. Half an hour. That gives me exactly enough time to drive to Belgravia and mentally prepare for whatever fresh hell awaits me. I pocket the phone and head downstairs.
Leonid is in the entrance hall, already holding my car keys. The man is part butler, part psychic, part silent judgement.
“The dark blue Bentley,” I say. “I’m not showing up at my uncle’s in the Lamborghini. Not today.”
“A rare moment of wisdom.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
He hands me the Bentley keys without a word.
The weight of them sits cool against my palm as I step outside to where the car waits, gleaming midnight blue under the early afternoon sun.
I slide my finger along the polished hood—no flashy chrome, no attention-seeking angles.
Just quiet power that whispers rather than shouts.
The kind of car that valets nod at respectfully while holding the door for men who never introduce themselves before they decide your fate.
The drive to Belgravia takes twelve minutes.
Baron’s townhouse sits on a crescent that reeks of old money and diplomatic immunity.
White stucco facade. Black iron railings.
Window boxes with flowers, tended weekly by some poor gardener, while armed men patrol the perimeter.
It looks like every other house on the street. That’s the point.
I pull up, and the gates part without me having to announce myself. Cameras. Always cameras. Baron trusts technology more than people, which is saying something given the people he employs.
I park beside a black Mercedes and climb out, buttoning up my jacket before adjusting my cuffs.
The front door opens before I reach it. Grigor, Baron’s personal security detail, is built like a Soviet monument and about as warm. He nods once and steps aside.
Inside, the house smells of beeswax and old leather. The hallway is lined with oil paintings—landscapes, mostly, dark forests and grey rivers. The marble floors echo under my shoes as I follow the corridor to his study at the back of the house.
The door is open. Baron stands behind his desk, hands clasped behind his back, facing the window. “You’re early.”
“I’m always early.”
“I know, it’s noteworthy enough to mention.”
“What is this meeting about?”
“Follow me.” He turns and leads me out of the office, back out onto the driveway, where his driver holds open the back door of the Mercedes. Baron gets in first, and I follow. The thump of the door closing is like the lid of my coffin slamming shut. Grigor slides wordlessly into the passenger seat.
“If you want me on the front foot, I suggest you start talking,” I say, getting pissed off with the mystery. “I’m all for improvisation, but some details would be appreciated.”
Baron turns to me, his pale blue eyes that he shares with his sister, my mother. “We are going to see Viktor Rusanov.”
My blood goes still. The kind of stillness that comes before something detonates.
“Come again?”
“You heard me.”
“I heard you. I’m giving you a chance to say something different.”
Baron’s mouth twitches. Not amusement. Warning. “Viktor has agreed to a sit-down. At his home.”
“His home? You agreed to that?”
“I did. It’s called diplomacy.”
I stare at him. Diplomacy. The Mercedes pulls into traffic, smooth and silent, the streets of Belgravia sliding past the tinted windows. My hands rest on my thighs. I keep them very still because the alternative is putting my fist through the window.
“You’re walking into his house,” I say. “After he burned our route and got three of our men killed.”
“Yes.”
“With me.”
“With you.”
“And you didn’t think to mention this before I got in the fucking car?”
Baron adjusts his cufflink. One small, precise movement. “If I had told you on the phone, you would have argued. You would have called Roman. Roman would have called me. Roman has bigger issues to deal with.”
“Bigger issues than Viktor Rusanov?”
Baron smiles. It’s not amusement. It’s something he does when he is either contemplating extreme violence, or he has been proved right. I’m not sure which it is in this case. That makes him a danger to everyone in a ten-mile vicinity.
Eying him up suspiciously, I sigh shortly. “Are we going there to kill him?”
“You said war was overkill,” he clips out. “We are doing this another way.”
“And what way would that be then?”
“Depends.”
“On?”
“What he has to say for himself. Men like Rusanov don’t go around making waves with families like mine for no reason. He wants something. I intend to find out what that is before I decide whether to remove him from the board entirely or allow him to stay and be useful.”
“So why am I here?”
“This was your idea.”
Babushka Voronov, God rest her soul, couldn’t come up with a curse vicious enough for me.
“You are not happy?”
“Happy? No. On edge? Yes. This is going to blow up, and you should’ve warned me so I could bring more weapons.”
“The boot is full of them.”
“Of course it is.”
We drive into Kensington and pull up outside an enormous three-storey mansion with a guard stationed at the door.
Baron is opening the door before the driver has climbed out, and I follow, stepping out into the road and feeling a shift in the air as I close the door.
Baron is already striding up to the door with Grigor in his shadow, looking around as if someone is going to jump out of the carefully manicured bushes and attack his Pakhan.
I button my jacket and follow, scanning the windows above. Nothing visible. No obvious shooters, but that means nothing.
The front door opens before Baron reaches it. A man in a dark suit steps back and gestures for us to come inside without a word. Professional. No posturing. That tells me something about how Rusanov runs his house.
The hallway is wide and immaculate. Parquet floors polished to a mirror finish. Art on the walls. A Repin, a Serov. The man has taste. Taste and the money to back it up.
We are led through a corridor filled with fresh flowers; a woman’s touch, even though it is well documented that Luseva Rusanova was killed in a turf war many years ago. Viktor practically burned the city to the ground and killed every single person involved in ways that make even me shudder.
Two more armed men flank a set of double doors at the end of the hall. They open them without being told.
The room beyond is a study. Large. Bright. Tall windows let in the afternoon light. Bookshelves line two walls, leather-bound volumes arranged precisely by height. Baron sweeps in, and I follow, my gaze taking in everything and everyone in the room.