Chapter 17
Laszlo
Inever made it to bed, but I watched her sleeping on the cam. On the right side. I’m calling it protection, but really, it’s spying. I think we have passed the need to keep an eye on her. She has proven herself capable of seeing the bigger picture and won’t do anything reckless.
I didn’t have you until now. Those words keep echoing in my head. It’s not surrender. It’s selection. She has chosen where to place her weight, and I feel the impact of it like a hand around my throat.
“Leonid,” I say quietly as he brings me coffee and toast and places them on my desk. “Remove the cam in the bedroom when Galina comes down for breakfast.”
“Yes, sir,” he says and backs out. But he pauses in the doorway. “You look like shit, sir. Perhaps a shower and a change of clothes if you refuse to sleep.”
“Refuse,” I snort out a laugh. “If only it were that simple.”
He inclines his head and leaves without further comment about my appearance.
He’s probably right. I should shower and change, or my fiancée might decide she doesn’t want to stick around after all.
That thought is enough to make me growl at my toast and bite roughly down, chewing with more force than necessary.
I take a sip of coffee and look back at the blueprint of Petrov’s house.
My phone rings, and I answer it. “Yeah?”
“Well?” Lev asks. “Was it what you wanted?”
“It was. I’m not even going to ask how you got it.”
“Best not to, but let’s say I owe someone a massive favour, so you owe me. Got it?”
“Got it.”
A weighted pause.
“You should tell Baron what you’re planning.”
“You don’t even know what I’m planning.”
“No, but it’s big, obviously, if you want Anton Petrov’s estate blueprints. Which are probably not the full scope of the building, by the way.”
“No shit. Uncle Baz doesn’t need to know anything. Yet. If he finds out, I’ll know you told him.”
“I’m not saying shit. I don’t want my head on the chopping block.”
“Neither do I, but I made a promise to a girl.”
He exhales audibly. “Nope, not asking.”
“Good call, cousin. Bye now.”
He hangs up before I can say anything else, which is the right call. Lev has always known when to stop pulling a thread.
With a low growl, I push the blueprints away.
Staring at walls and gates any longer is useless.
If Viktor Rusanov has been working this for months, then he is already further ahead than any sketch on my desk is going to show me.
Men like him do not start building a move like this and then leave the hard parts to chance.
What matters is not whether I can out-plan him before breakfast. What matters is whether Galina is right to trust that Yelena is not being left there to rot.
I think she is.
That should settle something in me. It doesn’t. Not fully. Because caring is one thing.
Depending on another man’s timing is another.
I lean back in my chair and stare out at the garden. Viktor is already moving his own pieces.
Fine. Let him. I am not interested in taking over a plan that was never mine to build. But I am interested in knowing whether, if it fractures, it fractures near my wife.
That is the part that matters now.
Not Petrov.
Not the house.
Not even Viktor’s long game.
Galina asked me for something that mattered to her, and I said yes. That does not mean I need to become the architect of the whole operation. It means I make sure she is not standing in the wreckage if it goes wrong.
I exhale slowly through my nose.
Viktor has this underway.
What I need is not a rescue plan.
What I need is the truth.
The answer comes to me slowly, then all at once.
Not in details. In shape.
Viktor did not build this marriage arrangement around a corridor by accident. He built it around timing, position, and distraction, and I know enough men like him to recognise the outline of a move even when I cannot yet see the whole board.
Which means one thing matters more than the rest: he is not standing still.
He is already doing something.
Galina was never wrong to ask. She was only wrong to think she was the only one carrying it.
I should be furious at being used. Instead, all I feel is the sharp, cold satisfaction of finally seeing where the pressure really sits.
Not on Yelena alone.
On Galina.
On whether she can believe that when something matters to her, it matters to me too.
“Morning,” Galina says a second later. “You didn’t sleep?”
I look at her and think, not for the first time, that none of this is really about corridors or Petrov or even Viktor’s long game. It’s about what lands in my hands now that she has.
I shake my head, wondering if I should spill what I think I know. It could be presumptuous, and I don’t have facts. Only a gut feeling that I’m not wrong.
She moves in closer. “You were working on this all night?”
“Yeah,” I say, sitting back and rubbing my hands over my face. “I need a shower.”
I stand up, not ready to give her hope that might be false. She catches my hand as I stride past her. “Thank you,” she says quietly. “You will never know how much this means to me.”
I do know. That is the problem. This isn’t really about the cousin anymore. It’s about the fact that she is finally placing something that matters in my hands.
I head upstairs, strip off, and stand under the shower for longer than I need to.
The hot water does nothing useful for my brain, which is still running circles around Viktor Rusanov and his chess pieces.
He is not a man who makes sentimental decisions.
He does not hand over the most valuable piece of criminal real estate in the south of England on a whim.
He does not engineer a war, then offer to prevent it, then negotiate access through a corridor in rival territory on the exact day his daughter enters into the marriage arranged, unless every part of it matters.
Minutes later, I towel off, pull on dark jeans and a fresh shirt, and drag a hand through my hair.
When I come back downstairs, Galina is in the kitchen with Leonid, sitting on a stool at the island with a cup of tea, watching him scramble eggs with the focused attention of someone who has decided that if they can’t control anything else, they can at least supervise breakfast.
Leonid looks up at me with the expression of a man who is managing two dangerous situations simultaneously and would like a pay rise.
“Steak?” she asks without turning around.
I pour more coffee. “Thanks.”
“Thank Leonid, not me. I’m just sitting here marvelling at how adept he is in the kitchen.”
“Flatterer,” I murmur, with enough heat that Leonid gives me a look that would kill me if he had magical powers. “I’m glad you’re eating,” I say quietly, moving across to her. “Yesterday was frantic.”
She nods. Hopefully, the next few days will settle. “Regarding what we discussed… my dad isn’t available for three days. He is out of the country on business.”
Convenient. Or strategic.
“Okay, three days.”
“Is that okay?” she asks carefully.
“Of course.”
She nods, relieved that I’m not going to back out, but to be honest, I don’t even know if I can move forward. “Something wrong?” she asks lightly.
Smiling, I shake my head. “Just tired.”
“Eat and then sleep.”
“Will you both stop hovering and go and sit in the dining room, please?” Leonid finally snaps.
Galina makes a noise that is half laugh, half genuine offence, and I feel the tension in my chest loosen slightly for the first time since I sat down with that blueprint at two in the morning.
We take ourselves to the dining room without further argument, which is probably the most compliant either of us has been since we met. She sits across from me and wraps both hands around her mug, and I drink my coffee and look at her properly in the morning light for the first time.
She looks rested. Better than rested. She looks like a woman who slept well in a new bed in a house she didn’t choose and woke up with her spine still intact. Her hair is loose, dark against the white of the jumper she has pulled on, and the ring sits on her finger like it has always been there.
I notice that she isn’t fidgeting with it this morning.
I say nothing about it.
Leonid appears with plates. Scrambled eggs and smoked salmon for her. Steak, eggs, toast for me. He sets them down with the efficiency of a man who does not want to be thanked or spoken to and retreats immediately.
Galina looks at her plate and picks up her fork.
I look at her over the rim of my coffee cup.
“You were working on Yelena last night.”
“Yes.”
She nods once, and I see the effort it takes her not to ask anything further. She is learning me faster than I am comfortable with. The restraint she is showing right now, the deliberate choosing not to push, is more telling than anything she has said since she walked into this house.
I set my cup down and cut into the steak.
We eat in silence for a few minutes. Not uncomfortable. Not charged.
“She is your mother’s niece?” I ask suddenly, needing to break the silence.
Galina looks up carefully. “Yes, her brother’s daughter.”
“What was your mother’s maiden name?”
“Kozlov.”
I nearly choke on my next bite of steak.
She smiles. “Weren’t expecting that?”
“Wasn’t expecting the Kozlovs to become pawns in Petrov’s game.”
“My mother would be turning in her grave if she knew,” she mutters, which tells me all I need to know about Luseva Rusanova.
“You are like her?” I ask as casually as I can.
She laughs. “Dad says so, and more like her the more time passes.”
“She was also a hardarse.”
Galina nods, her mouth full of salmon. “Such a hardarse, but she loved me more than anything. I miss her.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugs. “What for? You didn’t kill her.” Her fork scrapes against the plate with unnecessary force, and her gaze drops to her food. The corner of her mouth twitches once, twice, before settling into a hard line.
“Whereabouts is your dad now?” I change the subject.
She shrugs. “Didn’t ask.”
“Probably for the best,” I say, and mean it in more ways than one.
She finishes her eggs and pushes the plate back, satisfied, and reaches for her mug and the urge to blurt out what I think I know is clawing at me.
Not yet.
Not until I’m certain.
The problem with certainty is that it requires confirmation, and the only person who can confirm it is the man who engineered the entire thing.
Viktor won’t confirm it directly. He’ll smile at me in that particular way he has, the way that says he’s already three moves ahead and finds my attempts to catch up mildly entertaining.
Pushing my plate aside, I stand up. “I need to make a phone call.”
She looks up and nods, but doesn’t say anything.
Striding out of the dining room and into my office, I close my door and open my laptop as I pull out my phone and text Leonid to send me Rusanov’s number immediately. He will, without question, and four seconds later, it pings through.
I dial on my laptop for a video call and sit back.
Rusanov comes on the screen a moment later with a fierce frown. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Like you didn’t already have all my contact details stored in your phone,” I say.
He smiles, slow and satisfied, and leans back in his chair. “You’re sharper than I expected.” He tilts his head. “How is Galina?”
“She’s fine.” I keep my voice even. “I’m not calling about Galina.”
“No.” It isn’t a question.
“I want to talk about the corridor.”
“We have already discussed the corridor.”
“We discussed the access window. We didn’t discuss why the window falls on the exact day of the wedding.”
He says nothing. His expression doesn’t change.
“Anton Petrov,” I say after a beat.
He doesn’t even flinch. “What about the old bastard?”
“Controls Bexley.”
“He does.”
“Something interest you in Bexley?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“A war with Petrov will drag several families into it.”
“Probably.”
Jesus. He is impossible. I would say worse than Baron, but that’s probably not true. It’s just that I can get more out of Baron because he is family.
“Is it a war you are thinking of starting?”
“Why would you say a thing like that?”
“Because you are a man who doesn’t start wars. You finish them.” I pause, letting that sit. “And you’ve been planning this finish for a long time.”
The silence on the other end of the call is different now. Not evasive. Measuring.
Viktor Rusanov leans forward slightly, just enough that his face fills more of the screen, and for the first time since I’ve met him, he drops the performance. Not all of it. Men like him don’t drop all of it. But enough.
“What do you think you know?”
“The wedding is a cover,” I say. “The corridor isn’t for a package. It’s for people.”
He says nothing.
“You’ve been planning to move Yelena and the children for longer than this arrangement has existed. The corridor access makes it cleaner. Harder to trace back to you.”
Still nothing.
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You know nothing about Yelena.”
“I know a great deal. Your daughter has filled me in.”
“What she told you is the tip of the iceberg. I would warn you to tread very carefully from here on out.”
“Galina asked me to save Yelena. I said I would. If you are already planning that, I am wasting my time.”
“She asked you that?” He sits back.
“She did.”
“Anton Petrov is not a man you take on lightly,” Viktor says.
“Neither am I.”
He chuckles. “I forget who I’m talking to. The Voronov name gives most men pause.”
“Does it give Anton Petrov pause?”
“Only if you mean the grandson.”
I snort. “Yeah. If only it were that simple.”
“I cannot talk about this further. It will compromise everything I have been working for.”
“Can I tell Galina?”
“Tell her what? There is nothing to tell.” He hangs up, and I curse.
A soft knock at the door makes me slam the laptop shut and call, “Yeah?”
Galina enters. “Did I just hear my dad’s voice?”
“Only if you were lurking.”
“I wasn’t lurking... I overheard him,” she flusters.
“Sit down, Galina.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I don’t think. Sit.”
She sits, and I take a deep breath.