Chapter 18
Gavriil
Bad news hits harder when you’re already unraveling.
I hear a buzz of overlapping voices from out in the hallway before I throw open the door to the meeting room. I walk straight to the head of the table, but I don’t sit down. Too much anger and adrenaline courses through my veins to allow me to relax in the slightest.
How dare Dominik accuse me of being distracted by the girl?
She’s not that important.
I repeat it until it almost sounds true.
“What happened?” I demand from the men I put in charge.
“Things just—”
I lift my hand, cutting off Matvei from saying another word. “I don’t want excuses. I want a walkthrough. Start to finish.”
Matvei nods, glancing at the others uneasily before turning back to me.
A smear of dried blood runs along the side of his jaw, but I’m pretty sure that it isn’t his.
“We positioned our strike team according to the intel from our past recon missions. We thought we knew exactly where the Irish patrol would be and when.”
I nod as I listen, tension filling the quiet room.
“The Irish hit us from behind. They saw us before we saw them because they went down a different street than we expected,” Matvei explains. “We put up a good fight, but they had the upper hand. We were caught off guard.”
How were we placed incorrectly? We did multiple recon missions to assess the patrol’s movements. I went on one of the missions at the very start of this whole plan.
“How many did we lose?” I ask.
“Three,” Daniil says from the other side of the table, and the word lands heavier than a bullet. “Two died instantly from gunshot wounds. One bled out before we could help him.”
My hand clenches behind my back, fury blooming within me as I listen to how our solid plan fell apart at the seams because of one fucked up detail.
Four men are dead because I missed something.
And if I missed this, I may have missed more.
“You fled?” I ask.
Matvei nods. “They started to surround us, and we assumed they were going to call in reinforcements, so we had to get out of there.”
They’re no good to me dead, but they’re no good to me if they fail either. The Irish foiled our plan and sent them fleeing. That makes us look bad. Weak. Just like Dominik accused me of being.
We’re an even bigger target now since this attack failed.
“What road were you positioned on?” I ask Matvei since he failed to mention that detail.
“Swan.”
My brow furrows. “Swan? We decided on Harper. We had an advantage on that road because of all the wide alleyways.”
Matvei frowns. “I was told to position the team at Swan.”
My jaw clenches for a second. “And who made that call?”
Matvei quietly glances over at Leon, who hasn’t said a word this entire time.
“You made that call?” I question Leon. “Without discussing it with me first?”
He’s one of my brigadiers or captains. He has the authority to make big decisions, but he shouldn’t change any of the ones that I sign off on without my approval, especially when it comes to attacks.
Leon swallows as he stares back at me, looking like a deer in headlights as all eyes fall to him. “We thought the Irish patrol changed their routes at the last second.”
I resist the urge to grab a gun and shoot him between the eyes. He’s lying to my face, and he got three men killed because of his stupid, last-second decision. I don’t know his motive for leading the plan astray, but he won’t interfere ever again.
“Daniil. Simeon,” I say before nodding toward Leon. “Put him in a cell while I contemplate his punishment.”
Wordlessly, the two men both get to their feet and walk over to Leon, who shrinks back in his seat.
“What? No!” Leon protests as the men grab his arms and haul him out of his chair. “It was just a mistake! That’s all!”
My nails dig into my palm as I keep my fist behind my back, steadying myself as they drag Leon out of the room.
Silence rushes in after his screams fade, thick and suffocating. He may never be heard from again.
“We need to correct this. Immediately,” I tell everyone remaining in the room. “Matvei and Pyotr, stay. The rest of you leave and wait for orders.”
A few confused glances are tossed across the table, but no one argues. Most of my men pour out of the room, leaving only the three of us.
“I want to arrange a counterstrike,” I tell both of the men as they sit on either side of the table.
“And I want to make sure that what just happened doesn’t fucking happen again.
Both of you will comb through our ranks, identify any potential weak links, and remove them.
Then, you’ll pick a small team for the counterstrike. No one else should know about this.”
Matvei and Pyotr nod at the same time.
“We can’t afford any more weaknesses or distractions. Not after this failure,” I say, spitting out the last word. Unable to stop wondering if Dominik’s accusation about Alina making me distracted was correct.
I hate that I can’t dismiss it outright.
I can’t get anything under control. Not this conflict. Not my brother. Certainly not her.
I breathe in deeply at the thought of Alina, my mind threatening to stray. I should be thinking about strategy, casualties, retaliation, not the woman in my cage who has learned exactly how to stay in my head.
And I still can’t stop thinking about the infuriating moment shared between her and my brother.
That stubborn bond that I’ve failed to break.
I can’t be a failure. I need to fucking focus.
“Go on. Report back to me,” I tell the men with a dismissive wave of my hand.
They leave without hesitation, and I’m close behind them.
But I’m not attending to my duties as I should be. I’m on the way to my bedroom.
How did Dominik know that she’s like a drug that I have to take a hit of to keep my mind straight or I have withdrawals? Because he’s been in my shoes?
When I walk into the bedroom, Alina is peeling the skin off a mandarin orange as she sits in her usual corner. Relief cuts through me when I see her eating, and I hate myself for it.
She cocks an eyebrow at me as I lean my back against the closed bedroom door. “What?”
“Is this what you did while staying under my brother’s roof? Sit where he told you to and behave?” I ask her, genuinely curious.
Whenever I visited his place, I never really got to see what she was doing in her free time. Did she follow Dominik around like a puppy? Did she stare out of the window wishing for her brother to show his face and save her?
I know so little about her. Yet, she lingers in my mind and refuses to leave.
Alina drops the peeled skin on the floor before halving the orange, moving too slowly and casually for my preference. “What do you think I did at Dom’s?”
“I know what he wanted to do,” I assure her, keeping my distance. For now.
Alina rolls her eyes as she chews on a small slice. She swallows. “I already told you that we didn’t have sex. Not even close.”
“Then what made him get so attached to you so quickly?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess…maybe Dom and I became close because we went through things together. We…bonded, despite the awful circumstances.”
Something burns in my chest that I don’t want to name. It pesters me, though, as I gaze at her through the bars. “You didn’t want him to fuck you?”
Alina blinks at my forwardness. “I didn’t say that. We just never got a chance.”
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
She frowns. “Not after he almost died. He was injured. Are you having his bullet wound taken care of?”
I wave off her worries. “He’s healed. No infection. Barely even a scar once the stitches were removed.”
At least I assume that’s the case since Yelena hasn’t mentioned having any concerns.
Alina exhales slowly, relief written all over her face. “That’s mainly why. He would’ve ripped open his stitches if I hadn’t stopped him.”
I push off the wall and wander toward the cage, watching her place another orange slice between her lips. “So, what did you do then? Read books? Knit?”
Alina licks a glimmer of juice from the corner of her mouth, causing desire to surge through me as I imagine how good her tongue would feel on me.
She’s so damn sexy in her lingerie that it should be illegal.
“I mostly kept to myself until we got closer. Then, he talked to me about what was happening, and I helped however I could with trying to…trying to convince Archer to do the right thing,” Alina remarks.
“I liked hearing Dom talk about his plans to go after the bikers, how his men got the guns back, the way he made the bikers give him names and information...”
I don’t miss the spark in her eyes when she speaks about the attacks and torture. She’s being honest, and fuck that’s hot. Even if she wasn’t born into this life, she found a way to find her footing in it while she was a captive.
Most women would’ve been terrified. They wouldn’t have approved of using violence against the bikers.
I think Alina liked being a part of the excitement. She enjoyed the thrill of the chase, just like I do.
“You liked having a front-row seat to the drama?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I guess it would be more fun to see how the…business is handled when my brother isn’t the enemy.”
That’s admirable to me, sexy as hell, and it hatches an idea in my mind.
“One of my men disobeyed my orders at the last second, costing men their lives. How do you think I should punish him?” I ask her.
“That depends,” she replies, wetting her lips in thought.
“On what?”
“If he intentionally disobeyed you or if someone convinced him to do what they wanted instead, knowing he would take the fall.”
Huh. She’s not wrong.
“So, you think someone under him could be the traitor and are perhaps pulling his strings?” I ask.
“It’s possible. And if that’s the only mistake he made, listening to the wrong person, then he doesn’t deserve to die for it, right?”
“We’ll see,” I reply.
While I enjoy talking to her about business, I know I don’t need her advice or her ideas. I won’t even accept Dominik’s.