Chapter 3
Damien
Standing on the opposite side of the road from the café where Lidiya Kareva works, I watch her smiling at customers as if they were her long-lost friends. Her usual exhaustion isn’t apparent, and I wonder if she has decided to cheer up to make better tips after I tested her earlier.
The money wasn’t due today. Baron doesn’t even know I’m here. I wanted to see her when her name popped up earlier on that stupid auction inventory. I did have my eye on another girl, but that got blown out of the water when I recognised the newcomer.
Her name shouldn’t be there. Lidiya Kareva, London born, Russian parents dead, a debt marker with my father’s ink on it. I don’t believe in coincidence. I believe in arranging things, so they fall where I want them.
She laughs with a woman, all brightness and crumbs, and I note the moment her smile slips when she turns away. The edge she carries like a secret blade. She quickly brings it back under control. I approve of that. Survival dressed up as service.
I don’t know when she became the thing I check for without meaning to—the café schedule, the street outside, the tilt of her head when she thinks no one’s looking—while the spare to the heir does what he’s built for and turns traitors into lessons.
But seeing her on the auction list this morning doesn’t intrigue me.
It makes my blood go cold. It feels like theft.
Her desperate act of signing up doesn’t sit right with me. She won’t like the way I fix her problem. She’ll like even less that I make it my problem first. Baron will probably have my hide, but it will be worth it. To see her smile will settle the noise.
I will show up at the auction tomorrow night, and she will be shocked when she sees my face. It gives me a dark thrill to know she will be mine. I’ll make sure of it.
Turning away, I stroll down the street and slip into my Aston, and head back over the river to Belgravia.
The townhouse greets me the same way it always does—with expensive silence and the faint hum of climate control keeping everything at precisely the right temperature.
I toss my keys onto the marble console table and head straight for the vodka cart.
The crystal decanter is heavy in my hand, satisfying.
Carrying it over to the window, I settle into the leather armchair and pull up her file on my phone; the one my family keeps on every debtor foolish enough to borrow from Baron Voronov.
Lidiya Kareva. Twenty-eight. Parents deceased—car accident, eighteen months ago. Left behind nothing but a debt to my father that her old man accrued over years of quiet, stupid borrowing. The kind of debt that compounds in the dark like mould. She inherited nothing but the obligation.
I scroll through the payment history. She hasn’t missed one. Not a single Friday. Scraping together the payment, but she pays it. Every single time. On time. Without complaint.
The vodka in my hand catches the amber glow from the table lamp, clear and sharp. Like her eyes when she told me she didn’t have it. No begging. No theatrics. Just the raw mathematics of poverty delivered with a spine made of something harder than she realises.
I drink. The burn is clean, familiar, and I let it settle before I set the phone down and stare at the Basquiat opposite me. A skull screams in neon and charcoal. It cost me more than she’ll ever earn in her lifetime, even if she lived forever.
Something about that ratio bothers me tonight, even though it never has before.
I pick the phone back up and pull up the auction details Kirill sent.
It’s a high-end affair, run by a woman named Madame Orlov who operates in the grey space between London’s elite and its underworld.
The events are discreet, invitation-only, and legally untouchable because nothing technically illegal happens.
Companions are auctioned for a single evening—dinner, drinks, conversation.
What happens after is between consenting adults, and Madame Orlov washes her hands of it with the elegance of a woman who’s been laundering reputations longer than most people have been alive.
The intercom at the gate buzzes, and I frown. I wasn’t expecting anyone. Dad would just waltz in, so it’s not him. Rising, I move to the panel that shows the CCTV from all angles.
Delivery.
Something about it seems off. The driver is antsy, looking left and right, not quite dressed the part.
Opening the drawer on the console table, I pull out a Glock and shove it in the back of my pants before unlocking the front door and striding out past the Aston to the gates.
“What is it?” I ask.
The driver holds up a padded envelope, brown and unmarked. No label. No postage. Hand-delivered.
“Package for Mr Voronov,” he says. His voice is too tight for a man doing a routine drop-off.
I don’t open the gates. Instead, I study him through the bars.
Mid-thirties, wiry build, cheap jacket that doesn’t sit right on the left side.
Either he’s carrying, or he’s got the worst posture in London.
His eyes keep darting to the mews entrance behind me, cataloguing exits like a man who might need one.
“From who?” I ask.
“Didn’t say.” He shifts his weight. “Just told to deliver it here.”
“And you took the job without knowing who sent it.”
It’s not a question. He hears that and swallows.
“Look, mate, I just need to hand it to Mr Voronov personally, and I’m gone.”
“Put it through the railings and step back.”
He hesitates. That hesitation tells me everything I need to know. A real delivery driver would shrug, drop it, snap it at my front gate and move on because he’s got forty more stops and a satnav screaming at him. This one lingers like he’s waiting for something.
“On the ground,” I repeat. My voice doesn’t change pitch. It doesn’t need to.
He places the envelope down with exaggerated care, which either means it’s fragile or he wants me to think it is.
He backs up three paces, hands visible but not raised.
It’s too casual for surrender, too deliberate for innocence.
I wait until he’s far enough that the angle works in my favour, then crouch and slide the envelope through the gap between the iron bars.
I don’t open it. Not here.
“You can go now.”
“I need a signature.”
“No, you don’t.”
His jaw tightens. For a second, I think he might do something stupid, and part of me hopes he does because why not? But he’s smarter than he looks. Or more afraid than he’s letting on. He turns, climbs into the van, and pulls away without another word.
I carry the envelope inside at arm’s length, set it on the kitchen island, flick the lights on, slit the seal with a knife, and tip the contents out.
A small black box slides onto the counter, and I turn it over to see a countdown counting down from three seconds. Two. One.
I don’t move. I simply stare at it as the clock runs down.
Nothing happens.
Then my phone rings.
I pick it up. Unknown number.
“Cute,” I say into the receiver. “The countdown was a nice touch. Very dramatic.”
A pause. Then a voice I don’t recognise—male, measured, stripped of any accent that might give him away. “Consider it an introduction.”
“To what? Your sense of humour? Because it needs work.”
“To the fact that we can reach you, Mr Voronov. Anywhere. Any time.”
I pick up the black box and turn it in my fingers. Cheap plastic, a basic circuit board, a tiny LED screen. Something you could build from parts ordered online for less than a tenner. It’s not a bomb. It was never meant to be. It’s a statement.
“Congratulations,” I say. “You delivered an envelope to a gate with a camera on it. My nan could’ve managed that, and she’s been dead since 2014.”
Silence. Then: “One of the girls on the auction list. Kareva.”
My hand stills. “Don’t know the name.”
“She is a person of interest to my boss.”
I set the box down.
“Oh? Who would that be now?”
“None of your concern.”
“Well, that’s unsporting. Surely you should give me a heads up, seeing as you threatened me.”
“We didn’t threaten you. We demonstrated accessibility.”
“Right. Semantics. My favourite. So, some anonymous boss has an interest in a girl I don’t know, and you’re telling me this because…?”
“Because you were standing outside her place of work for eleven minutes this morning.”
So, they’re not just watching her. They’re watching me watching her. My grip tightens on the phone.
I let the silence stretch. It’s a tool, silence. Most people rush to fill it, and in that rush, they spill. This one doesn’t. He waits with the patience of someone who’s been trained to wait, which tells me he’s not street-level muscle. He’s operational.
“Eleven minutes,” I repeat. “You were counting.”
“We count everything.”
“Then you’ll know I also stopped at a newsagents on the corner and bought a pack of chewing gum. Spearmint. Want the receipt?”
“I’ll take the receipt for the coffee you ordered when you spoke to her for longer than an average order takes.”
My eyes narrow. “Here’s what I think. I think your boss wants this girl, and he’s worried someone with deeper pockets and a shorter temper is going to outbid him. So, he sent you to rattle my cage. How am I doing so far?”
“You’re making assumptions.”
“I’m making deductions. There’s a difference. One requires a brain. If your boss thinks a plastic box and a phone call are enough to make a Voronov step aside, he’s either new to London, or he’s lost his fucking mind.”
The line goes quiet for three beats. I count them.
“Stay away from the auction, Mr Voronov.”
I laugh. It’s genuine, which probably irritates him more than anything calculated would.
“You’ve just guaranteed I’ll be there. You know that, right?
You could’ve left it alone. Could’ve let your boss bid like a civilised person and taken his chances.
But no, you had to play the countdown game. You had to make it personal.”
“It doesn’t have to be personal.”
“Too late.” I end the call.
My fist tightens around the phone as I stare at the black box on the counter, the LED screen dead.
Now I’m more interested in this woman who scrapes together money to pay off a debt she didn’t even accrue.
Someone wants Lidiya Kareva badly enough to monitor her, monitor me, and deliver a theatrical warning to my front gate. That’s not casual interest. That’s a fatal mistake.