Chapter 23
Damien
Her arms lock around me, and something hot and mean eases in my chest.
I give in, just enough, to pull her against me, palm sliding into her hair. She fits. Small, quick-breathing, pulse a staccato against my sternum that I tell myself is adrenaline, not me.
She smells like my soap. My shirt hangs on her like she’s mine, and I hate that I care about the symbolism when there’s a target painted on her back.
I count five heartbeats, then make myself release her.
She stays there a fraction too long, and I go still—no hands, no taking. Her rule. Not unless she says so. When she steps away, I let the space open without dragging it shut again.
“Clothes,” I say. “There are some on the way.”
“How do you know my size?” she asks lightly, like she didn’t just come out of a room full of men bidding on her like she was an antique.
“I guessed.”
“You guessed?”
“I’m a good guesser. Plus, they’ll send over a few sizes.”
She stares at me as if I’ve grown a second head.
The buzzer goes.
My attention snaps sharply. I know it will be the boutique because no one else gets through the perimeter right now. Test my defences once when I allow it; next time, you get put down before you make it within the gate.
I check the monitor, confirm, and buzz them through. Gate. Door. Hall.
Two women in black with garment bags and a valet rack follow one of my men in, briskly competent in heels. I respect it.
“Down that hall,” I tell them, pointing towards an archway that leads to the downstairs rooms. “Third room on the left. Anything that scratches or shows too much goes back.”
One of them smiles like she’s been given that order before. “Understood.”
I look at Lidiya. She glares at me, jaw set, but she doesn’t say anything.
“Do you want me there?” I ask with a slow smile.
“I am capable of picking out my own clothes.”
“I’ll be in my office,” I say. “The room next to the one you’ll be in.”
She nods, squares herself, and follows the women with bare feet and my shirt brushing her thighs like a provocation.
My phone buzzes before I sit. Baron.
I swipe and press speaker.
“Damien,” he says. “Do you have any answers?”
“I have some,” I say, sitting down. “Not the name. Yet.”
Baron exhales through his nose. That sound means he’s in a mood.
“Summarise.”
“A three-man team were sent to test my defences. I let them. I killed them.” I keep my tone flat. “Okay, I killed two. One of them killed himself. Cyanide. No IDs. They came in not to rob. To retrieve.”
“You invited this.”
I press my fingertips to the desk. “They were testing me. Someone looped the cameras at the auction for nine minutes. The car he left in vanished into Barlow’s garage. This wasn’t some random buyer. He wanted papers to make it look clean when he took her. And he made damn sure I noticed.”
Silence.
Then, “What else?”
“Orlov is involved somehow. Her name crops up on several documents that appear to link together.”
“Regina Orlov,” he grits out. “The woman who is currently in possession of Babushka’s yacht?”
“The very same. I’ll get it back.”
My smile must be audible because he snorts.
“I have no doubt. Or she will come back from the grave and haunt you.”
“Right?” I say with a short laugh. “You think I’m messing with Babushka Voronova?”
“Damien,” he says in that way that makes me want to lean back and light a cigarette just to irritate him.
He wants to strip me of my skin, and if I were Roman, he probably would.
But he can’t. I’m too much fun, and he lives vicariously through me.
Not that he would ever acknowledge that in any way, shape or form.
“Spare me the analysis and tell me what you want to do,” Baron says at last.
“I want Orlov,” I say. “Direct. No middlemen. She’s the hinge. The cameras don’t loop for free, and Barlow doesn’t swallow a van without a friend on the board.”
“Regina has a club in Mayfair,” Baron says. “She keeps her quiet meetings there. She thinks it’s invisible because the members are louder than the paper trail.”
“Name.”
“The Ashlar.”
Pretentious. Discreet. Expensive.
“I’ll go,” I say, already thinking through entry points.
“And the girl?”
“Here,” I say. “Under rules I agreed to.”
I don’t add that the rules are hers. He doesn’t need that ammunition.
“You made her a shield, day one.” His tone is ice under velvet. “That makes her a target twice over.”
“She already was. I just moved the target where I can see it.”
He goes quiet. When he speaks again, it’s the voice he uses when he’s two moves away from violence.
“You’ve started a noise. Finish it.”
“I have every intention of doing so.”
“See that you do.” The line clicks dead.
I stare at the dead screen for a beat after he hangs up, then pocket the phone and roll my wrist until the knuckleduster kisses my palm. Cool metal. Clean appetite.
The Ashlar.
I type a message to Kirill to map a clean entry route with exits mapped.
Laughter drifts down the hall. Female, bright. It cuts across the house like a shard of glass catching the sun.
I don’t move toward it.
I keep my arse in the chair and make myself read the dossier on an arms deal going down in two days, then read it again, then again, like repetition is discipline and not avoidance.
A soft knock on the doorframe pulls my head up.
Lidiya steps in.
She is wearing black leggings and an oversized black tee, but the designer kind that looks thrown on despite the hefty price tag. She is holding two white boutique bags in each hand.
“Done,” she says.
“That was quick.”
“I’m not fussy.”
“Did you get everything you need?”
She nods and averts her eyes.
“Underwear?” I press, just to see her blush. It’s fucking adorable, and it annoys me that it is.
“Yes,” she hisses and spins, loose hair flicking around her shoulders. “I’m going upstairs.”
“Aren’t you going to show me?”
“My underwear?” she asks, not turning around.
“Well, I wouldn’t say no, but I meant the rest.”
She half-turns, gives me a look that would fell a lesser man, mutters something filthy in Russian, then lifts one bag and rattles tissue paper at me like a warning before she disappears.
I let the smile drop the second she’s gone.
Not because she isn’t funny.
Because the house feels wrong when she’s out of sight.
I stand, walk to the hall, and watch the cameras on the security monitor until I see her enter the bedroom. Only then do I let myself breathe.
Control. That’s what keeps people alive.
Not luck.
Not love.
Kirill doesn’t knock when he comes into my office. He never does. He reads the air and enters like smoke.
“Alisha Johnson.”
“Talk,” I say.
He takes one look at my face and doesn’t waste words.
“It’s a working name,” he says. “Not her legal identity. Café records are thin, cash tips, nothing properly traceable. The phone number she gave them is a burner. The address is a mail-drop. Socials are curated—polished enough to be real, clean enough to be fake.”
My jaw tightens. “So she planned this.”
“She planned being unfindable,” Kirill corrects, like I’m a child and he’s teaching me the difference between a knife and a gun. “Whether she planned this—the auction—I can’t say yet.”
I lean my hip to the desk, knuckleduster heavy in my hand. “How long?”
Kirill’s mouth twitches, humourless. “If she’s protected, the trails will be booby-trapped. But she made one mistake.”
“Which is.”
“She served coffee. People talk. Someone saw something. Someone knows her real name, even if they don’t realise they know it.”
I keep my impatience on a leash.
“Timeline,” I say.
“By tomorrow before noon,” he says. “I’ll have her. Real name, family, residence.”
“Good.”
Kirill watches me for a beat. “You were going to take her there today.”
It’s not a question.
“I was,” I admit.
“And now?”
“Now we wait,” I say, and the words taste like blood. “We close the doors. We don’t chase a shadow into Mayfair on a Saturday with her in the car.”
Kirill’s gaze flicks, briefly, toward the corridor. “She’s in the house. You’re restless.”
“I’m always restless.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
I don’t answer.
Because he’s right.
I don’t like her being out of my sight, and I like that fact even less.
“Security stays doubled,” I tell him. “No one gets within thirty metres of the property without my permission.”
“Already done.”
“And if we get movement tonight? If they try again?”
Kirill’s eyes go flat. “Then you’ll have bodies to stack.”
“Good,” I say, and it comes out too soft.
He tilts his head. “You want me to tell her anything?”
“No,” I say. Then, after a beat, because rule three matters even when it’s inconvenient: “You don’t speak to her.”
Kirill gives a short nod and disappears as quickly as he arrived.
I stare at the door he left through until my pulse settles back into something resembling calm.
Then I go find her.
Upstairs, she’s in the bedroom, barefoot and gorgeous.
She looks up when I enter, and for a second, her expression is pure defiance.
Then it flickers to something else. Something more dangerous because it’s quieter.
“What now?” she asks.
“Now you eat,” I say.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’re lying.”
Her nostrils flare. “I’m not—”
“You’re running on adrenaline. You’ll crash. I don’t want you crashing.”
Her eyes sharpen on that. “You don’t want me crashing,” she repeats, voice careful, as if she’s testing the shape of the sentence in her mouth.
“Eat,” I say again, and make my tone less commanding, more factual. “Then you sleep.”
She laughs once. It’s not humour. It’s disbelief.
“And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” I say, “Kirill gives me the real last name of Alisha.”
Her posture shifts. “You don’t know?”
I don’t like giving her anything that makes me look less than omniscient. But she asked, and she has rules, and I agreed.
“She gave a fake identity at the café,” I say. “Kirill will have the truth by tomorrow.”
A slow exhale leaves her. Not relief. Something harsher.
She watches me for a beat, then looks away. “What are you feeding me?”
“Soup. Bread. Tea.”
“I’m not a child.”