Chapter 7 Rowan #2
Ivan doesn’t respond right away, and the delay stretches long enough that my skin prickles. The building feels enormous and hollow around us, every corridor carrying the possibility of violence.
When Ivan answers, his voice is still calm, but something colder has slipped into it. “I know exactly where I stand,” he answers. “That’s why I’ve been moving.”
Arkady’s footsteps scrape across concrete again, quick and uneven with irritation, and then he’s closer to our door, close enough that I can hear the change in his breathing, and the slight roughness in it.
“And the girls,” Arkady snaps, the words turning sharp as his attention shifts. “You remember who they belong to, yes?”
Lila’s shoulders tense beside me. Her eyes flick toward mine, panic bright and sudden.
I don’t move. I keep my face composed, my hands loose at my sides, even though every instinct in me wants to cover my abdomen and curl inward.
Ivan answers without raising his voice.
“I remember,” he says calmly.
Arkady lets out a short, humorless breath. “Good. Because you seem to be forgetting a great many things tonight.”
A pause follows, brief but charged with tension.
When Arkady speaks again, his voice has changed. It drops lower, harder somehow, with a quiet threat in it that makes the air in the room feel colder.
“You seem very interested in how they’re handled,” he remarks.
Lila’s breath hitches beside me, and I see her glance toward the door before her eyes return to mine, as if she wants to move but doesn’t know how without drawing attention through the walls.
“I’m making sure they remain usable,” Ivan answers.
Usable. Not safe, protected, or even alive. Just something to be kept functional.
Arkady lets out a short breath through his nose, something close to a laugh but without humor.
“You think that’s your decision to make?” he mutters. “Those girls are here because I decided they would be.”
Ivan doesn’t raise his voice. “That’s correct,” he answers calmly. “They’re not yours in the way you think.”
Lila flinches as if she’s been struck. Her hands lift, then drop again, her fingers trembling briefly before she forces them still by pressing them into her thighs.
I take one slow breath, then another, and try to keep my thoughts from fracturing into panic. If this escalates, we’re trapped behind a steel door with no exit, no way to run, and no way to hide. The only thing we can do is listen, remember, and survive the aftermath.
Arkady’s next words come out with an edge that makes my stomach clench.
“You’ve been moving because you’ve been planning,” he says, his voice low with accusation. “You expected Kiren to squeeze and you wanted to be somewhere else when it happened.”
“Yes,” Ivan says.
Lila’s eyes widen further, and she turns her head as if she might be sick.
Arkady’s footsteps stop. There’s a small sound, fabric rustling, maybe the slide of a coat sleeve, and my pulse spikes because I can’t see what he’s doing. The silence that follows feels wrong somehow, like the air has gone still around whatever decision he’s making.
“Rowan,” Lila whispers, the word trembling with panic, like saying my name might hold her together.
I cross the room in two quiet steps and take her wrist gently, not pulling, just connecting, my fingers firm enough to let her know she’s not alone. Her skin is cold.
Arkady’s tone hardens. “You’re not the one who gets to anticipate me.”
Ivan exhales once. I can hear it, a soft release of breath through his nose.
“I already did,” he replies coldly.
There’s a fraction of silence. Then movement. A sudden change in the air beyond the door, the scrape of a shoe against the floor, the sound of someone turning too quickly.
Lila’s fingers close around my hand, her nails biting into my skin.
“Stop,” Arkady orders, his voice cutting through the corridor.
For a moment, nothing happens.
Then Ivan speaks. “Put it down.”
Arkady laughs, but this time the sound is strained.
“You think you can order me?”
The gunshot explodes through the corridor, so loud in the enclosed space that it feels like it strikes the door and rebounds into the room.
Lila jerks beside me, a breath caught in her chest, and my body reacts before my mind does.
Every muscle locks. My hand flies instinctively toward my abdomen, as if I can shield what I can’t even see.
For a moment, everything goes quiet. There’s no shouting, no rush of movement, only the distant grind of the trains and the faint electrical hum somewhere above us.
Then something heavy hits the floor outside, the impact unmistakable as the vibration travels through the building and up into my feet.
Lila makes a sound that isn’t quite a sob and isn’t quite a gasp, her face going pale as she stares at the door as if she expects it to open and reveal the scene like a nightmare spilling into our room.
My mouth is dry, and my heart beats too hard. I force myself to breathe anyway, slow enough to keep the nausea from turning into something worse.
Then new voices appear in the corridor. Low and careful in a way that people use when they’re waiting to see what the man in charge will do next. Someone speaks quickly. Another voice answers.
Then Ivan speaks again. “Move him,” he instructs. “Now.”
The words are quiet, but the reaction is immediate. Boots start moving in the corridor, quick and purposeful, the movement of people who don’t need to argue or ask questions.
Lila’s lips part in shock. “He… he shot him,” she murmurs.
I don’t respond immediately, because if I speak, I might break. Instead, I press my fingers into Lila’s wrist, reminding both of us that we’re still here.
Outside, something drags slowly along the floor. I hear the scrape of fabric against the ground. It makes my stomach twist, and I swallow hard, a sour taste rising in the back of my throat.
Lila’s shoulders shudder. She lifts her free hand to her mouth again, pressing her knuckles against her lips so hard her skin pales.
“They’re going to…” Her voice breaks. She can’t finish.
I keep my voice low, careful, forcing control into it without pretending I feel it.
“Listen,” I whisper. “We need to listen.”
Because whatever comes next will matter, and the only advantage we have is that they forget we can hear them.
Outside, Ivan speaks again, and his voice is closer now, as if he’s moved down the corridor toward us.
“Arkady’s men,” he instructs calmly. “Separate them. Anyone who hesitates goes in another room.”
A deep voice answers, “Understood.”
Lila’s eyes meet mine, and terror flashes there, followed by realization.
“He’s taking control,” she whispers.
“Yes,” I breathe back, and the word feels like ice in my throat.
The corridor fills with movement. Doors open. Doors close. Orders echo down the hall. Boots pass our door again and again, each time a reminder that we’re trapped in the middle of a takeover.
Then footsteps stop outside our room, close enough that I feel the pause more than hear it. For a moment, everything seems to freeze. A key turns in the lock, the metal clicking softly, and Lila’s grip on my hand tightens until it hurts. The handle moves, and the door begins to open.
It opens slowly, and somehow that makes it worse.
If he had stormed in, if there had been shouting or visible adrenaline, I could have answered it with something fierce inside myself.
But Ivan steps into the room as if he’s stepping into his own office, completely at ease, his coat still buttoned neatly, his dark hair undisturbed as though nothing outside this door has changed the balance of the world.
The faint smell of gunpowder follows him in.
Lila goes rigid beside me.
He doesn’t look at her first. He looks at me. His eyes move over my face, my posture, and then lower briefly, not crudely and not openly, but long enough that I know exactly what he’s calculating.
I don’t move. I don’t fold in on myself. I keep my shoulders level even though my pulse is still echoing in my ears from the gunshot.
Only after that does he turn toward Lila. The change between them is immediate. There’s history in the space they share, but not the kind she thought she understood.
Her voice comes out rough, anger barely holding itself together over something deeper. “You used me.”
Ivan tilts his head slightly, as if considering the wording rather than the accusation itself.
“I offered you a solution,” he replies. “You accepted it.”
“That wasn’t a solution,” she snaps, taking a step toward him, before I catch her wrist and hold her back. “You told me you could fix Jonathan’s debt. You told me you had people who could handle it.”
“I do,” Ivan answers.
“Then why did they break his arm?” she fires back.
Something moves through his expression then, not remorse and not even irritation, but something closer to impatience.
“Because he continued to gamble,” Ivan says calmly. “Because your brother doesn’t understand restraint.”
Lila’s face drains. “You said it was handled.”
“It was contained,” Ivan corrects. “There’s a difference.”
She stares at him, shock widening her eyes. “You let them hurt him,” she whispers.
Ivan doesn’t deny it.
“He was a liability,” he says simply.
The bluntness of it hits the room like a dropped weight.
“You told me you were helping,” she says, and now the anger cracks, revealing the hurt beneath it. “You said you didn’t want me tied to men like them.”
Ivan’s eyes narrow slightly. “I don’t,” he replies.
“You are them!” she snaps.
For the first time, something changes in him. Not enough to break his composure, but enough that the accusation reaches somewhere personal.
“I’m not my father,” he says quietly.
The statement hits like glass shattering.
Lila goes completely still. “What did you just say?” she asks.
Ivan holds her gaze. “I’m not my father,” he repeats. “Our father.”
Her breathing slows, disbelief written across her face.