Chapter 10 Kiren #2
Which means one of two things. She’s alive somewhere else, or she’s valuable enough that he wants me to believe she is.
“Proof,” I instruct.
Ivan’s mouth curves slightly. “Straight to business.”
“You brought me to an empty warehouse in the middle of the night. Don’t act surprised.”
He studies me for a moment, as if checking whether the calm in my voice is real or performed. Then he laughs softly and reaches into his coat. Every gun in the room is suddenly more present. None of his men moves, but the room changes around the motion.
Ivan withdraws a phone. He taps the screen once and turns it toward me from where he stands. A live feed fills the display. Rowan is seated on a narrow cot under harsh fluorescent light, her hair pulled back, and her face pale but unmistakably hers.
Alive.
I take one step forward without meaning to. Ivan lowers the phone again.
“That’s the only free step you get,” he murmurs.
I force myself to stay where I am. The image stays with me anyway.
Rowan’s face. The way her shoulders are set, trying to hold herself together.
The room behind her comes back piece by piece as my mind replays it.
A concrete wall, a vent near the ceiling, and a roll of bandages sitting on a small table in the corner.
Lila is partly cut out of the frame, but there’s enough to see dark hair and one arm pressed against her side.
Lila is there with her. And she’s injured.
Ivan sees the change in my expression and smiles a little more openly now, pleased with himself.
“You understand,” he remarks, “why I asked you to come alone.”
I meet his eyes. “I understand that you want me here for a reason.”
“Yes,” Ivan replies. “And we’re finally close enough for you to hear it.”
He studies me with the quiet patience of a man who believes the next few minutes belong entirely to him. The industrial lights overhead give off a faint electrical hum that blends with the distant clatter of a train somewhere out in the yard and the slow mechanical sounds of the building.
I keep my attention on him. Not the men stationed behind the crate rows.
Not the staircase along the far wall. Not the loading doors that could open or close in a heartbeat if someone outside decides the conversation has gone on long enough.
My focus stays on Ivan. If the room turns violent, everything will pivot around him.
“You’ve seen enough to know she’s alive,” he remarks, slipping the phone back into the inside pocket of his coat with an easy motion. “That should make this conversation easier.”
My hands remain loose at my sides while I watch him. “Then stop wasting time, mudak.”
A faint smile touches his mouth, as if the bluntness genuinely entertains him. “Direct as always.”
“Where is she?”
Ivan tilts his head, studying my face as though the answer to that question matters less than the way I chose to ask it. His gaze lingers there a moment before moving to the open stretch of warehouse floor between us.
“You walked through this yard already,” he remarks casually. “That’s the interesting part.”
I let the statement sit in the air without answering.
“You were close,” he continues, adjusting his stance as he studies me. “Closer than you realized.”
That lines up far too well with the suspicion that has been circling in my mind since I read the note.
“She’s in the train yard,” I reply.
Ivan spreads his hands, acknowledging the deduction with a relaxed shrug. “It’s convenient.”
“It’s temporary.”
“Everything is temporary,” he states flatly.
“You delivered Arkady’s body to my gate,” I remark, keeping my eyes on him.
“Yes.”
“Which means this isn’t about him anymore.”
Ivan’s smile fades. “It was never about him.”
Something in the tone of that sentence changes. Arkady mattered only as long as he believed he was building something larger. Now he doesn’t matter at all.
“You used him,” I say.
Ivan shrugs, brushing an invisible speck from the sleeve of his coat before letting his hand drop again. “Arkady believed he was building something. I allowed that belief to exist as long as it served its purpose.”
“And when it stopped serving you?”
“I ended it.”
The admission comes without apology. I glance once toward the loading doors before looking back at him. “And now you think you’ve replaced him.”
Ivan chuckles quietly. “You’re jumping ahead.”
“I’m listening.”
“Good,” he replies, folding his arms loosely across his chest. “Because this part actually matters.”
He takes a half-step to the side. The movement changes the angle of the overhead light across his face, leaving one side of it partially shadowed.
“You’ve spent years building your reputation,” he continues. “Men talk about the Sovarin name like it’s something important. Like the power behind it belongs to you by default.”
“It belongs to the men who enforce it.”
“Yes,” Ivan replies, his tone almost conversational. “And to the men who understand where power actually comes from.”
He pauses, then he adds quietly, “Which is where Lila comes in.”
He watches my face closely after saying it. I don’t react outwardly, though several pieces of the situation begin sliding into place at once.
“You recruited her,” I remark.
“I didn’t recruit her.”
“Then explain why she’s part of this.”
He pauses for a few seconds. “Because Lila happens to be my sister.”
For a heartbeat, the background sounds of the warehouse seem distant.
“Sister,” I repeat.
“Half-sister,” Ivan corrects, lifting one shoulder slightly. “Same father, different mother.”
I lean slightly onto my rear foot while considering the claim. “That’s convenient.”
“Truth rarely arrives at convenient times.”
“How long have you known?” I probe.
Ivan’s smile returns, slower this time. “Years.”
“And you waited until now to reach out?”
“Timing matters,” he replies.
The explanation fits the way Lila was pulled into this situation almost perfectly, calculated and delayed, planned long before Rowan ever stepped into the picture.
“You used her,” I remark while studying him from across the warehouse floor.
“I used an opportunity.”
I tilt my head a fraction, watching the way his men hold their positions along the crate line. “Which required manipulating her brother.”
Ivan doesn’t bother denying that part.
“Her brother was easy,” he replies. “Men with gambling debts usually are.”
My fingers tap once against my forearm before I lower my arms again and meet his eyes. “You planned that.”
Ivan’s mouth curves. “Let’s call it preparation.”
“You dragged Rowan into it.”
“I didn’t drag anyone,” he replies calmly. “Rowan stepped into the situation because she chose to protect someone she cares about.” He watches me more closely now. “You, for example.”
I hold his eyes. “You’re not nearly as clever as you think.”
Ivan laughs softly. “That may be true,” he replies, spreading his hands slightly. “But tonight, you’re standing in a warehouse exactly where I asked you to stand, and the woman you love is exactly where I want her.”
The satisfaction in his voice is impossible to miss. I ignore it.
“What happened to your father?” I ask.
The change in subject is enough to draw his attention. “Interesting question.”
“You mentioned him.”
Ivan’s expression becomes more serious now. “My father worked for the Volkov family,” he replies. “He moved between cities whenever they needed something handled. Moscow. St. Petersburg. Rostov. Sometimes smaller places that barely exist on most maps.”
His tone carries no affection when he speaks about him.
“He had a habit of leaving things behind when he moved,” Ivan continues. “Money problems. Enemies. Women.”
“Children,” I add.
“Yes,” he agrees calmly. “Children.”
“My father was killed when I was seventeen,” Ivan goes on. “A disagreement with the wrong man in the wrong city.”
“And that left you alone.”
“For a while,” he confirms, his eyes returning to mine. “Until someone noticed the situation and decided I might be useful.”
Someone.
“You found a mentor,” I note.
Ivan lets out a quiet breath through his nose. “Something like that.”
“Who?”
Ivan studies me for several long seconds. “You’re impatient tonight.”
“Rowan is waiting.”
“Yes,” he agrees quietly. “She is.”
The reminder finds the mark.
“And the child,” he adds.
The words change the air in the room more than anything he has said so far.
“She only learned recently,” he continues, studying me now with open curiosity. “The timing surprised me as well.”
A slow pressure builds behind my ribs that has nothing to do with anger and everything to do with the live feed he showed me earlier. I glance once toward the far end of the warehouse, where the shadows between the crate rows deepen.
“What exactly is it going to take for you to get to the point?”
Ivan folds his arms loosely across his chest again. “I want you to understand something,” he replies.
“Which is?”
“That the world you built around the Sovarin name isn’t as stable as you believe.”
I hold his gaze. “You think you can take it?”
“I don’t think I can,” Ivan says quietly. He pauses, then adds, “I know I can.”
The confidence in his voice doesn’t come from arrogance alone. It comes from something else. Something that has been hovering just beyond reach since the conversation began.
“You didn’t build this alone.” I flex my fingers once before letting them fall still again.
Ivan’s smile deepens. “Now you’re paying attention.”
I study him more carefully now, replaying the pieces of his story.
Father was killed when he was seventeen. Someone powerful stepped in afterward and taught him patience. Taught him how to dismantle an enemy slowly enough that the collapse looks like a coincidence.
“You’ve been planning this for a long time,” I observe.
Ivan nods once. “Yes.”
“And Arkady was only a step along the way.”
“Exactly.”