Chapter 22
Ivan
I opened the door before he knocked. That did not improve his mood.
Maxim stood in the hall in a dark suit, calm as a funeral and twice as warm.
Nikolai took up most of the space behind him, shoulders broad enough to make the corridor look badly designed.
Aleksei stood slightly to one side, elegant and unreadable, his eyes already moving over the camera placement, the doorframe, the sightlines.
Sergei was last, as usual, because Sergei preferred to see what everyone else missed.
His gaze flicked once to me.
Then past me.
To Kit.
She sat at my desk with Daniel’s file to her left, her laptop open, and my monitors showing the Orlov movement we had triggered.
She had not stood when the door opened. I liked that.
She did not rush to pay respect to men who had not yet earned anything from her.
She only turned her chair enough to see them, one hand resting near her coffee, the other near the cracked blue folder that had become the center of the room.
Her face was calm. Too calm, perhaps, for anyone who did not know her.
I knew her. There was fury under that stillness. Grief. Exhaustion. The hard edge of a woman who had spent seven years waiting for the truth and had no intention of being pushed aside by four dangerous men in expensive coats.
I stepped back. “Come in.”
Maxim entered first and his eyes moved over the apartment once.
He did not miss the blanket folded at the end of the couch.
He did not miss her bag near my bedroom door.
He did not miss the pen on the desk between our workstations, though he could not know why that small blue object mattered enough to feel like a loaded gun.
My eldest brother missed very little.
Nikolai came in behind him and looked at Kit with undisguised curiosity. “So you’re the one making Ivan act like he has a soul.”
“Nikolai,” Maxim said.
“What? It’s a compliment.”
“It was not,” Aleksei murmured.
Kit looked at Nikolai for two seconds. “Are you always the emotional support noise?”
Nikolai blinked. Then he grinned. Sergei’s mouth moved, barely. Aleksei looked delighted. Maxim did not.
Good. He was not here to be charmed.
He was here to decide whether the woman under my roof was a liability, an asset, or a threat that needed to be moved out of Morozov space before my judgment compromised the family further.
I did not let myself step between them.
That was harder than it should have been. Kit did not need me to shield her from questions. If I did, Maxim would see only my claim on her, not her value. Worse, she would see it too and hate me for reducing her to someone that needed protection before she had a chance to prove she was dangerous.
So I stood beside the desk, close enough to intervene if necessary, far enough that she owned her answers.
Maxim faced her and cleared his throat.
“Kit Calloway.”
“Yes.”
“I am Maxim Morozov.”
“I know who you are.”
That earned a faint lift of his brow. “Do you?”
“I know what matters right now.”
Nikolai made a low sound that was almost a laugh.
Maxim ignored him. “And what matters today?”
“That Mikhail Orlov is moving assets because the timed release scared him, but not enough to make him stand down.”
Maxim’s expression flickered the tiniest bit. He had expected fear, perhaps. Anger. A civilian’s demand for justice dressed up as strategy. Kit gave him her courage instead.
Good girl.
I kept that thought off my face with a maximum amount of effort.
Maxim took one step closer to the desk. “I have three questions.”
Kit nodded once. “Ask them.”
Maxim looked at the center monitor. “What is the highest-value Orlov exposure in the release?”
“The authorization chain ties Mikhail to a historical murder through an operational structure he still uses. That makes it reputational, criminal, and political exposure at once.”
Maxim’s gaze stayed on Kit. “Second. If Mikhail wants to collapse the evidence before the first seventy-two-hour cycle matures, what does he target?”
“The people before the paper trail.”
Nikolai’s grin faded.
Kit reached for her coffee, took a sip, and set it down carefully.
“The paper trail is already duplicated. He knows that. If he is competent, he will assume the release packet has more than one copy and that killing me no longer solves it for him. So he targets anyone who can confirm context before they’re protected.
The port services signatory. The old bartender if he’s still alive.
The notary tied to the warehouse sublease.
Anyone whose memory turns documents into a story. ”
Maxim remained silent. Sergei, still near the wall, unfolded his arms.
Maxim said, “Third. What does he move first?”
“Not cash.”
This time Maxim’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Kit leaned forward and tapped one open document with two fingers.
“Cash movement is visible, and he knows Ivan is watching. He’ll remove access.
He’ll use lower-value assets to create noise and shift the thing that proves continuity between Seaport Meridian and Meridian Harbor Services.
” She paused. Then said, “Specifically, he’ll move the warehouse trust.”
There was a silence.
I had known that answer, but I had not told her. She had found it between the lines sometime in the last hour, while sleep-starved, grieving, and furious with me.
Watching her do it was the most attractive thing I had ever seen, and I had the self-control to keep that entirely off my face.
Maxim looked at me then.
I did not hide my satisfaction.
Yes, my expression said. Now you see her.
Kit moved the mouse and pulled a side document onto the monitor.
“You were going to ask about the trust after the three questions,” she said.
“You don’t need to. I already found the current trustee.
The name on paper is useless. The actual control sits with a shell tied to a man called Viktor Sokolov.
He isn’t in the release packet yet because I didn’t know whether he mattered until Mikhail started moving around him. ”
Maxim’s attention snapped back to the screen.
She had just given him the fourth piece he did not know he needed.
Aleksei crossed to the side of the desk and looked over the document, careful not to crowd her. “Sokolov. I know that name.”
“You should,” Sergei said from the wall. “He handled two Orlov property transfers in Chelsea five years ago.”
Kit glanced at him. “Three.”
Sergei looked at her.
She turned the monitor slightly. “The third one was hidden inside a failed restaurant group. Badly, honestly.”
For one full second, no one spoke.
Then Nikolai laughed. “I like her.”
Maxim did not laugh, but something in his face warmed just a little.
“Sergei,” Maxim said.
Sergei’s gaze remained on Kit. “She’s better than the last three analysts we hired by a longshot.”
“That she is.”
The words came out before I considered whether they were wise. They were not, but they were true. Kit looked at me then, briefly, her eyes lighting up.
Maxim exhaled slowly through his nose. “Morozov resources are approved.”
The room seemed to settle around that sentence.
Maxim continued, “Sergei will put protection on the witnesses. Aleksei will start pulling pressure on Sokolov’s paper trail. Nikolai will handle anyone Orlov sends physically.”
Nikolai cracked his knuckles. “Finally. A plan with emotional range.”
Aleksei adjusted one cuff. “Your emotional range begins and ends with property damage.”
“Not true. Sometimes I branch into threats.”
“Growth,” Kit said dryly.
Nikolai pointed at her. “See? She understands me.”
“I understand obvious systems,” Kit replied.
Aleksei coughed into his fist. Sergei looked down. Even Maxim’s mouth tightened like he had almost allowed amusement and resented everyone for it. Then he looked at me and the humor, faint as it was, vanished.
“This does not absolve you.”
“No,” I said.
“We will discuss what you withheld.”
“Yes.”
“But not now.”
“No.”
His gaze moved once to Kit. “You are under Morozov protection officially now.”
Kit’s expression did not change. “I’m under my own protection. You can supplement.”
Nikolai muttered, “God, she really is perfect for him.”
Maxim smirked. “Supplement, then.”
That was more concession than I expected.
Kit seemed to understand that. She nodded once. “Thank you.”
Maxim accepted the gratitude with the same grave suspicion he brought to most pleasant things. Then he turned toward the door.
The meeting was over because Maxim had decided it was over, and the rest of us had spent our lives learning the cost of making him repeat himself unnecessarily.
Aleksei paused beside Kit on the way out. “If you have the restaurant group records, send them to me.”
“I don’t have your contact.”
“You will.”
Nikolai leaned toward her as he passed. “If Ivan becomes unbearable, call me. I won’t help, but I’ll enjoy hearing about it.”
“He is already unbearable.”
“Excellent. You’re ahead of the game.”
Maxim gave me one final look at the door, his expression much warmer than I expected now. Sergei stayed behind, but only for a moment.
He stood in the doorway, one hand on the frame, and looked at Kit first, as if fitting her into a puzzle he hadn’t known existed. Then his gaze moved to me.
I expected a warning, reminder, or even a quiet statement that if I hurt her or compromised the family further, he would do something unpleasant and justified. Instead, he gave the smallest nod. Then, to my surprise, he smiled before he closed the door behind him and the apartment went quiet.
Kit and I remained where we were, separated by three monitors, Daniel’s file, one blue pen, and all the things we still had not said.
For once, I did not speak first.
Kit turned back to the screen, but her eyes did not focus. She was processing the room, my brothers, Maxim’s approval, as well as Sergei’s silent endorsement. She had just stood in front of the Morozov family and earned resources on merit while grieving a murder and planning a war.
There were a dozen things I wanted to tell her. That she had been magnificent. That Maxim did not approve easily. That Sergei’s smile was rarer than mercy. I said none of it.
A soft chime came from her phone. Kit looked down at the screen and her face went still.
Too still.
I moved before deciding to, crossing the distance just enough to see the message without reaching for her or the phone.
Walk away from the Morozovs. I won’t ask again.
It had to be Mikhail.
Her thumb did not shake. Her breathing did not shift.
Her face gave nothing away, but I had learned the places where her control became expensive.
The fine tension at the corner of her mouth.
The angle of her shoulders. The way her fingers rested lightly on the phone instead of gripping it because gripping would admit that the message had affected her.
She set the phone down on the desk very carefully.
“I’m not going to stand down,” she said.
“I know,” I said.
She looked at me. “We release it.”
“Not tonight.”
Her head turned slowly. There was fury ready there. Defiance. The same dangerous brightness that made her so difficult to protect and impossible not to want. I stepped closer, stopping just short of touching her. Her gaze dropped once to my hand. Then back to my face.
“Mikhail just threatened me,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And you want to wait.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Because if we released everything tonight, the war would become public before our people were in place.
Because Maxim needed time to move.
Because Sergei was already protecting witnesses.
Because the Orlovs had taken the bait, and another hour of movement would give us more than one dead man’s justice.
All of that was true, but none of it was the answer she needed most.
“Because we have done enough for one day,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed.
“And because,” I said, taking one step closer, “for tonight, he does not get you.”
Kit did not move.
Neither did I.
The phone sat on the desk with Mikhail’s message still glowing faintly.
Daniel’s file lay beside it. The city darkened beyond the windows, evening gathering itself in the glass.
My brothers had gone. Maxim had approved resources.
Mikhail Orlov had made the mistake of speaking directly to a woman who had already decided not to run.
Everything waited.
So did she.
I held her gaze and gave her the only answer I was willing to end the night on.
“Tonight is ours.”