Chapter 012 Viktor
The man on his knees weeps openly, and still all I taste is Isabella’s mouth. I have not yet decided whether Artem Semenov will keep his tongue.
Artem. Forty-three. Wife, two children. Eight months of skimming from gun shipments. I have known for seven.
Four captains sit rigid around the long table, the air heavy with the sour stink of fear and the sharp bite of their cologne. Artem’s hands are zip-tied behind his back; his face is already swollen from the ride here. Blood scents the room, metallic and warm, yet it cannot overwrite the ghost of her on my tongue.
“Eight months, Artem.” My voice is quiet. They always lean in when I speak softly. “You have been stealing from me.”
“Please.” His voice cracks. “I have children.”
“You should have remembered them before you put your hand in my pocket.”
The knife leaves my belt with a whisper. I test the edge against my thumb—sharp enough to kiss skin and open it without resistance. I crouch in front of him, forcing his right hand flat to the floor. The hand that signed every false manifest.
“It is about trust,” I tell him. “You broke mine.”
The memory strikes like a blade between the ribs: Isabella on her knees this morning, mascara streaking her cheeks, lips stretched around me, that deliberate moan vibrating straight through my spine. Heat surges low in my gut; I am half-hard before I can stop it.
I blink the image away.
The knife goes through bone with almost no resistance. Index finger first. Artem’s scream ricochets off the walls. Blood arcs hot across the polished hardwood. Middle finger next. Another scream, thinner now, as if the sound itself is bleeding out.
I wipe the blade on his shirt and rise.
“Remove him. If he returns to Chicago, I take the rest one piece at a time.”
The guards haul him out. His blood leaves a bright trail across my floor.
The captains remain frozen.
“Productive morning.”
The voice slides from the shadowed corner like expensive vodka over ice. Kazimir steps into the light. Tall, lean, hair slicked back, cheekbones sharp enough to cut. The temperature in the room drops.
My cousin. The only man in this city who could name my weakness and still breathe.
“Kuzmin,” I say. I return the knife to my belt. “I was not told you were in Chicago.”
“I arrived last night.” He takes a seat uninvited; the leather sighs beneath him. “I thought I would see how the Moretti situation progresses.”
The captains exchange glances. They sense the storm.
“Imagine my surprise,” Kazimir continues, studying his nails, “when I discover she still draws breath.”
“The Moretti woman is my affair.”
“Is she?” His pale eyes lift to mine. “Word is she has lived under your roof a full week. Eats your food. Wears dresses you chose. Appears at galas on your arm.”
He leans forward. I smell his cologne—cedar and tobacco.
“The men talk, Alyosha. They say the girl has you thinking with your cock instead of your head.”
One captain sucks in a breath. No one speaks to me like this.
Except blood.
I move before thought. One moment I stand beside the table; the next Kazimir’s back meets the wall hard enough to rattle Dimitri’s landscape painting. My hand closes around his throat. His pulse flutters fast beneath my palm.
“Repeat that.”
He smiles even as I crush his windpipe. “Did I strike a nerve?”
“She is mine to handle.” The words tear out of me. “Mine. Not yours. Not the men’s. Mine.”
“Understood.” His voice rasps. “But if you cannot finish what must be done, someone else will. For Misha.”
I release him before the urge to snap his neck becomes irreversible.
Kazimir straightens his collar with deliberate calm. “Consider it, cousin. Every day she lives, you appear weaker. And weak men do not last long in our world.”
He leaves. The silence he leaves behind is louder than Artem’s screams.
The captains file out without a word. I remain alone with the blood drying on the table and Kazimir’s warning circling like smoke.
My phone vibrates. Moscow exchange.
“Alyosha.”
Katya’s voice is thin, brittle.
“How is she?”
“Days. Perhaps a week.” A pause filled with swallowing. “She keeps asking for you. And for Misha.”
Always Misha.
“I cannot come yet.”
“I know. The girl.” Frustration edges her grief. “You have had her seven days, Viktor. Mama wants to know her son is avenged before she dies. Can you promise her that?”
The truth is acid in my throat: I cannot.
“Soon.”
“You always say soon.” Her voice fractures. “I sit here watching her fade, and she asks if Misha can rest now. What do I tell her?”
“Tell her I am handling it.”
“Are you?”
I end the call. Press the heels of my hands against my eyes until sparks bloom.
What have you done to me, Isabella Moretti?
The memory returns unbidden—her mouth hot and defiant, taking punishment and turning it into something that felt disturbingly like worship. My cock stirs again, painful against my zipper. I grip the table edge until the wood creaks.
This is why I must keep her close. Not for surveillance. For possession. Complete, consuming possession before I ruin us both.
I find Maksim in the security office, banks of monitors glowing blue in the dark.
“The Moretti woman,” I say. “Move her.”
He turns, face carefully neutral. “Where to, sir?”
“My quarters.”
The silence is absolute.
“Your personal quarters?”
“Tonight. Before dinner.”
“Sir, the men—”
“The men will obey.” Ice coats every syllable. “She escaped again last night. Met her brother. I will not monitor her from down the hall.”
“There are other solutions.”
“I did not ask for opinions.”
“No, sir.”
I walk the corridor to my quarters alone. The distance feels endless tonight. My hand trembles—barely—when I reach for the handle.
No one has entered this room but me in five years.
The space opens like a confession. California king bed, sheets black and tucked with military precision. Bare walls save for Dimitri’s landscape—bold strokes, violent color—at sixteen. He gifted it to me that last Christmas.
I move through slowly, seeing it through her eyes. The bed dominates like a threat. On the dresser, the bonsai I have shaped for three years, every branch bent by my patience.
My fingers brush the top drawer. Inside, wrapped in black satin, the Makarov that killed my father’s murderer. She could find it. She could use it.
I leave it.
The closet: suits in perfect rows. Everything ordered. She will disrupt it simply by existing here. Her scent will seep into fabric and wood until I drown in it every night.
The bathroom next. Black marble, glass shower. I grip the sink, meet my own reflection. Shadows under my eyes. When did I last sleep without dreaming of her?
I strip and step under scalding water. It should burn away the morning, but memory returns sharper: her on her knees, tears tracking mascara, throat working around me while her eyes burned defiance. My cock hardens instantly. My hand moves before thought, closing around myself.
No.
I need control when she arrives.
I shut the water off, dress in black slacks and white shirt. Buttons tremble beneath my fingers. When did I become this man—shaking with anticipation for the woman I should have killed a week ago?
Back in the bedroom I scan for vulnerabilities. The photograph on the nightstand: me, Dimitri, Mother at his eighteenth birthday. He wears the watch I gave him, grinning like the world was his.
I should hide it.
Instead I angle it toward the bed. Let her see what her family stole. Let it poison the air she breathes.
The knife collection remains in its drawer.
Windows: bulletproof, no exterior access. Only one exit—past guards, past me.
A knock. “Sir, we are ready to move the prisoner.”
Prisoner. The word no longer fits.
“Five minutes.”
I stand in the center of the room and force my pulse to slow. In five minutes Isabella Moretti will cross this threshold. She will touch what is mine with those lethal hands. She will learn the shape of my solitude.
The bonsai draws me again. Three years of careful cuts, controlled destruction to create beauty. My original plan for her.
But she is not a tree. She is the storm.
I take the small shears, make one precise cut to a wayward branch. My hands are steady now. The ritual anchors me.
Revenge. Justice. Blood for blood.
Yet here I am arranging my bedroom like a bridegroom awaiting his doom.
The thought pulls a bitter laugh from my chest. Dimitri would have mocked me mercilessly—his ruthless brother undone by the very woman who helped kill him.
I set the shears down and move to the door.
Evening settles heavy outside the windows. I wait in the corridor, pulse drumming against my ribs.
The guards appear, flanking her. Another cotton dress—altered, waist nipped, hem raised. Even in rags she looks untouchable.
She sees me and stops.
“Problem?”
“Just admiring the upgrade.” That razor edge in her voice that inflames and enrages me in equal measure. “Should I feel flattered or alarmed?”
“You should be silent.”
But her gaze dissects me, searching for the trap. The guards shift, uncomfortable in the charged air between us.
They bring her to my door. She pauses on the threshold, one hand resting lightly on the frame as if claiming territory. The small gesture sends blood rushing south; one guard notices and quickly looks away.
“Your new cage,” I say, voice rougher than I intend.
She turns. I brace for sarcasm, for challenge.
Instead something unreadable flickers across her face. Recognition, perhaps, of what this surrender truly costs me.
She holds my stare for a breathless eternity. My body reacts without permission—muscles tightening, breath shallow, heat coiling low. The guards practically vibrate with the need to escape the tension.
Then she steps inside.
Her fingers trail along the doorframe as she crosses the threshold, a deliberate, possessive touch that nearly buckles my knees.
The guards retreat. The door closes with a soft click.
I remain in the corridor, palm braced against the wall, heart slamming against bone. Behind that door she moves—soft footsteps on hardwood, pauses as she discovers the photograph, the bonsai, perhaps the sheets that will soon carry both our scents.
Each small sound is exquisite torture.
Welcome to the wolf’s den, kotyonok.
The thought should taste of triumph.
Instead I stand here trembling with hunger and fury and something far more dangerous, wondering which of us has truly walked into the trap.