Chapter Ten
Alexei’s POV
A few weeks passed by calmly. But it was the calm before the storm.
I knew this. I’d been in this business long enough to recognize the particular quality of silence that preceded violence—the way the air thickened, the way my instincts sharpened without conscious thought, the way small details that should have been meaningless suddenly felt significant.
Moretti was planning something. The intelligence we’d gathered suggested movement, whispers of shipments being redirected, men being repositioned like chess pieces across a board.
But the attacks had stopped. The subtle provocations, the “accidents” that were anything but—they’d ceased almost three weeks ago.
And that worried me more than the violence had.
Because men like Enzo Moretti didn’t just give up. They regrouped. They planned. They waited for the perfect moment to strike where it would hurt most.
Still, the past weeks had been… unexpectedly pleasant.
Mila had settled into the estate with a quiet determination that surprised me.
She didn’t cower or avoid my presence. Instead, she’d claimed spaces for herself—the library became her sanctuary, the garden her morning ritual.
She’d even started joining me for breakfast, and our conversations had evolved from careful and stilted to something that felt almost natural.
She asked me about shipping routes and customs regulations with the analytical mind of the forensic accountant she'd been, and I found myself explaining things I rarely discussed with anyone outside my inner circle.
She was learning my world, not running from it.
And at night…
At night, she came to me willingly, eagerly even, with a passion that still caught me off guard.
To think that the attraction we shared on the balcony at the party didn’t turn into repulsion after she was forced to marry me, that she saw me as someone worthy of access to every part of her.
Fuck, it clouded my mind with a kind of desire and tenderness I’d never felt before.
It made me want to please her in the best of ways, even if I had to learn.
The careful distance I’d planned to maintain had burned away entirely, replaced by something fierce and consuming that I still didn’t have a name for.
I just knew that when I touched her, something inside me that had been cold for years felt almost warm.
I’d even caught myself smiling at her across the breakfast table this morning—an unguarded expression that made Dimitri raise an eyebrow when he’d arrived with the reports.
The call woke me at 2:47 AM. My hand found my phone before my eyes fully opened—years of training meant I went from sleep to full alertness in seconds. Mila stirred beside me, a soft sound of confusion, and I gentled my voice when I answered.
“Yes.”
“Boss.” Dimitri’s voice was clipped, urgent. “The north warehouse. It’s burning.”
Fuck!
I was already out of bed, moving toward the closet with the efficiency of a man who’d done this countless times before. “Casualties?”
“Two guards, both alive but injured. Fire department’s on scene, but it’s bad. And boss—” Dimitri paused in a way that made my jaw tighten. “There’s a body. Hanging from the loading dock gate.”
Not just a warning, then. A message.
“Moretti?”
“His calling card was nailed to the man’s chest.”
“Of course it was,” I uttered. “I’m on my way. Keep things under control.”
I dressed quickly—tactical clothing, not a suit. This wasn’t a negotiation.
Behind me, Mila sat up, the sheet pooling around her waist, her hair a tangle of silk in the dim light.
“What’s wrong?” Her voice was sleep-rough but alert.
“Business.” I strapped on my shoulder holster and checked my weapon with automatic precision. “Stay inside. My men will be outside the door.”
“Alexei—”
I crossed back to the bed, cupped her face with one hand, and kissed her hard and fast. Not gentle. Not reassuring. Just claiming, the way a man marked what was his before walking into potential death. “I’ll be back. I promise.”
Then I was out of the room, my mind already shifting into the cold, tactical space where emotion became a liability and violence became mathematics.
**********
The warehouse was a blazing inferno when I arrived, flames licking fifty feet into the night sky and painting everything in shades of orange and red.
Fire trucks surrounded the building, their hoses fighting a losing battle against the accelerant-fed blaze.
I could smell it from the street—gasoline, maybe kerosene.
This wasn’t an accident. This was arson, professional and thorough.
And expensive.
Dimitri met me at the perimeter, his eyes reflecting the flames.
“Status,” I demanded.
“Fire’s too hot to contain. We’ll lose the whole structure,” he divulged, gesturing towards the loading dock, where something dark swayed in the superheated air. “Body’s still up. Fire department won’t let us take it down until the area’s secure.”
My gaze locked on the silhouette. Even from this distance, even through the smoke and flames, I could make out the shape of a man hanging by his neck, arms bound behind his back.
The calling card Dimitri mentioned was practically visible too—a piece of white paper that stood out starkly against the dark clothing.
I didn’t need to see it up close to know what it would say. Moretti had a signature style: a single sentence in Italian, always the same. Il sangue richiede sangue. Blood demands blood.
“The guards who survived,” I said, my voice flat and emotionless. “Where are they?”
“Hospital. One has third-degree burns, the other took a bullet to the shoulder. Both are talking.”
“And what are they saying?”
Kirill stepped forward, his expression grim. “Four men. Professionals. They hit fast—cut the power, took out communications, then set the charges. The hanging came first, though. They wanted the guards to see it. To run and spread the word.”
Psychological warfare. Enzo was trying to destabilize them, make their people question whether the Lobanovs could protect them. I would have admitted that it was effective had I not trained my men better than that.
“What was in the warehouse?” I questioned. Mila’s voice echoed in my memory—her questions about shipping routes and inventory management, asked with genuine curiosity over breakfast just yesterday.
“Mostly legitimate goods,” Dimitri answered. “Electronics, some luxury items waiting for customs clearance. But—”
“But?” I prompted.
“There were three containers in the back. The ones from Rotterdam that we redirected after Ruslan attempted to skim still haven’t been fully processed.”
My eyes narrowed. “And what’s in them?”
“According to the manifest, industrial parts. But in—”
“They’re weapons,” I finished the sentence, my mind already calculating losses and implications. Those containers held a shipment of modified firearms destined for contacts in Eastern Europe—untraceable, highly profitable, and highly illegal. “Moretti knew.”
“Seems that way,” Dimitri agreed. Kirill nodded in affirmation.
Which meant we had a leak. Someone under me had given Enzo specific intelligence about which warehouse to hit and when.
The rage that spiked through me was clean and sharp, surgical in its precision.
Not the hot, wild fury of impulse, but the cold calculation of a man who understood exactly how to make someone pay.
“Find the leak,” I said quietly. “I don’t care how long it takes. Find them, and bring them to me alive.”
Dimitri nodded once, already pulling out his phone to start the hunt.
I turned my attention back to the burning warehouse, watching millions of rubles and irreplaceable inventory turn to ash. The loss stung, but losses could be recouped. What mattered more was the message Moretti was sending: I can touch you. I can hurt you. And I’m just getting started.
I spent the next three hours on-site, coordinating with fire officials, arranging for the body to be taken down and examined, and issuing orders with a practiced calm that I could feel terrified everyone around me.
The colder I got, the more dangerous everyone knew I was.
It was one of my most useful weapons—the ability to strip away all emotion and become pure calculation.
Men feared the rage of hotheads. But they were absolutely terrified of a man who smiled while deciding how you’d die.
By the time the fire was contained—the warehouse a smoking ruin, the body bagged and sent for autopsy, the guards’ statements recorded—dawn was beginning to break over the city. I was giving final instructions to Roman about increasing security at their other facilities when my phone rang.
Anya.
My sister had no reason to call me at dawn. Unless something was wrong.
“What is it?” I didn’t bother with pleasantries.
“It’s Mila,” she answered, her voice laced with worry.
Everything came to a halt.
“She fainted. We’ve called the doctor, but Alexei, I don’t… I don’t know—”
“I’m on my way.” I was already moving before I clicked on the red icon.
The image of a lifeless Mila made my chest tighten. For the first time in years, something cut through the steel of my composure.
Is this what fear feels like?
Pure, primal fear that had nothing to do with business or empires or blood debts, and everything to do with a woman with hazel eyes who’d somehow become the center of my entire world without me realizing it was happening.
The drive back to the estate took twenty-three minutes. I knew because I fucking counted every single one.
I found Mila in our bedroom, pale as death and drenched in sweat, with Anya sitting beside her and holding her hand like a lifeline. Dr. Volkov—one of the Lobanov family’s personal physicians—was taking her pulse, his weathered face creased with concentration.