Chapter 17 #3
I'd been thinking about this since I'd traced the email. Through holding Auralia while she cried. Through making love to her in the dim light of my bedroom. Through the long hours of night when I couldn't sleep and could only plan.
"We use it against them." I pulled up the original email on the center screen. "Respond as Auralia. Accept the meeting. Express enthusiasm, gratitude—whatever Elena would expect from someone who just got her dream handed to her."
Konstantin's grin was savage. "And when they come to grab her—"
"We grab them instead."
Silence. Nikolai's stillness had shifted—calculating now, running scenarios. I could almost see the tactical assessment happening behind those grey eyes.
"Location?" he asked.
"Elena suggested a gallery in SoHo. Already scouted." I pulled up the floor plans I'd acquired that morning. "Back entrance, minimal windows, three exit points we can control. Plenty of space for our people to position without being obvious."
"Timing?"
"Tomorrow evening. Seven o'clock. Gives us twenty-two hours to prepare."
"Personnel?"
"Konstantin's best men." I nodded to my brother. "Plus us. All three of us. If Anton's sending an extraction team, I want overwhelming force."
Konstantin's grin widened. The scars on his face pulled tight with the expression—testament to years of violence survived. "Finally. Something to hit."
"And the women?" Nikolai's voice was careful. The question he'd been waiting to ask.
"Here. At the compound." I switched to the security overview I'd prepared. "Three layers. Perimeter guards on rotating shifts. Internal security at all access points. Maya's medical training means she can handle emergencies. Sophie knows the protocols."
I turned to look at both of them directly.
"Auralia stays with them. Behind three layers of security, with two women who've survived worse than waiting."
Nikolai's nod was slow. Approving. "Clean."
"Smart," Konstantin agreed. "They think they're hunting her. We set the trap."
"When they move on the gallery, we'll have people in position. The moment their team reveals itself—" I made a capturing gesture. "We take them. Interrogate. Find out exactly where Anton is running this operation from."
"And then?" Nikolai's voice was soft. Dangerous.
"Then we end it."
The words hung in the air. We all knew what ending it meant. Anton Belyaev had been a threat for too long—disrupting operations, testing boundaries, now targeting the people we loved. This wasn't business anymore. This was personal.
"I want whoever designed that website," I added. "Whoever wrote those fake reviews. Everyone who helped build this trap for Auralia—I want them."
Konstantin clapped a massive hand on my shoulder. The impact was jarring even through my shirt.
"We'll get them, little brother. Every last one."
I believed him. How could I not? Konstantin had never made a promise he didn't keep, especially when it involved violence in service of family.
We spent the next hour refining details.
Positions. Communications. Contingency plans for if things went sideways. The choreography of a counter-ambush—making the enemy think they were springing a trap while walking into ours.
By the time we finished, I felt something close to confidence.
The plan was clean. Every variable accounted for. Every weakness addressed. Anton's people would show up expecting a vulnerable artist; they'd find three Besharov brothers and a dozen armed men instead.
We had him.
Finally, after months of defensive positioning and careful watching, we had the initiative. Anton had overreached. His clever little trap had given us exactly what we needed to strike back.
Nikolai straightened from the tactical display. His face was still cold, but something satisfied lurked in his eyes.
T he Chelsea evening was too perfect.
That was my first thought as we approached the gallery—the wrongness of a mild autumn night, the kind of weather that made people linger on sidewalks and notice things they shouldn't.
Bad for an ambush. Good for witnesses. I pushed the observation aside.
We'd accounted for it. Positioned our people to blend with the evening crowd. Everything was in place.
The gallery sat at the end of a quiet block, its windows dark, its facade unremarkable. Elena Voss's chosen meeting place. The trap we were about to spring.
Nikolai materialized at my shoulder. He moved like smoke through the shadows, his presence more felt than seen. We exchanged a look—the communication of brothers who'd done this before, who knew each other's rhythms without needing words.
I nodded.
He nodded back.
Konstantin appeared from the opposite direction, massive even in the dim light, his men flowing into position behind him like water finding its level.
Twelve soldiers. Almost our entire force, concentrated here for exactly this moment.
Overwhelming odds against whatever extraction team Anton had sent.
The plan was clean. We'd take their people. Interrogate them. Find Anton.
End this.
"On your mark," Nikolai murmured.
I raised my hand. Counted the seconds. Felt my brothers beside me—Kostya's coiled violence, Nikolai's cold precision, my own calculated fury at what Anton had done to Auralia.
Three.
Two.
One.
"Go."
The door went down.
Kostya's boot connected with the handle, and the wood splintered inward with a sound like a gunshot. Our men flooded through the breach—tactical, controlled, the choreography of a team that had trained for exactly this. Flashlights swept the darkness. Voices called out positions.
"Clear left!"
"Clear right!"
"Moving to back room!"
I followed through the doorway, weapon drawn, every nerve singing with adrenaline. The gallery smelled like dust and fresh paint—the particular scent of a space that had been recently set up, recently prepared. For us. The thought flickered and disappeared.
"Back room clear!"
"Storage clear!"
"Fucking nothing here!"
The silence landed like a physical weight.
No extraction team. No Deshnev soldiers waiting in the shadows. No ambush, no confrontation, no enemy to capture and interrogate.
Just empty rooms. Bare walls. The stillness of a space that had never been intended to hold anything at all.
Wrong.
The word pulsed through my mind with growing urgency. Wrong, wrong, wrong. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. Anton's people should have been here. Should have walked into our counter-trap the way we'd planned.
Unless—
My phone buzzed.
The sound was obscene in the silence. A cheerful vibration against my thigh, the tone I'd set for unknown numbers. My hand moved automatically—pulling the phone free, looking at the screen.
Unknown number.
I answered.
"Did you really think I didn't know you'd trace Elena?"
Anton Belyaev's voice slithered through the speaker like something venomous. Smooth. Amused. The satisfaction of someone who had already won and was simply enjoying the aftermath.
"I was counting on it, Maksim. Counting on your clever little fox brain to figure it out and set your counter-trap."
Ice flooded my veins.
Not metaphorical ice. Real cold, the kind that came from blood draining toward vital organs, from the body recognizing mortal danger before the mind caught up. I felt it spread through my chest, down my arms, into fingers that had gone numb around the phone.
"While you and your brothers play soldiers in Chelsea—" Anton's voice was silk over broken glass. "I've been at your compound."
No.
The word was soundless. A scream that never made it past my throat.
"Well—not anymore." A pause. Theatrical. The bastard was enjoying this. "I've left. But I took something of yours with me."
The line went dead.
I was already running.
Through the empty gallery, past Nikolai's sharp "What?" and Kostya's confused growl. Out the door, into the Chelsea night that was still too perfect, still too mild, completely indifferent to what was happening.
"The compound!" I shouted. "He hit the fucking compound!"
Nikolai's face went white.
One second of frozen horror—the expression of a man who'd just realized his wife, his daughter, everything he loved was in danger. Then he was moving too, phone already at his ear, calling the guards who should have answered and weren't answering.
The drive was seven minutes.
Seven minutes of Kostya's driving—aggressive, reckless, the SUV taking corners at speeds that should have killed us. Seven minutes of Nikolai trying every number in rotation, getting voicemail, getting silence, getting nothing.
Seven minutes of knowing.
I knew before we arrived. Knew with the sick certainty of someone who'd seen the pattern, who understood exactly what Anton had done. The gallery was never the target. Auralia was never supposed to be at that meeting.
The meeting was the distraction.
We'd pulled almost everyone to Chelsea. Left the compound with minimal guards. And Anton—
The gates were open.
That was wrong. The gates were never open. Automated security, manual backup, the paranoia of a family that had survived by never leaving vulnerabilities.
Kostya didn't slow down. The SUV crashed through into chaos.
Bodies.
Two guards crumpled near the entrance, their positions suggesting they'd been hit fast, hit hard, never had a chance to sound an alarm. Blood pooled dark on the gravel, already going tacky in the evening air.
The front door stood ajar.
I was out of the vehicle before it stopped moving. Running again—through the entrance, into the foyer where I'd first brought Auralia to meet my family. The space was wrong. Furniture overturned. A lamp shattered on the floor. Signs of a struggle that hadn't been enough.
"Sophie!" Nikolai's voice was unrecognizable. Raw. The voice of a man whose control had finally, completely shattered. "SOPHIE!"
The nursery.
The thought came from somewhere primal—Katerina, the baby, they wouldn't have taken the baby—
But when I reached the nursery, it was empty.
The crib stood undisturbed. The stuffed animals lined up on their shelf. No baby. No sign of struggle here, which meant either they'd taken her or—
"She's with Mikhail." Nikolai's voice came from behind me. Hollow. "Sophie texted earlier. Said she was taking Katerina to see Dedushka at the secondary location."
Relief. Sharp and brief.
Then the rest of it crashed back.
"Maya was here," Kostya said. His voice had gone strange. Flat. The tone of someone dissociating from a reality too painful to process. "She was supposed to stay. Protect them."
I found myself in the living room.
The couch where Auralia had curled with Ghost. The spot where she'd nested while I traced emails in my office. Her book lay face-down on the floor, pages crumpled—she'd never leave a book like that, never, she treated them like sacred objects.
Ghost was gone too.
The dog who'd loved her. Who'd slept at her feet every night. Who'd known something was wrong before anyone else and tried to warn them.
All of it. Gone.
"Auralia." Her name came out broken. A sound I didn't recognize as my own voice. "My Ptichka—"
The silence swallowed the words.
Three women. Sophie, who'd survived an auction and rebuilt herself piece by piece. Maya, who'd escaped a murder frame and found love in the last place she'd expected. Auralia, who'd trusted me to keep her safe, who'd let me dress her and hold her and promise her everything was going to be okay.
Gone.
Taken while we played soldiers in an empty gallery.
While I was so fucking clever, so certain I'd figured out Anton's trap.
He'd been counting on it.
Counting on my clever little fox brain.
And I'd walked right into it. Dragged my brothers with me. Left the women unprotected because I was so sure I understood the game.
Konstantin's roar shattered the silence—rage and grief tangled together, his massive fist going through the wall like it was paper. Nikolai had gone still. Completely, terrifyingly still, the way he only got when violence was about to follow.
And me?
I stood in the wreckage of everything I'd promised to protect.
Holding a phone that had gone silent.
Knowing that somewhere out there, Anton Belyaev had my little bird.
And I had no idea how to get her back.