Chapter 26 #2
"Look close, Kiryan. She's been acting since she was a kid," Isabella said. "Playing pathetic. Playing innocent. Playing like everyone owed her protection. She ruined my baby, ruined my marriage to you, made you kick me out. She pays."
"Once she's dead, everything goes back where it belongs," Isabella said. "You marry me. The invitations are already ready. Guest list doesn't even change. Father will say yes. Everyone will."
She stepped toward me. Years of training still made her posture graceful, but her eyes were pure madness.
"It should have been me," she said, voice softening. "Elena was a mistake. We erase her, and we put everything back on track. You just have to say the word. Nothing has to change."
I finally looked at her.
"You were never my track."
The blood drained out of her face.
I turned to Matteo.
"Name your terms."
"Clean," Matteo said with a grin. "I like doing business with someone who gets it."
"Kidnapping a pregnant woman isn't business."
"A deal at gunpoint is still a deal."
He flicked his hand.
One of his men dragged in a folding table and slapped down a thick contract. The first page listed docks, warehouses, transport lines, contacts. After that—shares, accounts, ownership transfers.
He'd come prepared.
"Sign," Matteo said. "Give me every Morozov route up and down the East Coast. You walk away from everything you can move. I let her live."
"Let her go first."
"You don't have leverage."
I looked at Elena.
She shook her head hard, eyes blazing, almost angry.
I'd put status, rules, family interests on her shoulders. But when the real choice landed in her lap, she'd rather stare down a gun than watch me lose everything.
I stared at the contract and let silence stretch on purpose.
Matteo's patience frayed. "You got one chance."
Isabella sneered. "I told you. He won't pick you."
Elena kept shaking her head.
I lifted my eyes.
"If I sign, she walks out alive?"
"Of course," Matteo said.
Every word out of his mouth was a lie.
Isabella ripped off the last strip of tape that still clung at Elena's mouth. Elena could finally speak.
"Kiryan, don't."
Her voice came out raw, like sandpaper. Every drop of blood in my body surged toward her.
"Don't sign," she said, staring at me. "He won't let us live."
Isabella slapped her.
My body moved before my brain—one step forward.
Four guns snapped up.
I stopped.
Elena's head was turned to the side, fresh blood seeping from the corner of her mouth. She slowly faced forward again, still looking at me.
No blame in her eyes. Just a warning.
Don't do something stupid.
I'd had guns pointed at me more times than I could count. None of them had been harder than this.
"Pen," I said.
Isabella froze.
Matteo smiled and tossed a steel pen onto the contract.
"Smart."
I walked to the table.
The contract ran over twenty pages. I didn't flip through it. I opened straight to the signature page.
In the corner of my eye, Elena lowered her head.
Not in defeat.
Her shoulder, hidden behind the chair back, moved—small, controlled. A piece of metal on the chair's back edge was sawing the rope, slicing into her wrist.
The muscles at the back of my neck tightened. She hadn't waited for me to save her. She'd made her own opening.
I picked up the pen and hovered the tip over the line.
"All routes?" I asked.
"Every last one," Matteo said.
"Warehouse and docks?"
"Mine too."
"My people won't listen to you."
"When they see your signature, they'll learn."
I kept my questions slow on purpose.
Each one bought Elena seconds.
Her right shoulder dipped.
One hand slipped free.
Isabella's focus stayed on the contract. She stood to Elena's right, gun still in hand, but her trigger finger had drifted off the trigger.
Matteo leaned in, eyes glued to the signature.
The gunmen watched me.
They all wanted to see Morozov bend.
I set the pen down.
Kiryan Morozov.
The pen dragged across the paper.
I wrote it slowly, like those letters could really hand over my entire life.
When the last stroke landed, Matteo's shoulders loosened.
Isabella smiled.
They thought ink on paper was my soul.
After my father died, I'd spent over a decade rebuilding the organization. Every route had been paid for in blood.
But with Elena tied up a few steps away, all of it suddenly felt light. Laughable.
If Matteo could take it with a contract, I could take it back with my hands.
Only her and the baby—those couldn't be replaced.
And that only mattered if he made it out of here alive.
"See?" Isabella said to Elena. "He still comes back to me."
Elena lifted her head.
She didn't look at Isabella.
She looked at me.
One hand was fully free now, hidden behind the chair. Her ankle rotated slowly, working at the rope.
Our eyes met.
She flicked her gaze to Isabella's gun, then back to me. Her breathing was shallow and fast, but her eyes were steady.
Heat surged up my spine.
Not fear.
She'd handed me the next second.
I didn't nod. I just set the pen down.
It tapped the tabletop.
Soft. Clean.
That was my answer.
Elena yanked her hands free and lunged out of the chair.
Isabella barely had time to turn.
Elena's shoulder slammed into her waist. Both women crashed to the floor. For the first time, Isabella's trained balance didn't save her.
No shot fired.
The gun flew from Isabella's hand, clattering on concrete, sliding under a row of wooden crates.
Elena pinned Isabella's wrist, her other hand instinctively shielding her belly.
She was out of the muzzle line.
I flipped the folding table with one hard shove.
"Go!"
The welded cargo door on the east side exploded inward.
Glass shattered up high at the same time.
Feodor's people stormed in from both sides, muzzles stitching the dead-white light into a wall. Gunmen behind the steel pillars spun too late, the first burst of fire driving them back into cover.
I vaulted the overturned table and charged for Elena.
And then Matteo's hand slid inside his coat.