25. Yaromir
YAROMIR
Larisa leaves before breakfast. She doesn’t say goodbye.
That is very like her.
One of the staff informs me while I’m buttoning my shirt, and for a moment, I only look at the woman in silence. “When?”
“Before dawn, sir.”
“Did she say where she was going?”
“No, sir.”
I should be relieved. Part of me is. Another part knows she is rarely finished just because she’s gone.
By the time I come downstairs, Anya is already in the breakfast room.
She’s sitting near the window in a pale blue dress that arrived sometime yesterday, her hair loose over one shoulder, one hand wrapped around a cup of tea.
Morning light softens her face, but it does nothing to hide the marks I left on her throat.
My body reacts before my mind can stop it.
Last night returns in pieces.
Her in the shower. Her hands on me. Her voice breaking when she said she wanted my cock inside her.
My fingers tighten once around the back of the chair before I sit.
“Good morning,” she says. Her voice is quiet. A little hoarse.
I did that too.
“Morning.”
For several minutes, we eat in a silence that is not comfortable but not hostile either.
Anya picks at the fruit first, then eats properly once she thinks I’m not watching.
I do watch. I watch the way she shifts slightly in her chair and tries to hide the wince.
I watch the color rise in her face when she realizes I’ve seen it.
“You should have stayed in bed,” I say.
She gives me a look over her tea. “You say the most romantic things.”
“I wasn’t trying to be romantic.”
“Clearly.”
I almost smile.
The house is quieter than usual. No cane striking marble. No cold voice from the doorway. No Larisa watching Anya as if she’s a stain on the carpet.
Anya notices the quiet too. “Where is your aunt?”
“She left.”
Her eyes lift to mine. “Left?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Before dawn.”
She sits back slightly. For a second, I see relief move across her face before she hides it. “Did she say why?”
“No.”
“Does she ever explain herself?”
“Rarely.”
Anya looks into her tea. “Good.”
That does make me smile. Only a little. She sees it and looks away too quickly, but not before I catch the flush along her cheek.
The room settles again. Outside, the garden is wet from early rain. Beyond the windows, two guards move along the gravel path, their coats dark against the pale morning.
Anya follows my gaze. Her expression changes. “Can I go out today?” she asks.
I look back at her. “Where?”
“Anywhere.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is the answer.” She sets her cup down. “I don’t mean alone into some club or train station. I mean outside the estate. A shop. A café. A bookstore. I don’t care. I just need to leave the house.”
“No.” The word comes out before I soften it.
Her face closes.
I hate that.
I hate that I still don’t change my answer.
“No,” she repeats.
“Not yet.”
She laughs once, but there’s no humor in it. “There it is again.”
“Anya.”
“No, I know. Not yet. For now. Later. All these little phrases men use when they mean no but want to sound reasonable.”
I put my fork down.
She looks beautiful when she’s angry. That’s inconvenient. More inconvenient is that she’s not wrong.
“I’m not keeping you in this house because I enjoy it,” I say.
“Then why?”
“Because you walked into a gala last night and became the center of a war you don’t understand.”
Her mouth tightens. “I understood enough.”
“You understood what was in the room. You don’t yet understand what follows.”
She looks toward the window again, at the guards. “You mean them.”
“I mean my father. Dmitri. The men watching which side to choose. The ones who will think hurting you is an efficient way to reach me.”
That makes her go still.
Not afraid exactly. Listening.
I continue before she can turn it into another fight. “Until I know where the next hit comes from, you stay inside the estate.”
“Inside the estate.”
“Yes.”
“With guards.”
“Yes.”
“And if I refuse?”
My gaze holds hers. “You won’t.”
Her face goes cold. “You sound like him when you talk like that.”
I know which him she means.
Dmitri.
Or Sergei.
Maybe both.
It shouldn’t affect me. It does.
My jaw tightens. “I am not either of them.”
“Then stop making decisions for me like I’m furniture you moved into your house.”
I lean back, forcing my voice even. “I’m making decisions because I have enemies who will not ask your permission before using you.”
“And I’m supposed to just accept that?”
“No. You can hate it. You can shout. You can call me controlling, cruel, impossible. You can do all of that from inside the gates.”
She stares at me. Her eyes shine, but not with tears. Anger. Frustration. The kind that has nowhere to go because the cage has been explained too well.
That’s worse than a cage with no reason.
I know that. I have lived it.
“I don’t want to be protected like this,” she says quietly.
“I know.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I.”
She looks away first. Breakfast continues, but the peace is gone. She eats less after that. I don’t tell her to eat more. I’m not entirely without instinct.
By the time I finish my coffee, Viktor appears in the doorway. He doesn’t enter fully. That tells me enough.
“What?” I ask.
His eyes flick once to Anya, then back to me. “One of the river warehouses was hit.”
Anya turns toward him. “Hit?”
Viktor ignores the question because he’s not sure if he’s allowed to answer her.
I stand. “Damage?”
“Fire in the east section. Two men injured. One missing. They say it was planned.”
My father moves faster than I expected.
I button my jacket.
Anya rises too. “What happened?”
“A warehouse fire.”
“That’s not what he said.”
“No,” I admit. “It isn’t.”
Her eyes search my face. “Is this because of last night?”
“Possibly.”
“Yaromir.”
I look at Viktor. “Car in five.”
He leaves.
Anya comes around the table, anger replaced now by something like concern. “You’re going there?”
“Yes.”
“Is that safe?”
“No.”
The honest answer makes her stop. For a second, the argument disappears from her face.
“You just told me I can’t leave because it’s dangerous, and now you’re walking into it.”
“Yes.”
“That’s absurd.”
“That is my work.”
She looks like she wants to say more. Then her eyes drop to my hands, to the cuts still healing over my knuckles.
Something in her expression shifts. Softens.
I can’t afford softness right now.
“Stay in the house,” I say.
Her face hardens immediately.
There. I ruined it.
Good. Anger is safer for both of us.
“I heard you the first time.”
“I mean it.”
“So did I.”
I want to touch her before I leave. That’s new.
That’s also dangerous.
I don’t touch her. I walk out.
The warehouse sits near the river, behind a row of loading yards and rusting fences. By the time we arrive, smoke still hangs low over the water, dark and oily. Fire crews have already pulled back from the main structure, but the air smells of wet ash, burned wood, metal, and chemicals.
My men are everywhere. Some armed openly. Some not. All tense.
The east wall is blackened. Half the roof has collapsed inward. Water runs across the concrete in dirty streams, carrying ash and broken glass toward the drains.
Viktor walks beside me.
“Who was on watch?” I ask.
“Denis and Lev.”
“Where are they?”
“Denis is burned. Alive. Lev is missing.”
That means dead or taken. Neither is good.
A foreman named Makar approaches, face streaked with soot, one sleeve torn.
“Report,” I say.
He swallows. “Two trucks came in with forged papers. The men knew the gate schedule. They were inside less than six minutes before the explosion.”
“Explosives?”
“Small charges. Enough to start the fire and ruin the inventory. Not enough to bring the building down completely.”
A message, then.
I look at the burned wall. My father likes warnings. He likes the old way of making men kneel before the real blow comes. But this feels too quick. Too exposed. Too theatrical after last night.
Dmitri, perhaps.
“Cameras?” I ask.
“North side was cut. East side burned. We have some from the gate.”
“Get them to Viktor.”
Makar nods and leaves.
I step closer to the warehouse entrance.
Viktor moves with me. “I don’t like this.”
“No.”
“Too easy.”
“Yes.”
I look around the yard. Too many places to hide. Stacked containers. Burned vehicles. A line of old machinery along the fence. Smoke still drifting thick enough to break sight lines.
I should step back.
But then I see something near the far service door. A smear of blood on the frame.
“Viktor.”
He follows my gaze.
Then the first shot cracks through the yard. The metal wall beside me sparks, and everything moves at once.
Viktor shoves me down behind a burned-out truck as more shots tear through the air. Men shout. Glass breaks. Someone fires back from the left. The yard becomes noise, hard and sharp, bullets hitting metal, concrete, wood.
I pull my gun and move low along the truck.
There are at least two shooters.
No, three. One near the containers. One high, maybe on the service platform. One by the fence line.
This was not only a warehouse hit. This was a trap.
A good one.
I should feel anger first. I usually do. Anger makes things clean. But as I crouch behind twisted metal with bullets tearing through the yard, the first clear thought in my mind is not about my father. Not Dmitri. Not territory. Not the men firing at me.
Anya.
The thought comes so fast it nearly disorients me.
Anya at breakfast, angry because I told her she could not leave.
Anya in my shirt.
Anya asking if this was safe.
Anya inside my house, behind gates that suddenly do not feel high enough.
For the first time in my life, fear hits before calculation.
Not for myself. For her.
If this is a trap for me, there may be another move happening somewhere else.
My hand tightens around the gun. “Call the house,” I tell Viktor.
He’s already doing it.
Another shot strikes the truck. Metal shrieks. I move on instinct, rising just enough to fire toward the service platform. The shooter ducks. I see movement near the containers and fire twice more. Someone curses. A body drops behind the corner, not dead, but hit.
Viktor shouts into the phone, “Lock down the house. No one enters. No one leaves. Put two men outside her door.”
The words barely register before another shooter moves. Too close.
A man comes around the rear of the truck with a pistol raised. I shoot first. He falls hard onto the wet concrete, weapon skidding from his hand.
“Left!” Viktor shouts.
I roll behind a stack of crates as bullets chew into the truck where I was a second ago. One of my men fires from behind a forklift. Another goes down near the gate, hit in the leg, dragging himself back while swearing.
The shooter on the platform rises again. This time I’m ready. I fire once, and he drops out of sight.
The yard rings in the aftermath. My ears buzz. Smoke moves slowly over the concrete. Men shout positions. Someone groans in pain. The last shooter runs toward the fence, but Viktor’s men cut him off before he reaches it. Two shots. Then silence.
Viktor comes back to me, phone still in hand. “The house is secure,” he says. “She is inside.”
I stare at him. “Anya?”
“Yes. She’s in the library with Nina and two guards outside. No breach.”
Something in my chest releases. Only slightly.
“Confirm visually.”
“I did.”
“Again.”
He doesn’t argue. He calls again.
I stand, gun still in my hand, looking at the body near the truck. Blood spreads beneath him, mixing with dirty water and ash.
I have killed men before. Many. Sometimes in anger. Sometimes for strategy. Sometimes because leaving them alive would be untidy.
This one should feel no different, but it does. Because while bullets were flying, I did not think of empire. I thought of my wife.
I thought of her alone in my house, angry at me, alive because I had told her no.
Makar stumbles over, bleeding from a cut above his eye. “We got one alive.”
I look toward the fence where two of my men have a shooter on his knees.
Good.
“Find out who sent them,” I say.
Makar nods.
Viktor studies me. “You’re going back?”
“Yes.”
“The warehouse?”
“Handle it.”
“And the prisoner?”
“Keep him breathing until I decide otherwise.”
Viktor watches me for half a second too long. He knows. Of course he knows.
“You thought they might go for her,” he says.
I don’t answer.
That’s answer enough.
His expression shifts, almost imperceptibly. Not surprise exactly. Concern.
That irritates me.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I say.
“Like what?”
“Like I’ve developed a weakness.”
Viktor’s gaze moves over the burned warehouse, the bodies, the smoke, the men waiting for orders. Then back to me. “Okay, boss.”
I turn toward the car. My hands still smell of gunpowder and blood. My suit is dirty. There’s a burn mark along one sleeve where a bullet came too close. None of that matters.
And now that I know what that feels like, I understand one thing with absolute clarity.
This city can burn before I let anything touch her.