Chapter 55
Chapter fifty-five
Olivia
Two Months Later
Being back feels good.
Even with the little eye in the sky watching me from the door.
I glance up at the camera mounted above the office entrance and give it a lazy wave.
“My voyeur,” I mutter, shaking my head with a fond smile.
The man who gave up the most important thing in the world for me.
My heart aches. The Parker Building.
It had become something to me.
It was his cross to bear, but it became a sigil for redemption and hope.
Our dream. Our legacy.
And now it’s gone. Traded. For me.
I never wanted that. Never wanted to be worth more than something that meant everything to him.
I close my eyes briefly, then refocus.
We’ll build something else. Honor Noah another way.
This morning, I called the city office. Left voicemails for the director of outreach. Emailed the zoning board. Asked if there’s a vacant lot next to Beaumont Luxe we could redevelop. A shelter. A creative arts space. Something bright and safe with Noah’s name etched in the foundation.
But none of it stops the anger from curdling in my gut.
This is Maksim Korsakov’s fault.
That Bratva asshole.
I don’t care what “territory” means in their world. I care that War had to trade our dream for my family’s safety because that man wanted the Parker Building like a damn trophy.
I type his name into the search bar again, fists clenched.
Colorful hair? Really?
What kind of mobster runs an empire looking like a reject from clown college?
Snake bites through his lip. Ink down his throat. A permanent smirk that makes me want to throw my coffee at the screen.
I click through a few articles. One about The Gilded Ace… his casino, all glass and gold and debauchery.
Another about Exile, some high-profile club in the city I’ve definitely heard of, but never went.
And then I see it.
Smash and Sugar.
My favorite bakery.
“No,” I whisper. “No. No no no—come on.”
Nothing is sacred!
I keep scrolling.
Property deeds, shell companies, all funneling back to Korsakov Holdings.
Do these bastards own everything in this city?
I huff and yank my hair into a messy bun.
I need more. Need to know why he wanted the Parker Building. What he’s planning.
Maybe I can find leverage.
Maybe I can steal it back.
I open a new tab and pull up an old shortcut.
WesTech Intranet.
I shouldn’t…
But this isn’t my first time.
Wesley didn’t seem to remember me. Not really. But I remember him.
I was sixteen, bored, angry, brilliant; and stupid enough to test a security patch on the new WesTech servers I had read about all the way from my tiny town.
I cracked it in under an hour.
His legal team showed up two days later. Mama nearly had a heart attack.
Wesley didn’t press charges. Said he was… impressed.
Paid me, quietly, for a line of encryption I’d built from scratch, something he claimed they’d been trying to develop for weeks.
That check helped save the inn that year.
But Mama made me promise never to touch anything like that again.
Sorry, Mama.
I pull up the WesTech Intranet and type in the credentials.
A beat.
Then: Access Granted.
I blink.
“Seriously? “I mutter, “Some things, never change.”
We need to work on our offboarding protocols.
I click into the internal systems. Wesley never knew I added myself to the backend dev team as a ghost profile. I was careful—mirrored logins, masked IP, backdoor routed through a dead server in Arizona. Rookie shit, but effective.
Okay, Liv. Time to go hunting.
I route myself through a VPN, then sandbox my browser just in case.
I don’t touch anything sensitive. Not technically. Just hover near the financial servers, then pivot into public asset registries.
My fingers fly, tracing breadcrumbs:
Corporation names, subsidiary loops, LLCs hidden inside offshore accounts.
It takes hours, but I find it.
A map of Maksim Korsakov’s empire.
And a weak spot.
The Parker Building wasn’t just a grab.
It was a homecoming.
I dig deeper. Property records, archived sales, auction history—
There it is.
The Parker Building used to belong to his father.
Alexei Korsakov. Bratva royalty.
Lost the building fifteen years ago in a quiet forfeiture.
The city seized it after a nasty racketeering case tied up in civil litigation.
Beaumont Enterprises acquired it at auction six years later—clean title, no red flags.
War had to have known.
My cursor hovers over the file.
So Maksim didn’t want the building because of its location.
He wanted it because it used to be his.
A ghost from his past.
A wound.
A slow grin pulls at my lips.
Personal wounds make for very effective leverage.
I keep going.
If his father’s loss still lingers… what else does?
I dig into old records, court cases, even police reports from Maksim’s adolescence. It’s all scrubbed, sealed or encrypted or buried under layers of legal sludge.
But I know what I’m doing.
I crack into a database I’m technically not supposed to still have access to. A private health records aggregator.
Just poking.
Just looking.
I pause, fingers trembling slightly.
Do I really want to do this?
This isn’t just petty revenge or city politics.
This is personal.
Still… he took our building.
This isn’t just strategy.
It’s war.
I enter the parameters. Maksim Nikolai Korsakov. DOB. Known aliases.
A file pings.
Psychiatric evaluation. Age 15.
I open it.
My stomach tightens.
It’s not just the aggression scores, or the dissociation markers.
It’s the description of the incident that triggered the court-ordered psych hold.
A violent episode.
I exhale slowly, the edges of the report burning into my brain.
Now I understand why he wanted the Parker Building so badly.
I lean back in my chair and stare at the ceiling.
Okay.
Two plans.
Plan A: Strategy. Business.
Plan B: The jugular.
Only if I have to.
Because if Maksim wants to play dirty?
He’s not the only one who knows how to destroy people from the inside out.
I glance up at the camera again, its red light blinking in silence.
“Sorry, War,” I murmur.
“I have to do this one my way.”