Chapter 3
Arkady
Dragging my gaze from hers, I pick up the phone. “Dad,” I say. “What’s—”
The sound of the shot cuts through the line, and I grip it tighter as Alina jumps, eyes darting to mine.
The line goes dead, and my blood runs a bit cooler.
“What was that?” Alina whispers.
“Good question. Get your shoes.”
“I didn’t see any,” she says, shaking her head.
“The ones you wore last night. Hall cupboard.” I fire off a text to Vik to bring the car around. My car.
“Where are we going?” she asks, already getting to her feet. Her bratty attitude has been parked, and she has moved into Bratva mode. She is in this life whether she wants it or not, and she knows the score. She isn’t screaming or wailing. She’s moving.
“To my dad’s.”
I could leave her here. I should. It’s cleaner. Safer for my operation.
My eyes land on her anyway, and the decision is already made before my brain finishes listing reasons. She comes with me. The thought sits in my chest like a locked bolt.
She nods once, even though her face pales. Nikolai Saranov is most people’s worst nightmare come to life. But I am not leaving her here, so she comes with me. End of story.
In the hall, she yanks open the cupboard while I pull open the hall table drawer. I grab my keys and a Glock, shoving it into the back of my pants, under my shirt. Alina slips on her heels, a damn sight more stable than she was last night.
She moves when I move. She is trained even without knowing it. Thank you, Valery. If he left me with a whimpering idiot, this would be ten times more difficult.
“See? You can be obedient.”
“Fuck you,” she mumbles again, but as I yank open the door, she sticks to my side. My left, already noticing my stronger side is my right.
Clever girl.
Vik meets us at the Porsche and throws me the keys. “Want backup?”
“Not yet,” I say, with a shake of my head. “The last thing we need is a Bratva army turning up when it’s nothing.”
He accepts it but will wait on standby until he hears from me.
Alina slides in without being told. Good. Her hands are tight in her lap, her sharp nails painted deep red. I take the wheel and gun it, tyres biting tarmac as I pass her the Vityaz. She accepts it with a nod, and I hope she isn’t considering stabbing me with it.
Traffic parts for the Porsche in their mirrors.
They know without even really comprehending that I will sit on their arse until they move anyway.
London hums like a coiled beast, a city full of rich fools and poorer devils.
I cut down through Brook, over to Park, and punch it up towards Belgravia, where my father keeps court in a stucco monstrosity with too many windows and not enough mercy.
I unlock my phone and throw it to Alina. She catches it. “Do you know Mina’s number?”
She frowns. “I think so. Why?”
“So she stops ringing every number on your phone. Tell her you crashed at mine. Call me Kade. Don’t write my surname.”
She taps the screen a few times. “I don’t know if this is right.”
“Just send it.”
She does it. The screen lights her face for a second, then goes dark. “Sent.” She hands it back to me. I shove it in the top pocket of my shirt.
I pull up two streets over and kill the engine. “We walk.”
“Why?”
“Because if there’s a surprise, it’ll be for a car pulling straight up.”
She nods once. I feel her breath, quick and controlled, as we move.
The street is quiet. Manicured hedges, black iron railings, the kind of wealth that doesn’t need to announce itself. Alina shoves the knife into the back of her joggers, under her tee and keeps pace, her heels clicking against the pavement.
We round the corner, and the house comes into view. Three storeys of white stucco, a black front door with polished brass fixtures.
No visible damage. No cars I don’t recognise.
I slow my pace, and Alina matches it without being told. My hand drifts to the small of my back, fingertips grazing the Glock’s grip.
“Stay behind me,” I say.
For once, she doesn’t argue.
I take the steps two at a time and press my thumb to the biometric pad. The lock disengages with a soft click, and I push the door in with the Glock drawn, sweeping the entrance hall in one fluid arc. Alina moves in behind me and removes her shoes, leaving them just inside the door.
Silence. The kind that sits wrong in a house that never sleeps.
The marble floor gleams. No blood. No shell casings. The grandfather clock in the alcove ticks like it hasn’t received the memo that something is off. I move through the hall, checking corners, doorways, and the shadow under the staircase. Alina ghosts behind me.
I push through to the study. The door is ajar, which is wrong. It’s always closed. I toe it open with my foot and step in, gun up.
My father sits behind his desk.
Dead.
Single shot to the forehead.
“Fuck,” I growl.
“Oh, Jesus,” Alina breathes and averts her gaze.
My hand twitches towards her elbow—an idiot reflex to keep her upright—then stops midair. I curl my fingers into a fist instead until the urge passes.
I can’t afford comfort in this room. Not for her. Not for me.
The world narrows to a pinpoint. My father. The desk. The neat, precise hole in his forehead tells me this was professional. Close range. Someone he let in or someone who was already here.
I don’t move for three seconds. I count them. One. Two. Three. It’s all I have time for to grieve, then the cold settles in, the kind that lives in the marrow, the kind that makes me dangerous.
His eyes are open. Fixed straight ahead. His right hand rests on the desk, fingers curled loosely around his phone. The phone he called me from. The shot I heard. Not fired by him. Fired into him while he was on the line to me.
A message.
I scan the room. No signs of a struggle. The vodka decanter is untouched, two unused glasses beside it.
“Don’t touch anything,” I say to Alina without turning around.
She nods and turns her back, arms folded as if that will shield her from the horror.
“I need to clear the house.”
“I’m guessing whoever did this is long gone,” she mutters.
“Probably, but protocol.”
She nods grimly but looks relieved when we move to the next room.
Fifteen minutes later, the sweep reveals nothing, and I place her on the bottom of the sweeping staircase, telling her to sit. She does without a cutting remark.
“First dead body?” I ask.
She nods, jaw clenched.
“Breathe through your mouth.”
“Why? So I can taste the smell?”
The chuckle that escapes me is short, sharp and full of inappropriate amusement. “Good point. But there is no smell.”
“Yet,” she mutters as I pull out my phone and call Vik.
“Nik is dead,” I say. They land like stones. “Get here. Bring the kit.”
Vik doesn’t waste breath on sympathy. “Get out of there. Now.”
“Moving.”
I pocket the phone and press both palms flat against the wall. The plaster is cool. I focus on that. Not on the image seared into my retinas. Not on the neat geometry of the wound. Not on the fact that my father called me, and I heard the bullet that ended him.
Someone wanted me to hear it.
That detail lodges itself behind my ribs like a shard of glass. I breathe around it. Later. I will take it apart later, piece by piece, and when I find who pulled that trigger, I will return the favour so slowly they’ll beg for the clean death my father got.
Pushing back, I feel the pakhan’s crown descend with a resounding thud that reverberates up my spine as if it had really happened. “Move,” I say to Alina, pulling her up by her upper arm.
She nods and grabs her shoes on the way out, hopping into them as I close the door quietly and leave the premises as if we hadn’t been here. “You can drop me off at home,” she says.
“Not happening,” I growl. “Not only do we have the original problem of who tried to drug you last night, but you were also a witness to the shooting of the Saranov pakhan, and you were at the crime scene. You aren’t going anywhere except back to my place and into a room where I can see you at all times. ”
“You can’t just take over my life,” she hisses.
And she’s back.
“I just did,” I say, my hand snaking around hers and crushing it with just enough force to make her wince. “See how this works?”
She yanks her hand free the second I ease the pressure.
Her eyes are wet, but not from crying. Rage.
Pure, undiluted fury that makes the blue of her irises burn electric.
She doesn’t speak for the entire walk back to the Porsche, and I let the silence sit because my jaw is locked so tight I might crack a molar.
I open her door. She gets in. No fight. No spit. She knows.
The engine roars to life, and I tear through Belgravia like the streets owe me something.
My knuckles are white on the wheel. The image of my father’s face keeps flickering at the edges of my vision, that perfect circle in his forehead, the way his eyes stayed open as if he refused to close them for whoever put him down.
“Arkady.”
Her voice cuts through the static in my skull.
“What?”
“Red light.”
I slam the brake. The Porsche stops on command like the beast it is. Alina braces against the dash, and a horn blares from the car beside us. I don’t look at them. If I look at them, I will get out and do something that ends with flashing blue lights and me behind bars.
I pull into the driveway of my townhouse, and the gate rolls shut behind us with a finality that makes Alina flinch.
She covers it by climbing out before I’ve killed the engine.
I half expect her to try to run and scale the gate.
She doesn’t. She knows she will probably be shot down before she reaches the top.
“Alina.”
She stops but doesn’t turn.
“Whatever you saw in that room stays in that room.”
“I know. Who would I tell anyway? No phone and no way out of here. Right?”
“Right.” I scowl at her and stride past, grabbing her wrist on my way past.
“Stop grabbing me,” she hisses.
“Stop giving me reasons to think you’re going to run.” I pull the knife out of the back of her joggers, not giving her any reason to use it.
“I’m not running. I’m surviving.”
Smart.
Inside, I release her and slam the door hard enough to rattle the frame. Dima appears from the kitchen, takes one look at my face, and straightens.
“Pakhan.”
The word hits me as hard as his meaty fist would’ve.
The fact that he’s using it tells me Vik has already made the call. Word travels through the Bratva like blood through veins—fast and impossible to stop.
“Don’t,” I grit out. “Not yet. Take Alina upstairs to the blue room. Lock it.”
“What?” she spits as Dima looms over her. “You’re locking me in a room like a prisoner?”
I turn, and whatever she sees in my face makes her step back. Good. She should step back. The leash I keep on myself is fraying, thread by thread, and if she keeps pushing, she’ll meet the version of me that doesn’t ask nicely.
“My father was just murdered,” I say, each word bitten off and spat out.
“Someone put a bullet in his brain while he was on the phone to me, and you heard it. So right now, Alina, you will go upstairs, you will sit in that room, and you will be quiet. Or I will carry you there myself, and you will not enjoy it.”
Her lips part. She sees the violence that is about to break free and rip this entire ten-million-pound mansion apart.
She thinks it’s grief. It’s not.
Three seconds was all it took to accept Nik is gone, and then his legacy was thrust at me without warning.
Dima bustles her up the stairs without even touching her. His massive presence is enough to make her move.
I wait until she is out of sight before my fist connects with the wall. Plaster cracks. Pain shoots up my wrist and settles into something useful. I welcome it. The sharp sting centres me when everything else is spinning out of orbit.
Blood smears the white wall. I stare at it. My blood. My wall. My house. My empire now, whether I’m ready for it or not.