Chapter 14
Kara
The sea had turned molten in the late afternoon sun, a sheet of gold broken only by the yacht’s slow drift. Dmitri hadn’t moved since he’d last spoken. He just stood there, hands in his pockets, displaying that measured calm that made other people babble to fill the silence.
But I wasn’t like that.
“You want the truth?” I said finally. “Fine.”
He didn’t answer. That was Dmitri’s superpower, or so I was learning. He didn’t need words to command obedience. Roman charmed people into doing what he wanted. Lev was something of a bully. Dmitri simply existed, and people folded.
“ARCHEON isn’t a branch of any government,” I began.
“They’re not even an agency, really. They are their own entity.
Think of them as a private market for order versus chaos.
They buy instability for one side, sell stability to the other, and take a cut when the dust settles.
It’s simply their business model and they make a lot of money doing it. A lot.”
His gaze didn’t waver. “And you’re one of their agents.”
“Not exactly,” I said. “More like… an employee of circumstance. ARCHEON blackmailed me into working for them. Four years ago, they fabricated a dossier. Inside it, there are charges for an international assassination that never happened. Blurred photos, falsified travel logs, my name on offshore accounts I’d never heard of.
If they flip that switch to put that document in Interpol’s hands, I become a global fugitive. ”
“Convenient,” Dmitri murmured.
“For them, yes.” I gave a short, humorless laugh. “For me, it’s a permanent leash. They pull, and I move.”
He finally spoke, voice low, controlled. “So what is it they want from us? Why did they send you after my family?”
“They’ve started paying attention to you,” I said.
“ARCHEON doesn’t admire many people, but they have…
a professional respect for you three. You built an empire quietly, efficiently, without leaving the usual trail of corpses.
You’ve done what they do—control the balance of power—but without pretending you’re saving the world. They like that.”
A flicker of amusement crossed his face, but it was gone as fast as it came.
“But,” I continued, “they’ve noticed something in your orbit that bothers them.
There’s another Bratva group, the Dragunovs.
They’ve procured a batch of repurposed drones.
Chinese or North Korean tech, depending on who you ask.
Basically, they’ve got military-grade hardware repackaged as civilian delivery drones and from the information we’ve gathered, they’re going to sell them to the highest bidder. ”
“And you were sent to find out if we’re involved?”
I nodded. “You were their variable. They know you have your own distribution networks, your own military contacts and they know you’ve done business with the Dragunovs before.
To them, your family is both an asset and an obstacle.
You’re competition, especially if you were connected to the drone sale.
You’re one of the few players in the game who can make their lives harder and they don’t like that. ”
He absorbed that in silence, watching me the way a hawk eyes its prey far down on the ground beneath them.
“And where do you fit into this?” he asked.
“I was supposed to watch you,” I said. “To learn who your suppliers were, what kind of hardware you were buying. My job was to get close, identify your contact points and recent activities, and pass it all back.”
“Instead,” he said, “you drugged my brother.”
“I had no choice,” I said quickly. “They gave me a mission. Get close to Roman, assess whether he was involved with the Dragunovs, and confirm whether the drones were passing through any of your channels. ARCHEON doesn’t care about ethics. They care about results.”
He was still silent. The wind picked up, and my hair swirled around my face. My pulse thudded in my throat.
“I didn’t expect to…” I stopped, searching for the right word. Feel was too small, too dangerous. “I didn’t expect him to be—”
“A distraction,” Dmitri said.
“A person,” I corrected.
Dmitri’s expression didn’t change, but his silence shifted. I could feel it, the way a change in air pressure comes before a storm.
“Tell me about Lev,” he said finally.
I forced myself to meet his eyes. “What about him?”
“You knew him before all of this,” Dmitri said. “You went to school together.”
So he’d done his homework. Dmitri Markov didn’t ask questions he didn’t already have the answers to.
I turned away, staring out over the water. The sun was lower, brushing gold across the horizon, but the heat still clung to everything. My skin prickled under it.
“We went to boarding school together,” I said finally. “Back in Geneva. I was a scholarship student. He was—” I hesitated, a small, unwilling smile ghosting across my lips. “A Markov. A legacy student.”
Dmitri didn’t move, but I could feel his attention snap back to me.
“Lev had a reputation,” I went on. “Even then. Brilliant, gorgeous, untouchable. A bit of a bully, a little cruel when he got bored. The teachers adored him. The other students feared him. I… didn’t.”
“You challenged him,” Dmitri said.
“I existed, I didn’t fall at his feet, and I may have made him the butt of a humorous comment or two,” I corrected softly. “That was enough to earn his ire.”
The memory came unbidden, the echo of marble hallways, snow tapping against tall windows, the faint scent of his cologne mixed with ink and testosterone.
He’d been beautiful in that cold, unreachable way that boys like him always were.
All sharp lines and haughty eyes. Always convinced the world would bend for him.
“I used to argue with him,” I said. “In class, over books, over nothing at all. He’d wait until everyone was watching and try to break me down, whether it was intellectually, emotionally, whatever amused him that day. And I… pushed back.”
Dmitri’s expression was inscrutable. “Why?”
“Because no one else did,” I retorted, annoyed at the memory of the condescending boy Lev had been, and still was. “And because it drove him crazy that he couldn’t make me flinch.”
That earned the faintest flicker of something from Dmitri—interest, maybe. Approval, for sure.
He was watching me more closely now. The quiet between us felt electric.
“He liked you.” Dmitri said this as a statement of fact.
That surprised a genuine laugh out of me. “Lev? No. He hated me. I was apparently the one person in that whole school who wasn’t afraid of him, and that made me a problem for him.”
“Anger and desire can be close cousins, Kara. Sometimes they occur simultaneously,” he said. Then, after a pause: “But he’s not the only one who feels that way.”
My breath caught in the back of my throat.
He stepped closer, his presence filling the space between us. The sun was sliding toward the horizon, casting long shadows across the deck, and his was the longest of them all. He didn’t touch me, but I could feel the heat of his body, the sheer, unyielding force of his will.
“You’ve managed to get under the skin of all three of us,” he declared. “Roman fell for your charm. Lev fell for your audacity. And I… I find your intelligence and fortitude… compelling.”
My heart hammered against my ribs like a war drum. I wanted to back away, but I forced myself to hold my ground. To meet his gaze.
“Is that what this is between us?” I asked, my voice softer than I intended.
He reached out, his fingers brushing stray strands of hair behind my ear.
The touch was light, fleeting, but it sent a jolt of pure electricity through me.
His knuckles grazed my cheekbone, a slow, purposeful caress that was more intimate than any kiss.
My skin tingled where he’d touched it, a trail of fire left in the wake of his fingers.
“You fascinate us all,” he continued, his voice dropping to a low, intimate murmur. “The three of us. We’ve spent our lives surrounded by people who want something from us. Money. Power. Attention. Protection. You’re the first one in a long time who seems to want something else entirely.”
“And what’s that?”
“Freedom,” he said simply. “The kind that only the Markovs can give you.”
My throat went dry.
“The kind of freedom that comes from belonging to something bigger than yourself,” he continued. “The kind that comes from being… ours.”
Ours.
The word landed in the silence like a stone, sending ripples through the still air.
I looked away, my gaze fixed on the horizon where the sun was bleeding into the sea. I needed a moment to breathe, to regroup, to find the armor I’d so carefully constructed and that the Markovs had stripped away piece by agonizing piece.
“It’s a tempting offer,” I said, my voice a carefully constructed mimicry of his own cool detachment. “I’ve always wanted a different nice, gilded cage with a fantastic view.”
He smiled and chuckled softly. “It’s better than a prison with no view at all.”
He stepped back, giving me space, but his presence still filled the deck, a palpable force that bent the light and the air around him. He picked up his glass of water, the melting ice cubes clinking quietly. He took a sip, his gaze never leaving mine.
“There’s a certain… efficiency… in consolidation,” he said, his tone shifting, becoming more conversational, almost casual. “My brothers and I have always believed in it. In business. And in other things.”
A flicker of understanding, hot and unsettling, sparked in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want to ask, but I knew he was going to make me.
“What other things?” I asked, the words barely a whisper.
His eyes held mine, a direct, unflinching challenge.
“Pleasure,” he said simply. “Roman enjoys the chase, the performance. Lev prefers the conquest, the fight. I…” He paused, letting the word hang in the air between us, a promise and a threat all at once.
“I appreciate the aftermath of victory. The quiet certainty of ownership.”
He was painting a picture with his words, and I was at the center of it.
“So you take turns,” I said, my voice a little too tight, a little too high.
“Sometimes,” he conceded, his gaze lazy and obnoxiously confident. He was enjoying this, the subtle unraveling of my composure. “But it can be more… collaborative than that. An appreciation of our shared assets.”
Shared assets.
The phrase was so cold, so clinical, and yet it ignited a fire in me that I refused to acknowledge.
The image flashed through my mind, unbidden and intoxicating: three sets of hands on my skin, three different voices whispering my name, three different men all interested in me.
Roman’s teasing, exploratory touch. Lev’s rough, demanding punishment. Dmitri’s possessive control.
I had to get a grip on myself.
I managed a small, dismissive laugh. “You make it sound like a business merger. What’s the exit strategy? Do you vote her off the island when she gets boring?”
A genuine smile, the first one I’d seen from him that wasn’t purely predatory, touched his lips.
It was a devastatingly handsome thing. “We don’t get bored.
And we’re not in the business of relinquishing assets arbitrarily.
” He took a step closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. “But you’re a complication.”
“Every man’s favorite kind of woman,” I retorted, though my mouth felt dry.
“Complications,” he said, his eyes darkening, “can be managed. Transformed. Integrated.”
The words hung there, thick with implication. He was circling me, not with his body, but with his words, a predator testing the perimeter of my defenses.
“And if I don’t want to be… integrated?” I challenged.
He stopped directly in front of me. “Then you’ll spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder, waiting for ARCHEON to pull that trigger,” he said softly. “Is that the freedom you want?”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
“Look at you,” he said. “Defiant, even now. Standing here in a torn swimsuit, with my cum drying on your thighs and my handprints still painting your ass red, and you’re still trying to negotiate.”
My cheeks burned, but I held his gaze. “It’s all I have left.”
“You have more than you think,” he said. He reached out, his finger tracing the line of my collarbone, a soft, gentle caress that made me hold my breath. “You have our full attention. That’s a very dangerous and very valuable thing to possess.”
I wanted to pull away, to slap his hand, but I couldn’t. His touch was an anchor in a storm I hadn’t realized I was lost in. The air between us thickened, charged with a current that was far more alarming than the sex that had just happened between us.
“I suppose I should be flattered,” I managed, my voice regaining some of its edge. “The Markov men, all interested in the same girl. Did you take a vote?”
He smiled, a slow, lazy curve of his lips that was more devastating than any smirk. “No vote was necessary. Interest was expressed by my brothers, and now I concur. It’s mutually and unanimously agreed upon by us.”
“Mutually,” I repeated, the word tasting strange on my tongue. “That’s a very… cooperative way of putting it.”
“We’ve always been good at sharing,” he said in a smooth, confidential tone that was meant to disarm me. “Trust. Secrets. Toys.”
He paused, his gaze dropping to my mouth. “And, on rare occasion, a woman.”
My heart gave a single, hard thump against my ribs, a sound I was sure he could hear.
The image flashed through my mind again, brighter and more detailed: Roman’s lazy smile as he watched, Lev’s intense focus as he held me down, and Dmitri directing the scene, a conductor of a dark, beautiful symphony of flesh.
It was a wickedly shameful thought. A degrading thought.
And it sent a jolt of white-hot heat straight to my core.