2. Lev
LEV
The girl won't stop talking.
Her voice comes in fragmented bursts—questions about her mother, about where we're going, about whether she can make a call—and every word scrapes against my already fraying control.
I'm running through the guest list in my head, cross-referencing faces with loyalties, and I can't focus because she's right there, pressed against my side in the backseat, her thigh warm against mine despite the layers of fabric between us.
I clench my hands into fists on my knees. Unclench. The adrenaline has nowhere to go, so it builds in my chest, my arms, the muscles of my jaw. I want to hit something. Break something. Put my fist through a wall until my knuckles split.
The guards at the wedding were ours. Men I've known since I was eighteen, men who'd cut off their own fingers before they'd betray my father. Which means the threat came from inside—someone close enough to slip past security, someone we trusted.
"Are we headed to where my mom is?" Wren's voice again, higher now, edged with panic. "I need to see her. I can't?—"
"Jesus Christ." I turn on her, and she flinches. Good. "Will you shut up for one second? Or do you want me to drop you off here?"
Her mouth snaps shut. Her eyes go wide—green, the kind of green that shouldn't exist outside of forests and expensive jewelry—and I catch the exact moment fear overtakes shock.
"Lev…" Kostya starts from the front seat.
"Not now. I'm trying to think."
Diane didn't do this. I've met her twice—once when my father announced the engagement, once at a pre-wedding dinner where she spent the entire evening looking like she'd stumbled into the wrong life.
She wears every emotion on her face. No training, no artifice.
The look on her face when the bullet tore through my father's chest was raw, wrecked. Real.
Which leaves Wren.
I know the basics. Twenty-one. American. College degree in something useless. No siblings, no father in the picture, raised by Diane in a series of small towns I've never heard of and will never visit. That's it. The file was thin because she was irrelevant.
Until she wasn't.
Until I saw her standing outside the church in that dress—short, tight, the kind of thing that makes a man forget his own name—and every rational thought I'd had about maintaining distance evaporated.
I kept my expression flat through the ceremony, through the toasts, but my body didn't cooperate.
Semi-hard the entire time, which is a special kind of torture in dress pants, and I spent two hours cataloging exits and entry points while my brain kept drifting back to the curve of her hip, the line of her neck, the way her mouth moved when she smiled at something Maxim said.
Kostya noticed. Maxim definitely noticed. They've been stripping her naked in their minds since the moment they saw her, and I don't blame them—she's built for it. Small, soft, the kind of pretty that gets people killed.
Which makes her perfect bait.
Our enemies could have paid her. Sent her in to distract us while they moved on my father. It's clean. Efficient. She gets close, we get stupid, and by the time we realize what's happening, it's already done.
Her scent hits me again—something floral, faint, probably expensive—and my hands clench harder.
I force myself to breathe through my mouth, but it doesn't help.
She shifts beside me, her shoulder brushing mine, and heat rolls through me despite the fury, despite the suspicion, despite every logical reason I should be shoving her out of this vehicle and leaving her on the side of the road.
"Lev." Maxim's voice from the other side of her, low and careful. "We're almost there."
I don't answer. The trees thicken outside the window, the road narrowing to gravel, and I run through it again: guest list, security detail, who had access, who didn't. The Gambinos hate us, but they're sloppy—this wasn't sloppy.
The O'Rourkes are capable, but they wouldn't make a move this bold without leverage, and we've got nothing they want badly enough to risk open war.
Unless they already had leverage. Unless it was sitting beside me the entire time, green-eyed and terrified and playing the part so well I almost believe it.
Wren shifts again, her hands twisting in her lap. I catch the tremor in her fingers, the way her breathing's gone shallow, and something in my chest tightens. She's scared. That much is obvious. Whether it's because she's innocent or because she knows she's been caught—that's the question.
The SUV pulls to a stop, and Kostya's already moving, door open, eyes scanning the perimeter. The lake house sits dark against the trees, only the porch light cutting through the shadows. Two of our men stand at the door, another two by the vehicle parked along the drive.
I step out, and Wren follows. She stumbles on the gravel—those ridiculous heels she wore to the wedding—and I catch her elbow before I think better of it. Her skin is warm under my palm, soft, and I let go fast.
Maxim flanks her other side. We move toward the house in formation, keeping her between us, and I don't miss the irony. If she's guilty, we're protecting the person who got our father killed. If she's not, we're the only thing standing between her and whoever is.
The door shuts behind us, solid and final, and I turn on her.
"Who did you sleep with?" My voice comes out harder than I intend, but I don't soften it. I step closer, crowding her space, watching her eyes widen as the distance between us shrinks. She backs up until she hits the wall with a soft thump. "The Gambinos? O'Rourkes? Someone at the reception?"
"What?" Her eyes go huge, whites showing, and her chest rises and falls too fast. "I didn't—I haven't?—"
"Don't lie to me." I brace one hand on the wall beside her head, leaning in.
The plaster is cool under my palm. She smells like fear and perfume and up close I catch details I shouldn't be noticing: a constellation of freckles across her nose, a tiny scar at the corner of her mouth, lips that are full and pink and currently trembling.
"You show up out of nowhere, and four hours later my father's dead. So tell me—who are you working for?"
"No one!" Her voice breaks. I watch her throat work as she swallows, the pulse at the base of her neck hammering so hard I could time it.
"Then why haven't we met you before the wedding?
Where were you during the rehearsal? Who did you report to before the attack?
" I fire the questions at her like rounds, each one landing before she can recover from the last. Her hands are pressed flat against the wall behind her, fingers splayed, trapped.
"Who did you call? Who were you texting? "
"I wasn't—I didn't—" She's shaking now, full-body tremors I can see even in the low light.
"Who. Are. You. Fucking." I bite off each word, brutal and precise, and watch her flinch with every syllable.
"Lev." Kostya's voice, a warning from somewhere behind me.
I don't look at him. I keep my eyes on Wren, searching for the tell, the crack, the moment she breaks. Her pupils are blown wide, her breathing ragged, and there—her lower lip quivers, her jaw clenches, and something in her face just shatters.
"I didn't sleep with anyone!" Her voice pitches high, desperate, raw with something that sounds like humiliation and terror mixed together. "I'm a virgin!"
The words hit like a fist to the chest. My brain stutters, goes blank, and heat floods through me so fast I have to lock my knees to stay upright.
Virgin. She's a virgin, which means she's not bait, not a plant, not someone's carefully placed piece on the board—she's just a twenty-one-year-old girl whose mother married into the wrong family, and I just accused her of conspiracy while standing so close I can count her heartbeat in the pulse at her throat.
Her eyes fill, and the first tear spills over before she can stop it.
I step back. The space between us feels like a canyon, and my hands are still shaking with adrenaline and something else I refuse to name—something that twists sharp and unwelcome in my chest when I watch another tear track down her cheek.
She's crying now, silent and wrecked, and the fear in her eyes is so raw it makes my chest ache in a way I haven't felt since I was young enough to believe caring about things didn't get you killed.
I want to apologize. The words sit bitter on my tongue, wrong and necessary at the same time.
I want to pull her against me and tell her it's going to be fine, that we'll figure this out, that no one's going to hurt her—but I'm dealing with a dead father, a shattered organization, and enemies I can't name yet, and I don't have room for this.
I don't have room for the way her fear makes me feel like I've done something unforgivable, or the way some traitorous part of me wants to fix it.
I do neither.
"Maxim. Kostya. Office. Now."
My voice comes out flat, stripped of everything I'm not letting myself feel. I turn and walk away before I do something stupid, before the tug in my chest wins and I make promises I might not be able to keep.
The office is at the back of the house, small and dark-paneled, a desk and a few chairs and a window that overlooks the lake. I close the door behind us and lean against it, forcing my breathing to slow.
Maxim drops into one of the chairs, running a hand through his hair. Kostya stays standing, arms crossed, face flat.
"That was a fucking disaster," Maxim says.
"She's not involved." I push off the door, pacing to the window. The lake is black glass under the moon, still and silent. "She's terrified. She doesn't know anything."
"You sure?" Kostya's voice is flat. "Or did she just play you?"
"She didn't play me." I turn back to face them. "Diane's clean. The girl's clean. Which means someone else had access, and we missed it."
"The Volkov name passes to you now," Maxim says, quieter. "You're pakhan."