Chapter 8 Mikhail
Chapter eight
Mikhail
The penthouse is empty. Not quiet. Empty. My gut tells me what it takes seconds to discover. She's not here.
I stand in the mouth of the bedroom and feel it in my bones before my brain catches up.
The closet door is ajar. The empty hook where her thrift-store peacoat used to hide behind my suits.
The nightstand drawer, open by a fraction, the cheap burner phone she had is gone, along with all of her old clothes.
She took nothing that was mine.
That realization sucks the air from my lungs. She left the silk. The cashmere. The softness I built around her to keep her close. She took only what she came with—the rags of a girl who survived foster care, shelters, and men like me.
That makes no fucking sense. Riley's smarter than that. Only fear makes smart people do dumb things. But that still is no fucking excuse.
My hands shake with a rage so clean it feels almost holy. "Dmitri." My voice is inhuman. Scraped to its raw edges. He materializes from the hall, still in his coat, still armed. He takes one look at my face and reaches for his phone.
"Find her."
It takes eleven minutes to pull the lobby footage.
Eighteen to access the South Station security feeds.
Nineteen to see the three men in black puffers closing around her on the platform bench.
Twenty to watch them drag her through a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY while her body goes limp, her tote bag crashing to the ground.
Twenty-one minutes, and I put a target on Boston.
I do not think or plan. The Pakhan vanishes, and what remains is something older. A beast who has found its mate in another predator's jaws. My vision narrows until all I see is Briggs.
Jayshaun Briggs.
He has been in the wind for weeks, but he is not a ghost. He is a rat, and rats need holes.
Viktor traces the cell tower pings from South Station.
The data narrows to one place. Underground.
An old engine room from the 1920s, sealed during the Big Dig, forgotten by maps, perfect for torture and disposal.
We go in hard.
Four of my men take the surface—sewer access, utility tunnels, any exit Big Jay might run to. Dmitri and Viktor flank me. We descend through a rusted access hatch behind a derelict storage shed, boots finding purchase on rungs slick with century-old grease.
The dark closes around us. Good. It knows me.
The first guard dies before he knows we are there.
My knife across his throat, hand clamped over his mouth, lowering him to the stone without a sound.
The second gets a look at my face and freezes.
I break his neck. The third raises a weapon—a cheap .
38—and Viktor puts two through his chest before the hammer can fall.
We move without hesitation. Jayshaun Briggs should have known this was coming.
I hear them before I see them. Voices echoing off brick. Water dripping somewhere in the black. And beneath it, faint but unmistakable, a woman's moan.
My Riley.
The engine room opens beneath the city, a maze. Brick walls are sweating condensation. A single yellow bulb swinging from a frayed cord, casting long, jerking shadows across the floor. And there—center stage, sitting on a folding chair like it's a throne—Jayshaun Briggs.
He has a knife. A switchblade, rolling between his fingers, catching the weak light.
At his feet, wrists zip-tied behind her, head lolling from whatever they gave her—
Riley.
There is a thin line of blood at her throat where the blade has already sliced her. Red washes over my vision. Jayshaun looks up and smiles.
"Speak of the devil," he drawls, rising.
I shoot him before he finishes his sentence.
I have no time for his words. The sound is deafening in the confined space.
He collapses, the folding chair skittering away, the switchblade clattering across stone.
I cross the distance in four strides. My boot finds his throat.
I press down until his eyes bulge and his hands claw at my ankle.
"Dmitri," I say, not looking away from Jayshaun's purpling face. "Get her."
Dmitri is already moving, knife out, cutting the zip-ties. Viktor sweeps the shadows, weapon raised, making sure no one else waits in the dark. But I only see her.
Riley's head lifts. Her eyes are glazed, dilated, but they find me through the fog. She tries to speak. Her lips form my name, but no sound comes.
Big Jay gurgles beneath my boot.
"You touched her," I sneer. "That was your death sentence."
I put two in his chest. Then one in his head. Then, because I am not finished, I put another round into his corpse.
Silence.
I drop to my knees in front of her. My hands are shaking again, but this time it is fear—pure, ice-cold terror. I cup her face, tilting it toward the light. The bruise. The cut. The drug-glaze in her eyes.
"Riley." My voice breaks. "Baby Girl. Look at me."
She blinks. Focuses with visible effort. "M'kail?"
The slur rips my heart out. But she is alive. She is breathing. My hands move down her body—checking for breaks, bleeding, or damage. I press my palm to her stomach.
"The baby," she chokes out. "Is the—"
"Shh. Don't speak."
But I am already scooping her up, cradling her against my chest. I press my face to her hair—the smell of smoke and sweat. "We need a doctor," Dmitri says.
"Bring the car. Now."
I carry her out of the dark. Into air that ices in my lungs. The Escalade is waiting, engine running, Dmitri at the wheel with a look on his face I have never seen before—something close to pity.
The doctor meets us at the Back Bay safe house within the hour.
A woman who knows better than to ask questions.
She examines Riley while I stand in the corner, helpless.
The doctor checks her pupils, her blood pressure, and the cut at her throat.
She listens to Riley's chest. Then she produces a portable Doppler, and for the second time in twenty-four hours, I hear it.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Fast. Furious. Alive.
The baby is fine.
Riley is fine.
The doctor administers something to flush the sedative, packs supplies for observation, and leaves without a word. She doesn't speak to me in this state. But the moment the door closes, and relief passes, rage returns.
It is a different rage now. Not the white-hot violence of the rescue. This is older. Deeper. She left me. That truth keeps finding new places to cut.
She sits on the edge of the bed, wrapped in a blanket. Her eyes are clearer now. Clear enough to know she is in trouble.
I lean against the wall across from her, arms crossed, before I trust myself to speak.
"Why?" I snarl.
She flinches. Her hands twist in the blanket. She says nothing. For once, her smart mouth is silent.
"What the fuck, Riley?" I say quietly. I am beyond shouting. "You ran. From me. Into that."
She stares at her lap. A bruise is darkening her wrist where they grabbed her. I want to kill Jayshaun again.
"Did you want to be with him?" I ask. "With that man?"
Her head snaps up, and her eyes flash. "No."
"You took nothing." I push off the wall, closing the distance. "You left the money. The cards. The clothes. If you were going to run, why not take what you could sell? Why not take a weapon? Why leave with nothing?"
Her jaw works. Her fingers roll and unroll the covers. "I couldn't," she whispers.
Then she clamps her mouth shut. Locks it. Throws away the key.
Frustration detonates in my chest. I grab her chin—not hard, but enough to force her eyes to mine. "You couldn't take my money, or you couldn't stay with me?"
Silence.
I release her and pace to the window. Giving us distance before I do something I regret. I want to shake her. I want to beg her. I want to keep her close enough that she can never vanish again.
"Talk to me, Riley." My voice drops. "Or I swear to God, I'll put you over my knee."
Her eyes snap to mine. Wide. Sharp. Finally, the fire. "You mean beat me up?" Her voice is hoarse but defiant. "Try it."
Something in my chest cracks open. Not anger. Relief. She is still in there. Still fighting. I cross the room in two strides. Snatch her off the bed by her upper arms. She gasps, but she doesn't cower.
"I should," I snarl, shaking her once, gently. "I should put you over my lap until you remember exactly what happens when you scare me like that. Do you have any idea what you put me through? Any idea what it felt like to walk into that empty room and know you were gone?"
Her breath comes hard and fast. Tears brim in her eyes but do not fall.
"Tell me what's going on." My voice breaks on the last word. I pull her against me, crushing her to my chest, my hand fisting in her wild braids. "Tell me why you ran. Tell me why you didn't want me. Tell me why I'm standing here with my heart in my fucking hands, and you won't even look at me."
She immediately stiffens and tries to push away.
"Tell me why you didn't want me either." The words tear out of me before I can stop them. Ragged. Ruined. "No one ever stays. Why don't I get a family, Riley?"
The last word breaks in my throat. I don't let her go.
I can't. I am holding on to the only solid thing in a world that has been nothing but ice and blood since I was eleven years old.
I press my face to the top of her head and feel the wetness on my cheeks.
Wetness tracks down my face, and I do not have the strength to hate it.
Her body goes still. Then it begins to shake. "You're taking mine," she whispers.
Hers? I freeze.
"You want me to hand you the only family I've ever had." Her voice rises, cracking, splintering. "You want me to carry this baby, love this baby, and then just… hand it over. Walk away. Be absent from my child's life. I can't, Mikhail. I can't do that to a child."
She pulls back, her hands coming up to grip my wrists, nails digging in hard enough to draw blood. Her face is wrecked—eyes swollen, lips bitten raw, tears streaming down her dark skin.