Chapter 14
VIKTOR
I’m gripping the edge of my desk so hard, my knuckles are white. The polished wood groans under the pressure, a faint, almost imperceptible protest against the storm raging inside me.
Leah. Someone dared to attack Leah, to try to end her life and take her from me.
The thought sends a fresh wave of ice and fire through my veins, a chilling fury that narrows my vision, sharpening the edges of the ornate gold frame with my father’s portrait across the room.
Leah, who is carrying my child, my heir, represents a fragile hope I hadn’t realized I was clinging to.
Never mind that whatever feelings I had for her in the beginning are only growing at a rapid pace.
I haven’t felt this way in decades; it’s a warmth that has begun to thaw the permafrost around my heart. And someone tried to take her from me.
The air in my home office, usually thick with the scent of old leather, expensive cigars, and the faint metallic tang of ambition, now feels suffocating, charged with my rage.
The heavy velvet drapes are drawn, blocking out the last vestiges of the fading autumn light, plunging the room into a perpetual twilight illuminated only by the soft glow of a single desk lamp and the flickering embers in the fireplace.
Each crackle of the burning logs seems to mock me, a reminder of the destructive fire within.
Iliya stands by the door, a silent, unmoving sentinel, a shadow carved from granite.
His face is a mask, as always, but the tension in his broad shoulders is visible in the subtle clench of his jaw, the way his eyes, usually so calm, dart almost imperceptibly toward the antique clock on the mantelpiece.
He knows. He always knows. He was the one who called, his voice tight, stripped of its usual measured cadence, relaying the news of the botched hit.
Botched.
The word echoes in my mind, a cruel, mocking whisper. It means they failed, yes, but it also means they tried. They dared to breach the sanctity of my world, to threaten what’s mine.
“Get them in here,” I rasp, my voice rough, barely recognizable even to my own ears.
Iliya nods, already moving, a fluid, efficient motion. He doesn’t question, doesn’t hesitate. Loyalty, absolute and unwavering, is a rare commodity in my world, and Iliya possesses it in spades.
Within moments, the heavy office door, reinforced with steel and solid oak, swings open, and my vor file in. Unlike the other day, they stand before me, a semicircle of hard faces, eyes wary. Some still avoid my gaze, and others meet it with faces kept carefully neutral.
Now they are my enforcers, my soldiers, my extensions in the brutal ballet of power. They’ve seen me like this before in moments of extreme anger, but this feels different. This is not about territory, or a rival shipment, or a disrespectful underling. This is personal. This is family.
“Someone tried to kill the woman carrying my child,” I growl, my voice low, dangerous, each word a stone dropped into a deep, dark well.
A ripple goes through my vor, a collective shift of weight, a subtle tensing of muscles under their expensive suits.
They know what this means. They know the code. They know the consequences.
“This was not a warning shot. This was an attempt to take her from me. To take my child. This is a declaration of war.
“Find them,” I command, my voice rising now, each word a hammer blow against an anvil.
“Find every last fucking bastard involved. I want names. I want faces. I want them brought to me. Alive, if you can manage it. Dead if you can’t.
But I fucking want them. I want them to understand the price of their insolence. ”
My gaze sweeps across their faces, lingering on each man to ensure my message is received, absorbed, and understood. There is no room for misinterpretation.
Just as they filed silently in, they leave, expectation and the knowledge of what failure will mean heavy on their shoulders, save for one, the youngest among my vor, who earned his stars through the depth and breadth of the intelligence network he’s built within our underworld.
It’s only shadowed by the depth and breadth of his loyalty to the Antonov Bratva.
Iliya closes the door and locks it with a soft click. He nods when Dmitri looks to him for confirmation, a silent signal to go ahead, and I tense. The simple fact that Dmitri is here tells me that whatever is said next, I will want to hear.
He clears his throat. “Moi Pakhan.”
I can see the apprehension in his posture. “Go on,” I press.
“There is—” He pauses, clears his throat again, shifts on his feet. “There is talk on the street.” His voice is hushed, as if the very air might carry the dangerous words beyond these walls.
I fix him with my gaze, my eyes burning holes through him. “Speak,” I rasp, the single word a command.
He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing, then continues, his voice gaining a fraction of strength, though still laced with caution.
“I’ve heard rumors and have sent my men after them.
I haven’t been able to get a confirmation, but they say whoever has been following your woman might be related to Peter’s accident. ”
My breath catches in my throat. I’ve always dismissed the whispers, the vague suspicions that circulated in the immediate aftermath.
An accident. A tragic, drunken mistake. A consequence of his reckless youth and terrible decisions.
That’s what I told myself, what I made everyone believe.
But now? Now the old doubts, the ones I buried deep, claw their way back to the surface, sharp and venomous.
“What kind of connection?” I press. My mind races, trying to connect the disparate threads, to find a pattern in the chaos.
“The word is that it wasn’t an accident, not really.
” Dmitri’s eyes finally meet mine and are filled with a grim, unsettling certainty.
“The rumor is that the same hand that pulled the strings on Peter’s car is going after someone else close to you.
” He pauses, taking a shaky breath. “It is my opinion that someone in the shadows is moving chess pieces, Boss. Someone who wants to dethrone you.”
The air crackles with unspoken tension, thick and suffocating.
Someone in the shadows is trying to dethrone me, to take my empire from me.
The words are an insult, a challenge thrown directly into the face of a lion.
My empire wasn’t built on a whim; it was forged in blood and iron, brick by painstaking brick, over three decades of ruthless ambition and calculated violence.
For years, I’ve crushed every challenge, every upstart, every fool who dared to dream of taking what was mine.
But this feels different. This doesn’t feel like a spontaneous act of defiance. This feels like a calculated move, a patient predator stalking me from the periphery, waiting for the opportune moment to strike.
The connection to Peter’s accident is a cold, hard knot in my gut, twisting tighter with each passing second. Peter has his faults—many faults—but was he just a pawn? Was his tragedy orchestrated, a strategic blow meant to weaken me, to chip away at my foundation so I was entirely without an heir?
The thought makes the rage boil over, a roaring inferno consuming every other emotion. The idea that someone could have so coldly, so deliberately, crippled my son, intended to kill him, simply to gain an advantage in this brutal power struggle, is unforgivable.
My gaze fixes on Dmitri, then sweeps to Iliya. He stands at attention, waiting for my command.
“Go,” I snarl, pointing a trembling finger at the door, the tremor not from fear, but from the sheer force of my suppressed fury. “Go and find them. Bring me answers. Bring me their heads.”
Dmitri turns, nods, and leaves, his movements swift and purposeful, and also hurried, because I know he doesn’t want to be in the room with me like this any longer than he has to be. The heavy door closes behind him with a soft thud, leaving Iliya and me in the silent office once more.
I turn to my second in command, my eyes still burning, but the raw, uncontrolled rage has begun to settle into a cold, hard resolve.
“Whoever this is...” My voice is softer now, but dangerously so, the calm before the storm, the stillness before the hurricane.
“Find them before they try again and correct their mistake.”
Iliya meets my gaze, his own eyes, usually so impassive, now holding a flicker of something akin to grim satisfaction. He understands; he always understands.
The hunt has begun. And it will be bloody.
I walk to the window, pulling back a corner of the heavy drape. Outside, the city lights begin to twinkle, a deceptive blanket of normalcy over a world where shadows conspire and blood is currency.
I will tear those shadows apart, one by one, until I find the hand that dared to touch my family. And then, they will pay.
They will all pay.