6. Luka
LUKA
I should throw them away.
That’s the first sensible thought I have after leaving the boardroom.
The second sensible thought is that I should call Nina back in, make it very clear that what happened was a mistake, and place enough distance between us that neither of us can confuse desire for permission again.
The third is that I should fire her.
Not because she deserves it. But because I no longer trust myself around her.
Instead, I walk into my office, close the door, and stand with my back to it for longer than I care to admit, listening to the faint activity beyond the glass.
Assistants moving through the corridor. Phones ringing.
Men speaking quietly, carefully, because this floor belongs to me and everyone on it knows better than to sound relaxed.
My office is still exactly as I left it this morning. Files squared on the desk. Coffee untouched. The city spread cold and silver beyond the windows. Everything ordered. Everything controlled.
Except me.
I take off my jacket and stop.
The weight in the inside pocket is nearly nothing, but I feel it as if it is a weapon.
Nina’s underwear.
A thin scrap of pale fabric I took from her body and put into my jacket as if I had any right to keep it. As if I’m twenty again, stupid with hunger and lacking discipline. As if I haven’t built an empire on the simple principle that wanting something is not the same as taking it.
I remove them from my pocket.
For a moment, I only look.
Delicate. Soft. Intimate in a way that feels more obscene now, alone in my office, than it did when she was trembling on my conference table with my mouth between her thighs.
I close my fist around them. I should throw them away.
But I don’t. Instead, I lift them to my face.
The moment I inhale, something in me turns primitive.
Her scent is still there. Warm and faintly sweet, mixed with the clean trace of her skin and the sharper, intimate proof of what I did to her. My fingers tighten around the fabric. My eyes close before I can stop them.
Why? Why would I do this?
The answer is immediate and unwelcome.
Because I want evidence.
Not for anyone else. Not to use against her. Not to frighten or humiliate her.
For myself.
Because for years, Nina Hale has been a line I refused to cross, a door I kept locked, a girl turned woman in the corner of my life with quick eyes and sharper words and a dangerous habit of making me feel human at the worst possible times.
And today, for a few irreversible minutes, she was not forbidden.
She was real. Hot under my hands. Open beneath my mouth. Shaking because of me.
I press the fabric harder against my palm and let out a slow breath through my nose.
This is not acceptable. None of this is acceptable.
I cross to my desk, open the bottom drawer, and place the underwear inside the private compartment where I keep things no assistant, lawyer, or security chief is permitted to touch. Then I close it and lock it.
A ridiculous act. A damning one.
My phone lights on the desk.
Nina.
Her name on the screen feels like a hand on the back of my neck.
I let it ring.
Once. Twice. Three times. Then it stops.
A second later, a message appears.
Nina: Are we going to discuss the boardroom or are you pretending you’ve developed selective amnesia?
I stare at it.
My mouth almost moves. Then I turn the phone face down.
No. Not now. Not when I can still taste her.
Not when all it would take is one wrong word from her for me to go back out there, drag her into this office, and finish what I deliberately did not start.
The intercom buzzes.
I press the button. “Yes?”
Meredith’s voice comes through, crisp and cautious. “Mr. Kazan, Kirill Antonov is here. He says he has an appointment.”
“He does not.”
“He says you’ll want to hear him.”
That almost amuses me. Men who say such things rarely have anything worth hearing. But I need the distraction.
“Send him in,” I say.
A minute later, Kirill Antonov enters my office with the desperate confidence of a man who has rehearsed this conversation in the elevator.
He’s forty-five, handsome in a soft, expensive way, with a watch too large for his wrist and a smile that does not reach his eyes.
He made his money in logistics, lost most of it in bad debt, and has spent the last six months trying to convince me to let him touch one of my port contracts.
Behind him comes his security partner, Oleg Taran, a broad-shouldered ex-military type with a flattened nose and eyes that move too much. Oleg used to work in private protection across the Baltics before deciding there was more money in standing behind weak men who wanted to look strong.
I don’t like him. This doesn’t make him special.
A third man waits near the door: Pavel Semyonov, one of my own security coordinators, clean-shaven, quiet, too neat. He’s worked under my head of security for eleven months. Competent, by all visible measures. Men like that are useful.
They are also occasionally dangerous.
“Luka,” Kirill says, spreading his arms as if we are friends.
“We are not on first-name terms,” I say.
His smile flickers. “Mr. Kazan.”
I sit behind my desk and gesture to the chair opposite me. “You have five minutes.”
Kirill laughs, but the sound has sweat under it. “Always efficient.”
“Four minutes and fifty seconds.”
He sits.
Oleg remains standing behind him. Pavel stays by the door, silent.
Kirill places a folder on my desk. “I’ll be direct. I want in on the northern route.”
“No.”
He blinks.
He expected bargaining, a slow tightening of terms, a performance of consideration. Men like Kirill often mistake refusal for an opening position.
“It’s a strong proposal,” he says carefully. “The distribution network is already built. My people can move faster than Novik’s, and with your capital—”
“No.”
His jaw tightens. “You haven’t read it.”
“I know enough.”
“You know what people have told you.”
“I know what you owe, who you owe it to, and what happens to men who use my routes to pay off their stupidity.”
Color rises under his collar.
Oleg shifts behind him, very slightly.
Kirill leans forward. “I made mistakes.”
“You made bets.”
“I can fix it.”
“Not with my assets.”
His charm finally thins. “If you lock me out, I lose everything.”
“Yes.”
A pause.
Kirill’s mouth opens, then closes again. He looks suddenly less like a businessman and more like a man who has heard footsteps behind him in an empty street.
“I have a family,” he says.
The room goes still.
There are several things men should not do in my office.
Begging is one. Using family as currency is another.
I lean back in my chair. “Then you should’ve remembered them before you gambled with money that belonged to people less forgiving than I am.”
Kirill swallows. “You’re not forgiving.”
“No,” I say. “But I’m honest.”
His eyes flick toward Oleg, then back to me. “There are others interested.”
“I know.”
“One of them will say yes,” Kirill says.
“Then go to him.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“If I go to Karpov, he’ll take the route.”
I study him.
Roman Karpov. Karpov has been circling the edges of my legitimate business for months, buying weak suppliers, offering foolish terms to desperate men, whispering that Kazan money is too careful, too corporate.
He wants the old channels. He wants leverage.
More importantly, he wants to test which of my people can be bought before I notice.
I always notice.
“You came here to threaten me with Karpov?” I ask.
Kirill pales. “No. I came here because I prefer to work with you.”
“You came here because Karpov offered you a rope and you realized too late it was a leash.”
Oleg’s face remains blank.
I turn my attention to him. “Oleg,” I say.
His eyes snap to mine. “Mr. Kazan.”
“You advised this visit?”
A pause.
Small, but present.
“I advised Mr. Antonov to explore all options.”
“That was not my question.”
His jaw works once. “Yes.”
I look back at Kirill. “There’s your first mistake.”
Kirill turns his head slightly, confused.
I close the folder without opening it and slide it back across the desk. “The answer is no. You will not touch my routes. You will not use my name in negotiations. You will not tell Karpov or anyone else that you were ever close to a deal with me.”
Kirill’s hand closes over the folder. “And if I cannot pay?”
“Then run.”
His face drains.
I stand, and the conversation ends because I decide it has. “Pavel,” I say.
Pavel straightens by the door. “Yes, sir.”
“Escort Mr. Antonov and his adviser out. Make sure no copies of that proposal remain in the building.”
“Yes, sir.”
Oleg looks at me for one beat too long.
There’s no open challenge in it. He is not that foolish.
But there is calculation. And I file it away.
Kirill rises slowly. At the door, he turns back as if there is one last word that might save him.
There’s not.
He leaves without saying it.
When they are gone, I remain standing by my desk, looking at the closed door.
My phone lights again. Nina.
This time she calls.
I watch her name pulse on the screen until it stops. Then I turn away from it.
For the rest of the day, I avoid her.
I send instructions through Meredith. I have files brought by Pavel. I take one meeting on the twenty-eighth floor instead of my office. When Nina sends a message asking whether the investor pack requires the revised schedule, I answer only: Yes.
When she asks whether I approved the car for the airport transfer, I answer: Handle it.
When she asks whether I still want the diary updated for Alina, I don’t answer at all.
Cowardice, if named by someone foolish.
Strategy, if named by me.
The result is the same.
At seven, Kazan Tower begins to empty. The executive floor quiets. Assistants leave in pairs. Lawyers disappear into elevators with loosened ties and dead eyes. Security shifts change. The building settles into its night rhythm, softer on the legitimate floors and sharper beneath them.
At seven-thirty, Meredith knocks once and opens my office door.
“Your car is ready, Mr. Kazan.”
I look up from a report I have not read in ten minutes. “Where is Miss Hale?”