Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Viktor
The door slammed shut behind Hailey, that heavy redwood sealing off the sight of her bolting like hell.
Silence swallowed my office again. The air still held her—faint vanilla, sweet as sin. It pissed me off how much I noticed.
I sank back into my leather chair, yanked my tie loose, and swallowed hard.
She had looked like a feral little cat with its fur up.
I chuckled under my breath and hit the hidden control switch under the desk.
The giant wall screen—half the damn wall, usually streaming Nasdaq—flickered once and snapped into ultra-clear live surveillance.
It showed the office next door. The one I'd had cleared out by force ten minutes earlier and assigned to her.
Onscreen, Hailey burst in like a stumbling storm. She whipped that sad canvas tote onto the expensive leather couch, then covered her face with both hands and spun in place like she'd lost her mind.
I could practically hear her breathing—tight, furious—and the muffled curse words she was probably throwing at me with every damn synonym she had.
Her ears were so red they looked ready to bleed. Her chest rose and fell too fast.
She was pissed. She was scared. She was humiliated that she'd run.
Watching her cornered—caught in the net I'd woven—sent that sick, addictive rush through my blood. It hit harder than signing a billion-dollar black-market weapons deal.
I figured she'd crack. Or at least sit in there shaking for the rest of the afternoon.
But less than three minutes later, she dropped her hands.
Hailey stood still, dragged in a deep breath like it hurt, then slapped her own burning cheeks—hard. Twice.
Then she walked to the desk, pulled out the chair, and sat.
When she opened her laptop and pulled up the XM acquisition file she'd left half-finished yesterday, the panic and shame cut off like someone flipped a switch.
What replaced it was cold focus.
I narrowed my eyes and leaned forward, elbows on the desk, gaze locked to the screen.
She disappeared into the work.
No fake effort. No scattered, shaken bullshit from what I'd done to her minutes ago.
Her fingers flew over the keyboard. Those dull, tangled international tax structures—shit even Carol couldn't untangle—started taking shape under her hands like she was stripping wire clean.
When she hit a hard spot, she bit the end of her pen without thinking, those green eyes drilling the screen, brows pulled tight.
She scribbled fast on a blank sheet. A few numbers.
Then she froze—like something clicked—and a sharp, sly spark lit her eyes.
Excitement. Then her hands went back to the keys.
Every so often, the long stillness wore on her.
She leaned back and stretched, arms up. That slim black dress tugged higher with the movement, tracing the narrow line of her waist—too fucking perfect—and the long, even legs crossed at the knee, wrapped in nude stockings.
Heat snapped to life low in my gut.
My suit pants went tight, painful. I muttered a curse in Russian and forced myself not to storm into the next room.
At first, I admitted it—I'd thought she was a fun distraction. A regular girl scraping by at the bottom of Manhattan, cheated on by her fiancé, yet she'd still knocked on my door that drunk night and, with that desperate, offering-herself look, ordered me to "ruin" her.
Her body had grabbed me by the throat. I'd wanted to own her, to hear her cry and beg under me. It had been basic rot in a man at the top—power and control, nothing more.
But now, watching Hailey on that screen—calm, sharp, professional, and freakishly gifted with complex numbers—
I couldn't pretend she was some pretty ornament that clung to men and looked nice on display.
She was a diamond buried in mud. Harder than a diamond, maybe.
Her worth. Her independence. That stubborn streak that kept biting down and getting shit done even when the world tried to crush her—something about it carved into me deeper than her body ever had. It lit a hunger so deep it felt like it could scorch my soul.
I wanted her.
Not just her body. Her mind. Her loyalty. Everything.
I picked up my phone and started typing, slow and steady. I knew exactly how to blow up the calm she'd built.
This was cat and mouse, and I was the only one placing bets.
Me: That desk is top-grade Italian mahogany.
I watched the feed. A few seconds later, Hailey's phone lit up on her desk. She frowned, confused, picked it up, and opened it.
I kept typing, my mouth twisting into something cruel and amused.
Me: It's the perfect height—right at my waist. I've been thinking... if I walk through that door right now and shove you down on that desk. Your upper body would hit those M&A papers, and I'd hike your skirt from behind.
I hit send, eyes burning into the screen.
Hailey jolted like she'd been shocked. She slapped the phone face-down on the desk, spine snapping straight.
I let out a low laugh and didn't stop.
Me: Your legs would have to spread wide. That wood would feel cold, but I'd be hot. I'd push all the way in, as deep as you can take, until you cry and beg me to stop. Tell me, princess, is the chair you're sitting on already wet?
On the monitor, Hailey bit her lower lip so hard it had to hurt.
Color flared across her cheeks—fast, vivid, like a sunset catching fire.
She didn't look at the phone again. Instead, she squeezed her thighs together with brutal force, shifting in that leather chair like something burning-hot was torturing her through the fabric.
That damn little demon.
My body reacted like it was about to detonate. My breathing went heavy. I wanted to rip my tie off, kick the door in, and turn every filthy word I'd sent into reality.
But I held it back.
Watching her fight on that knife edge—reason versus want—in an office that was supposed to be all polished respectability, getting wrecked by a few dirty lines from me... it was a fucking masterpiece.
Two short, steady raps sliced through the heat and shattered it.
I drew a slow breath, forced the fire down, and my eyes turned cold—the Pakhan again.
"Come in."
Yuri stepped inside. Dark gray suit, perfect as always. A black encrypted folder in his hand. His face was the same practiced cold and precise. As my right hand, he always knew when to talk and when to shut up.
"Pakhan." He stopped three steps from my desk. "We got the follow-up from last night's ambush."
I didn't cut the surveillance feed. I only tilted my gaze, letting him continue.
"The people in the punishment room used some pressure.
The guy talked." Yuri's voice stayed flat, like he was giving a weather report.
"It did come from a compromised line under our network.
But the one pulling strings was the Sorokov family.
One of their outer captains bought one of ours and got your location update from last night. "
Sorokov.
The name turned my vision dark.
"So the old bastard finally wants war with me." I tapped the redwood with my fingers, casual on the surface, ice underneath.
"Actually, the opposite, Pakhan." Yuri held the folder out. "This morning, Sorokov himself called on an encrypted line. He said he was 'deeply shocked' by the ambush, swore it was a rogue move, and he executed that captain overnight to 'appease' you."
A sacrifice. A cover.
"Fine." My jaw tightened. "What does he want?"
"Peace. Or more accurately, to push the alliance forward." Yuri looked at me, all business, passing along the message that made my skin crawl. "He said, 'Natalia is very worried about your safety. She booked a table tonight at Le Bernardin. She will wait for you.'"
Yuri paused.
"If you don't go, they will take it as Ivanov officially rejecting the alliance."
"Let them." I cut him off. "Tell that woman if she shows up on her own again, or if her family tries any more cheap little tricks, I won't mind paying her father a personal visit. Understood?"
"Yes."
Yuri should've left. He didn't.
He stood there, those hawk eyes tracking the direction my attention had drifted earlier, and he glanced at the wall screen.
On it, Hailey was still flushed, fanning herself at the computer like she was trying to put out a fire.
"Pakhan," Yuri said, the tone of a second-in-command doing his job. "Last night was a major security breach. Your focus should be on cleaning out the eyes inside the family, not..." He paused, eyes flicking across the screen. "Some irrelevant entertainment."
I narrowed my eyes, danger sharpening to a point. "Yuri. Are you telling me how to run my life?"
"I wouldn't." He dipped his head, respectful but steady. "I'm reminding you the situation doesn't allow distractions."
"Get out," I said.
Yuri bowed once, turned, and left—clean and efficient.
The door shut. I rubbed my brow, irritated. He wasn't wrong. I was Pakhan. My world was supposed to be power, blood, and control.
And yet I couldn't stop staring at a surveillance feed of a woman.
I hit the button and killed the video. The wall screen switched back to boring market lines.
Maybe I needed air.
I stood, grabbed my coat off the chair, and walked out.
I didn't go back to the estate. That place was a grave. My father's voice never really left those walls. My mother still clutched a house full of ghosts like she couldn't let them go. Unless someone held a gun to my head, I wouldn't step through that door.
I went to my Upper East Side apartment—the whole floor, mine alone.
No bodyguards. No staff. No rituals and rules that soaked the estate like poison. The number of people who could enter here didn't take more than one hand to count.
The second I opened the door, a sharp Cuban cigar smell punched me in the face.
"If I'd been here to kill you, you'd have been shot in the head three times already," a lazy male voice called from deep in my living room, drenched in mockery.
Oleg lounged on my expensive Italian leather couch, legs crossed. He held a glass of my top-shelf aged whiskey, and in his other hand he pinched a half-burned cigar.