Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Viktor
When I slammed the hard proof of Yuri selling us out right onto the elders' table, those old bones went gray as ash.
High-res photos. Offshore account transfers. Encrypted messages handing over our smuggling routes. Black and white. Yuri had already become a dead man. Igor snapped out of it first—right in front of me, he shredded that motion to remove me into confetti, babbling that he'd been fooled by a traitor.
Old foxes always knew which way the wind blew. Months of rebellion ended right there, strangled by evidence.
I had won.
I walked out of the council chamber and actually felt something I hadn't felt in a long time—lightness. All I had to do was sign the execution order tonight, dump Yuri's head into the Hudson, clean up my side of the street... then go see my princess.
Then I pushed open my study door, reached for a celebratory vodka.
And the encrypted line, the phone almost no one even knew existed, started vibrating like a goddamn death rattle.
Dmitri. He had no business calling me at this hour.
"Talk."
A few seconds of silence stretched on the other end—wrong, too long. Then Dmitri's voice came tight, like a wire about to snap.
"Pakhan, Hailey got taken."
My fingers locked around the phone.
"She was in SoHo this afternoon with Samantha," Dmitri fired off. "Our guys lost them for three minutes. Three. When they caught up, Hailey had already gotten dragged into a black van in an alley at Prince and Mott."
The air in my study vanished.
I heard my heartbeat. One. Two. Slow. Clean.
"The van," I said, and my voice came out so cold it didn't sound like me. "Plate."
"Stolen. We've been pulling every camera on the route."
"Where the hell is Samantha?"
"Across the street at a dessert place. She came out, realized Hailey was gone, and she lost it—running the blocks screaming. Our guys stopped her and kept her steady."
I shut my eyes. Fear—pure, choking—wrapped around my heart like an ice-cold snake.
My Hailey.
I had pushed her away. I had told her she was free. I had convinced myself that as long as I kept eyes on her in the dark, she'd be safe in the sun.
I had been a cocky, arrogant idiot.
"Pakhan?" Dmitri pressed.
I opened my eyes.
"Pull every crew," I ordered, yanking a drawer open and snapping spare mags onto my belt one by one. "Lock down every outbound road, every port, every private airfield. I don't care if you have to turn Manhattan inside out—find her. I want an ops map on my desk in thirty minutes."
"Understood."
"And," I added, grabbing the coat off the chair, "I want to know who did it. When you find them—don't touch them."
I paused.
"Leave him for me."
Time dragged like a knife.
I rode in the back of the Maybach toward Manhattan with a laptop spread over my knees, Dmitri's live feeds flickering across the screen. My phone kept ringing. Every call carried another piece of rot. The van had swapped plates three times and ditched two of our tails before it even hit Brooklyn.
I forced myself to breathe. Panic solves nothing. Panic kills Hailey.
But when Dmitri called again, his first sentence smashed what little calm I'd held onto.
"Pakhan, there's something... I don't know if I should tell you now."
"Tell me."
"We checked Hailey's movements this past month. She's been routine—except one thing." He hesitated. "Three days ago, she went alone to a pharmacy in Queens. The camera caught it. She bought... a pregnancy test."
The world went silent.
I crushed the phone so hard my knuckles bleached white. Outside the window, the city lights blurred into streaks.
A pregnancy test.
"You're sure," I said. My voice sounded dry, far away.
"The footage is clear, Pakhan. Miss Woods hesitated at the register for a long time."
I sank back into the seat, tipped my head up, and shut my eyes.
That night flooded in without warning. Her pinned to the wall.
My hands ripping fabric. Her tears hitting my skin.
Her crying, begging me to stop. And me—like a rabid animal—taking every piece of hate, every piece of shame, every fear I'd ever swallowed and unleashing it on the only woman I'd ever loved.
And then—near the end—I remembered it. She had lifted her hand to shield her lower belly and slapped me.
I had laughed, furious, thinking she was just fighting back.
She had been protecting the baby.
Our baby.
Pain detonated in my chest, sharp enough to split me, pouring through my blood into every bone. These hands had ended more lives than I could count. And these same hands had torn her clothes, ignored her pleas—while she might have been carrying my child.
I had hurt them. And now they were both at someone else's gunpoint.
"Pakhan? You still there?"
I opened my eyes. The pain, the self-disgust—I forced it all down in one brutal shove, packed it into something colder than Siberian permafrost.
"Dmitri," I said, flat as stone. "I changed my mind."
"What?"
"Whoever touched Hailey," I said, each word measured, "I don't want him to die easy."
The break came at five a.m.
Dmitri pulled a strip of footage from the last stretch where the van vanished—something they hadn't wiped clean. On-screen, the van turned into an industrial pocket in Brooklyn, and the streetlight caught the passenger's face, clear as day.
Brown hair. A smug, respectable mask.
Matthew.
The weak, clingy assistant DA. The man who'd betrayed Hailey and still wouldn't stay dead in her life. The ex-fiancé who haunted the edges.
I stared at his face and laughed under my breath.
A pathetic bastard who couldn't even keep his own woman. A prosecutor who hid behind the law and ran his mouth. How the hell did he plan a kidnapping? How did he shake my trained eyes?
He had to have someone behind him.
And in this world, the one person who wanted me to lose control most, who knew exactly where my soft spot was, who could move men and slip through my defenses—
Only one.
"Yuri," I ground out through my teeth.
The moment the name left my mouth, my private phone rang.
Unknown number. One text.
"Pakhan, long time. Your little princess is with me. The baby is, too. If you want them alive, you come alone. Brooklyn. Red Hook. The old slaughterhouse. If you bring one man, I'll chop her fingers off one by one right in front of you."
I stared at the screen for ten full seconds. Then I slid the phone away and looked at Dmitri in the front seat, my voice calm as a frozen lake.
"Red Hook. Old slaughterhouse."
"That's a trap, Pakhan." Dmitri twisted around fast. "Yuri telling you to come alone means he plans to put you down in there."
"I know."
"Then—"
"Then we don't play by his rules." I flipped the laptop open and pulled up a satellite view of the abandoned industrial grid.
"Tell the 'Hounds' to go in through the west drainage canal.
Have Kozlov take a sniper team up the water tower on the east side—high ground, lock down the whole courtyard.
I go in to talk. You close the net from outside. "
"If he kills her—"
"He won't." I stared at the outline of the building on-screen. "He wants my seat. My power. Hailey is his only leverage. If he kills her, he has nothing."
At least, I bet he didn't have the guts.
Because if he touched one hair on Hailey's head, I would've buried him—and the whole Sorokov family behind him—right alongside her.
"Before that, you're going to find two people for me. Their files will hit your phone now. Fast."
"Got it, Pakhan." Dmitri never asked questions. I trusted him. Next came the fun part—ending the traitor.
By the time we rolled toward Brooklyn, dawn had just started to bleed into the sky.
I opened a black case beside me. On top lay a pair of pure black leather gloves—the ones Hailey had stayed up sewing for me, the stitching along the inside of the thumb slightly crooked. For a month, they'd lived in my inner pocket, close to my body.
I pulled them on. The leather was rough, stubborn. It wrapped my fingers like it had been made to.
I wasn't making the same mistake again.
Last time, I'd used violence to push her away. This time, I'd use these hands—wearing what she'd stitched—to take her back.
No matter the cost.
The old slaughterhouse in Red Hook was a massive concrete beast, rust bleeding down its sides. Old sewage pipes clung to the exterior like dead veins.
My convoy stopped half a mile out. Dmitri led the "Hounds" into the drainage canal. Kozlov's snipers climbed the east water tower without a sound. I clipped in my earpiece and checked the signal.
"Call positions."
"'Hounds' set."
"Tower set. Courtyard stays in my glass, Pakhan," Kozlov's low voice came through. "You walk in, I can make it bloom anytime."
"Good."
I straightened my coat and walked alone toward the half-open, rust-eaten iron door.
Inside was darker than outside. Yellow emergency lights flickered here and there, throwing long shadows across rows of seized-up hooks. The air smelled like old blood and rust—sweet, rotten, nauseating.
I stepped into the center of that darkness.
And I saw her.
Hailey had been tied to an iron chair, wrists bound behind her. She wore the oatmeal cashmere sweater I recognized, now so filthy the color almost disappeared. A cut split her temple, dried blood on her pale cheek. Her lip was busted, too.
My heart clenched like a fist.
"Hailey. Fuck." The words came out raw. "How the hell did they—"
She lifted her head. The second she saw me—
Her green eyes shined with tears, but there was no hatred in them. No panic like I expected.
"Viktor, I'm sorry, Viktor..." she sobbed, soft and broken, every sound stabbing me. Animals. I was going to kill them.
"I'm sorry, princess. I dragged you into my mess after all." My voice went low. "Don't be scared. I'm getting you out."
"How touching," a voice said from the shadows.
I snapped my emotions shut and narrowed my eyes.
From behind a rusted support pillar stepped—not Yuri—but Matthew, wearing an expensive camel coat, hair combed to perfection.