Chapter 31
PAVEL
I thought I knew the limits of my rage. I thought I understood how hot the fires in my soul could burn and how cold my blood could run.
Then my phone rang in the middle of a meeting with Artem and Gregor, and everything I thought I knew about fury shattered into a thousand pieces.
"Boss—" The voice was breathless, panicked. Kirill. One of my most trusted men. The man I'd personally assigned to shadow my wife.
I held up a hand, silencing Artem mid-sentence as he outlined our expansion into the docks. Gregor's eyes snapped to mine, reading the shift in the room like the predator he was.
"Where is she?" Three words. Ice-cold delivery. But inside, my blood was already turning to liquid fire.
"Police station on Hayes Street. Boss, there were twelve of them, maybe more. They were ready for us, armed and?— "
"You let them take her." Not a question. A death sentence.
"We tried to stop them. There was almost a shootout in the middle of the street, but she—she ordered us to stand down. Your wife took control and?—"
I was already moving, chair scraping against marble as I stood. My brother and Gregor were on their feet a heartbeat later, reading my body language like a battle plan.
"Since when do my men take orders from anyone but me?" My voice was deadly quiet, but the rage underneath was a living thing, clawing at my chest.
"She's strong, boss. Stronger than we expected. She saw the situation was about to go to hell and she prevented a bloodbath. But they have her, and I don't know why, and I?—"
"Shut up." I cut him off, my free hand already reaching for the gun holstered under my jacket. "Get back to the penthouse. Now."
I ended the call and looked at Artem and Gregor. Artem's jaw was tight, Gregor's hand already moving toward his own weapon.
" Los Infideles ?" Artem asked.
"Don't know. Don't care." I was stripping off my jacket, removing the shoulder holster. Going into a police station armed like this would be stupid. The ankle piece would have to do. "Someone took my wife."
The words tasted like acid in my mouth. My wife. The woman who'd become my entire fucking world without me even realizing it was happening .
Gregor was already pulling out his phone. "I'll call Kostya, get him down there with the legal team."
"No time." I was moving toward the door, my brother and Gregor flanking me like we were going to war. Because we were. "I want her back. Now."
The elevator ride to the garage felt like an eternity. My hands were shaking—not from fear, but from the effort it was taking not to put my fist through the metal walls.
"Pavel." Artem's voice was calm, measured. The voice he used when I was about to do something spectacularly violent and stupid. "We need to think this through."
"No." I stepped out as the doors opened, heading straight for the Range Rover. "We need to get my wife back before I burn that entire fucking precinct to the ground."
Gregor slid into the driver's seat without being asked. He knew better than to let me behind the wheel right now. Artem climbed into the passenger seat, already dialing numbers.
"Kostya? Yeah, it's Artem. Hayes Street precinct. Now. Bring everything you've got."
The entire ride to the station, I thought about what they could be doing to her, why they would have her. We had no issues with the local police. To the best of my knowledge, there were no open investigations.
Even if there were, my family was well above their fucking pay grade.
If this was about the US government taking issue with what we’d been doing, the FBI would have brought in Gregor or Artem. Not my fucking wife.
Did they think they could get her to turn on me ?
The thought made my vision go red. If some rookie cop thought he could use her to make a name for himself, I was going to teach him exactly what happened to people who touched what was mine.
The second the Range Rover pulled up to the police station I got out, not even waiting for the car to come to a complete stop. I marched in, right past the receptionist and into the bullpen, where a dozen officers stopped and stared.
"Where is my wife?" I said. I didn't yell. There was no need to. Everyone there knew who the fuck I was and what I was doing there.
Two men in suits approached me, detectives, most likely.
"Mr. Ivanov–"
I didn't stop to listen to them. I pushed right past them and went to the corner office where a portly man with a pockmarked face was sitting behind the large desk.
"Where the fuck is my wife?" Anger and promises of violence were laced into every syllable.
He looked up, ready to yell at the interruption until he recognized me. The blood drained from his face as I stalked into his office. His jowls trembled with fear.
"Bring me to my wife, or I'll start with your fingers and work my way up until there's nothing left of you but screams and regret. Then I'll do the same to every cop in this building while your families watch."
He nodded, his eyes wide.
Shaking, he stood and led me through the bullpen and down a long, bland hallway with doors on either side.
"She's in here, just answering a few questions for Detective Cortez. I was just about to come down and check to see if she needed anything, water or?—"
He took a ring of keys from his belt and started fumbling with them.
"Is she?" I asked.
"Is she what?" He stopped and looked up at me.
"Is she answering any of your questions?"
"No, actually. The only thing she has said was to call you. She has been very uncooperative."
With no patience for his fumbling, I took a step back and kicked the door in.
Alina sat in the small, sterile interrogation room. She was pale and trembling, her wrists bound in metal cuffs, red where the metal bit into her delicate flesh.
Anger flared in me.
Then when I met her eyes, and she turned her head to the side to show the red handprint across her face, I fucking lost it.
I walked over to Alina and tilted her chin up so I could see the impression on her face more clearly. It wasn't a crisp single handprint—there were several that overlapped. Someone had dared to strike her multiple times.
"Pavel, I didn't say anything." She turned her head to look me in the eye, pleading for me to believe her.
"You need to teach your bitch some fucking manners," the detective sneered.
In a glance, I took in the man’s stance…and his hands on his belt buckle.
A howl of rage was torn from me as I pulled my hand back and slammed my fist into his face, the crack of his jawbone beneath my knuckles satisfying .
He spun and collapsed on the floor, out cold.
Fucking pussy.
He went down with one little hit. I wanted to hit him again, over and over, like he had struck my wife.
But at this moment, Alina was my only concern.
There would be plenty of time to work my rage out as I slowly tortured him to death later.
Kicking him over, I reached into his pocket for his keys.
Alina flinched at the sudden violence.
A whimper left her lips, and her eyes were glassy with unshed tears.
She wasn't sobbing, but her lips trembled, and when I reached for her cuffs, her breath hitched.
"Please, Pavel," she whispered. "It wasn't me. I didn't betray you. I would never–"
Finding the small handcuff key, I nodded. “I know, kitten. I'm so sorry this happened, but I am so proud of you for the way you handled it. You did everything right."
The cuffs fell away with a sharp click, and the moment her wrists were free, I grabbed her face in my hands and crashed my lips against hers.
I needed her lips against mine; I needed to taste her and know that she was back in my arms where she belonged.
That I had her now, and she was safe.
She kissed me back, her kiss just as desperate.
Her hands grabbed the lapels of my jacket as she pulled me close, pressing her body against mine in a way that was possessive, hard, claiming .
She needed this contact, the reassurance, as badly as I did.
"I know, baby," I murmured against her mouth. "I have you now. These assholes are going to pay for laying a finger on you. I am going to make every single one of them wish they were never born. They will be a warning to anyone who thinks about touching you again."
"Because I am yours," she said before kissing me again.
Fuck, that felt good to hear.
She was mine; she was always going to be mine.
Body and soul.
She was the woman I was going to come home to every night, the one who would make life worth living. I had always lived to further the interests of my family. It was my passion, my meaning behind life. Now it was her.
Everything was for her.
It was strange, how certain I'd been—how, from the moment I learned the police had taken her, I knew it hadn't been her doing.
I knew she wasn't going to betray me.
There was no logical reason for that certainty. I was aware that our relationship was built on force, manipulation, and control.
But still, when it came to Alina—I trusted her. Completely. Even though I had forgotten that I controlled her grandmother's fate.
That was a terrifying revelation. Leverage was how I knew who to trust and who not to. Leverage and blood.
But Alina was different. I didn't need the leverage, but just the same, I trusted her.
A knock at the door had me breaking the kiss and turning to the now open door behind me, ready to lash out with the fury still simmering beneath the surface.
Artem entered and looked down at the detective still unconscious on the floor. He grabbed his sleeve and ripped it up to show the Los Infideles tattoos on the inside of his forearms.
Definitely not a cop.
"Take that piece of garbage out of here," I said to Artem without looking away from Alina.
The unconscious detective was dragged from the room by two of Artem's men who had materialized in the doorway.
None of the other cops moved to stop them.
They knew better. Everyone in this building understood exactly what was going to happen to Detective Cortez once we got what we needed from him.
He'd wake up in one of our warehouses, and by the time I was done with him, he'd beg me to let him die. But first, I had to get my wife to safety.
Kostya stepped around the drag marks on the floor like they were nothing more than spilled coffee.
"We need to talk," Artem said.
I looked around this little room that wasn't supposed to be used for interrogations. There were no cameras, no window with two-way mirrors. This was a room meant for lawyers and their clients to have privileged conversations.
That asshole brought her in here, knowing there would be no evidence of what happened.
My blood started boiling again as I thought of all the things that could have happened to her .
Alina's hand rested on my shoulder and that calmed me enough to think clearly and face Artem.
"Why the fuck did they take her?"
Kostya shot a look at Alina.
"She can stay," I said, not wanting her out of my reach, let alone out of my sight.
"Of course, but first we need to document the marks on her face for our records. The police didn't orchestrate this. Los Infideles were behind it all. They bribed and blackmailed to get a few of their men police badges and access."
"How?" I asked.
"They have a new leader. A ghost in the underworld. We don't have the specifics yet, or why Alina was a target. But we know they have money, power, and a lot of influence. We think it might be related to whoever had been funding Solovyov."
"Fuck."
First, I was going to take my wife home. I was going to fuck her until we both felt better, then I was going to get to work.
I meant what I had said.
I was going to burn their world to the fucking ground and hang their corpses from the fucking rafters as a message to everyone else in our little world, including this ghost.
This was what happened when you fucking dared to touch my wife.