Chapter 6 – Lukyan
One week after the wedding, my life remains largely unchanged, which is surprising. Most people would assume marriage alters something fundamental. Schedules. Habits. Priorities. Living arrangements.
In my case, very little changes.
I still wake before sunrise. I still spend most of my day working. I still review financial reports over breakfast and answer calls long after midnight. The only noticeable difference is that there is now another person living in my house.
A wife.
The word still feels strange. Because I never expected to make it. Marriage was never part of my plans. Neither were relationships. They complicated things. People became vulnerabilities when you cared about them.
I learned that lesson a long time ago.
So far, Sofia and I coexist more than anything else. She has her wing. I have mine. She has her bedroom. I have mine. I never asked her to move into my room, and she has never shown the slightest interest in doing so.
Frankly, the arrangement suits both of us.
The few interactions we have are polite and brief.
Good morning. Good night. How was your day? Fine. And yours?
Productive interactions, and then silence.
The strangest part is that the silence isn’t uncomfortable. Sofia seems perfectly capable of entertaining herself for hours.
Most evenings, I find her exactly where I left her.
Curled into a chair somewhere with a book. Sometimes in the library. Sometimes in the sitting room. Sometimes by the window overlooking the grounds. Always reading.
I have never met someone so devoted to books.
She reads while eating. Reads while walking. Reads while waiting for tea. Yesterday, I found her reading on the floor because she apparently became distracted while organizing a shelf and forgot chairs existed.
I stood there for almost thirty seconds, watching her, before she noticed me.
She looked up.
Blinking.
Confused.
As though she genuinely couldn’t understand why another human being would interrupt a perfectly good chapter.
Then she returned to reading.
I walked away.
Marriage, apparently.
Most of my attention remains focused elsewhere.
Karl Jonathan.
For the past week, every lead has ended the same way. Too late. A warehouse abandoned hours before our arrival. A safe house already emptied. A financial trail that disappears into shell companies and false identities.
Karl stays exactly one step ahead.
I dislike people who are difficult to find. I dislike them even more when they owe me information. The code remains frustratingly out of reach. The dormant accounts are still inaccessible. And every day that passes increases the possibility that someone else discovers what we’re searching for.
I am in my office when Ben walks in, carrying another file.
One look at his expression tells me I’m not going to enjoy whatever comes next.
“No luck?”
“No luck.” He drops into the chair across from my desk. “We found another intermediary.”
“And?”
“He disappeared.”
Of course he did.
I lean back in my chair and pinch the bridge of my nose.
The office falls silent.
Rain taps softly against the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Manhattan glows in the distance beneath a gray sky.
For a long moment, neither of us speaks.
Then Ben clears his throat.
I already know that tone.
I don’t like it. “What?”
His eyes narrow. “You’ve been married for a week.”
I stare at him. “Congratulations. You can count.”
He ignores me. “I feel obligated to point out that normal husbands usually spend time with their wives.”
I return my attention to the file. “As your employer, I feel obligated to remind you that this conversation is irrelevant.”
“It isn’t.”
“It is.” Ben sighs heavily. The sound is irritating. “You married a twenty-three-year-old woman and put her in a mansion with people she barely knows.”
“She’s friends with half the family.”
“That wasn’t my point.”
I close the file. Ben remains completely unimpressed.
Years of working together have made him immune to self-preservation.
“She’s fine.”
“How do you know?”
I pause.
Because the truthful answer is that I don’t. Not really. I know she eats. I know she reads. I know she occasionally disappears into the library for entire afternoons. I know she still looks annoyed whenever she sees me.
Beyond that?
Very little.
Ben notices my silence.
A smug expression appears.
I hate that expression.
“That’s what I thought.”
I resist the urge to throw something at him.
“I’m not discussing my marriage with you.”
“Okay.” He stands. “But maybe stop treating your wife like a long-term house guest.”
The moment he leaves, silence returns to the office.
I stare at the closed door. Then at the city beyond the windows. Then back at the reports covering my desk.
Eventually, I return to work.
But annoyingly, Ben’s words linger.
And for the first time all week, I find myself wondering what exactly Sofia has been doing while I’ve been busy chasing Karl Jonathan.
The thought lasts less than ten minutes.
My office door opens again.
I look up, already prepared to tell Ben to find a hobby that doesn’t involve irritating me.
The words die before they leave my mouth.
Something in his expression stops me. It’s real urgency.
He strides into the room and closes the door behind him.
My pulse immediately sharpens. “What happened?”
Without speaking, he crosses the room and hands me his phone.
I take it.
A message is displayed on the screen.
My eyes scan the text once.
Then again.
A slow rush of adrenaline floods my bloodstream.
Karl Jonathan.
The bastard has finally reached out.
The message is brief, containing a location and a time. With a short text. Come get the information you’re looking for.
I almost laugh.
Karl has spent weeks hiding from me.
Now he suddenly wants a meeting.
That alone tells me something is wrong.
But I don’t care.
Not enough to stay away.
For the first time since our arrangement began, Karl is offering something concrete.
I hand the phone back. “Gather the men.”
Ben doesn’t move.
I already know why.
“What?”
His jaw tightens. “What if it’s a trap?”
A fair question. One I’ve already considered. I’m not stupid. If he’s inviting me somewhere, there’s almost certainly another motive. But that changes nothing.
I move around the desk and grab my jacket from the back of the chair. “Inform the men that we’re potentially walking into a trap.”
Ben watches me.
“We go in assuming every exit is compromised. Every angle is covered. Every vehicle is being watched.”
His expression remains grim. “And if it is a trap?”
“Then we deal with it.”
The answer sounds simple because it is.
I don’t have the luxury of avoiding risks.
Not anymore.
The dormant accounts have remained inaccessible for over a decade. Every lead we’ve uncovered points back to Karl. Every answer sits behind him. If I let this opportunity pass, I may never get another one.
“I need whatever information he’s hiding,” I continue. “This is the first real lead we’ve had.”
He gives a short nod. “I’ll get the men.”
Without another word, he turns and leaves.
The door closes behind him. I rush to my feet and grab my jacket. My reflection catches briefly in the dark glass of the window. Cold eyes. Controlled expression. No hesitation.
Exactly as it should be.
I walk toward the bar in the corner of the room.
The crystal decanter catches the light as I pour a glass of vodka. The liquid burns down my throat. I welcome it. Because something tells me tonight is about to get complicated.
I set the empty glass down.
Then I head for the door.
Whatever Karl Jonathan has been hiding for sixteen years, I’m finally going to hear it.
Or maybe die trying.
***
The warehouse sits at the edge of the city like something already abandoned by time.
Even before I step inside, I know something is wrong.
There’s no trace of preparation. No subtle signs of movement. No vehicles hidden in the surrounding space. No tension in the air that usually comes before a meeting like this. Karl always leaves fingerprints in a room, even when he tries not to. This place has none of them.
Which means he didn’t intend to be found here.
I signal the men to hold back and step in alone with Ben close behind me.
The air inside is stale and unmoving, heavy with dust and silence. My footsteps echo too cleanly against the concrete floor, as if the building itself is reminding me that nothing has passed through here in a long time.
That realization tightens something in my chest.
I move deeper into the warehouse, scanning every corner, every shadow, every elevated beam where someone might be waiting. There’s nothing. No sound. No movement. Just emptiness stretched too carefully across space.
Then I see the chair.
It’s placed deliberately in the center of the room, as if someone wanted to make sure I would not miss it. On it rests a single folded sheet of paper.
I approach it slowly, because I already know whatever is written on it will not be what I came for.
I take the note and unfold it.
The first line is enough to change the entire weight of the room.
I don’t have the code.
My jaw tightens almost immediately, but I keep reading.
You were never meant to get it from me. Find it yourself.
The words settle in a way that feels intentionally painful, like they were placed there to land at the exact right angle to break something in me.
For a moment, I just stand there, staring at the page, replaying every step that led me here. Every conversation with Karl. Every condition. Every delay. Every piece of controlled manipulation that I mistook for progress. Marriage! Fucking marriage!
Behind me, I hear Ben enter the warehouse, but I don’t turn.
It clicks slowly at first, then all at once with infuriating clarity.
He was never offering answers.
He was redirecting me. Using Sofia. Using me. Using all of it.
Something in my grip tightens around the paper until it crumples completely.
The sound I make is an animalistic growl.
I throw the paper down and move without thinking, kicking the chair hard enough that it slams into the far wall. The impact echoes through the warehouse, but it does nothing to settle what’s building inside me.
My hand strikes a nearby metal table next, sending it crashing onto its side. The noise is louder this time, more violent, and still it is not enough. I can feel the edge of something breaking loose in me, something I have spent years keeping contained through discipline alone.
Sixteen years.
Sixteen years of tracking this network, of building control around every variable, of refusing to let anything pull me off course.
And Karl has reduced all of it to a loop I’ve been walking inside without realizing it.
I turn sharply, shoving another crate aside. It splinters against the floor, wood cracking under the force. Somewhere above, loose glass shifts and falls in small fragments, scattering across concrete like rain I do not bother to avoid.
Ben says my name once, steady and low, but I don’t respond.
Eventually, I stop moving.
Not because I’ve calmed down, but because there is nothing left in the immediate space to destroy.
The warehouse is still again, except for the aftermath of what I’ve done to it.
I stand in the center of it, breathing unevenly, the crumpled note still in my hand.
Ben’s voice cuts through the silence behind me. “We should leave. If this is a setup, staying here longer doesn’t change anything except the body count.”
For a moment, I don’t move.
The warehouse is still echoing faintly with what I did to it, like the walls haven’t fully recovered from the impact. Dust hangs in the air. Broken wood lies scattered across the floor. Somewhere behind me, metal is still vibrating from the force of my strike.
He’s right.
I know he’s right.
That doesn’t make it easier to accept, but it doesn’t make it any less true.
I exhale through my nose, slow and controlled, and finally turn toward the exit.
“Move,” I say.
The men outside don’t hesitate.
We leave the warehouse the same way we came in—fast, coordinated, silent.
No one speaks until we’re back in the vehicles, and even then the silence holds.
I sit in the back seat without looking at anyone, the crumpled note still in my hand, the paper now soft and useless from how tightly I’ve been holding it.
The city moves past the window in blurred lights as we drive, but I barely see it.
I will find Karl Jonathan. No matter what it takes, no matter how much blood it costs, I will make him pay for every bit of this. He’ll learn exactly what the Rusnak name means. He’ll learn why we’re feared.
Now that the initial spike of adrenaline has subsided, my body is beginning to protest. My knuckles are torn open and bleeding, and a cold sting on my cheek tells me a stray shard of glass caught my face. But I don’t care about the pain. My mind is already moving, calculating the next step.
This failure hasn’t stopped me—it has only changed the stakes. I’m no longer just hunting for a code. Now, I’m hunting the truth behind Karl’s deception, and God help him when I find it.