Chapter 2 – Konstantin
I watch her go, her eyes darting around the crowded space like she’s searching for me, expecting me to appear again.
When she disappears from sight, I turn and make my way to the car park. My SUV waits, sleek and black, engine humming. I slip inside. Nik, my right-hand man, is already there, leaning back with quiet patience.
The door clicks shut behind me. Nik starts the engine, and after a moment of silence, he asks, “Did you find what you were looking for?”
I nod.
He leans slightly, curious. “Can I ask what it is? You haven’t told me anything.”
I consider it. For this case, I’ve been silent, calculating, letting the shadows carry my information until I’m certain. Now I am.
“Four years ago,” I begin, my voice low and precise, “a man named Nathaniel Hart stumbled across highly sensitive underworld intelligence during an undercover operation. Instead of handing it to the authorities, he hid it, intending to expose a network of corrupt officials and several Bratva factions all at once. But before he could act, he disappeared.”
I watch Nik’s expression, unreadable, as the streets pass by in blurred motion.
“I was assigned by my family to retrieve the stolen data before it leaked into the wrong hands. During my search, I discovered fragments of Hart’s files resurfacing…
through a girl. Raelyn. Nathaniel Hart’s daughter.
Seminar papers. Metadata. Old school assignments.
Digital backups. She’s unknowingly carrying pieces of what I’ve spent years tracking. ”
Nik hums, thoughtful. “So…you found her.”
“I didn’t just find her. I found her two years ago. And all this time, I’ve monitored her from afar, watching her habits, her routine, her scholarly patterns, just waiting for confirmation that she unknowingly carries her father’s secrets.”
I slip my hand into the pocket of my coat. “Today’s encounter provided that final proof,” I add. “Her assignment contains linguistic echoes, encryption markers, and pattern structures identical to the FBI documents Hart once compiled.”
Nik leans back, frowning. “Does she know? Is she…an accomplice?”
I don’t answer immediately. I think about the girl—straight ink-black hair falling around her face and down her back, a sharp face, expressive hazel eyes.
I don’t let my mind wander to anything else.
Like the leather jacket wrapped around a lithe torso.
The ripped denim. The slender neck. The elegant hands.
No!
I focus on the fact that she’s walking around with information she could get killed for.
I shake my head. “She doesn’t know. Her father probably shared bits and pieces with her before he disappeared, without telling her how critical it all is.”
Nik’s gaze sharpens. “What’s next?”
I tap the dashboard, cold and precise. “Rival factions are already sniffing around these fragments. That’s a dangerous sign. Her life is at risk. If they reach her before I do, she will be kidnapped…tortured…or killed for what she knows.”
Nik is silent for a moment, the weight of it settling in.
“We can’t let them have her until we take back the data her father stole,” he says finally. “What’s the plan?”
I don’t answer.
Raelyn is now an asset as much as she is a liability.
How do I handle that?
As the SUV speeds toward the Rusnak intelligence compound, I take out the ID card in my pocket. Raelyn’s university ID photo. I swiped it when she ran into me. Deliberately. I’d banked on that, calculated every step.
I study the photo.
Her face strikes me more deeply than I expect—not just because she is beautiful, but because she carries the same fierce intelligence that once made her father dangerous. The resemblance is uncanny.
I’ve studied Raelyn for years, but seeing her in person is different. I force myself to focus, taking my mind off the way it makes me shift in my seat.
I tell myself my fixation is strategic, not personal. Yes, I’m invested in her. When you study someone for years, that tends to happen.
But my interest is purely business. Not personal. Never that.
Raelyn Hart is a job.
How I carry out this job successfully—that’s what I need to figure out.
It shouldn’t be hard. I’m thirty-five and have been doing jobs like this since I was eighteen. Experience like that doesn’t vanish. I can handle this with my eyes closed.
I put the ID away and turn to look out the window, letting the city blur past while I calculate my next move.
The SUV rolls through the outskirts of the city until we eventually reach the gates of my compound.
The massive steel doors part instantly. Guards step aside, their weapons lowered but hands never far from triggers.
The SUV glides along the curved drive, past sentries stationed like shadows along the walls, past armored vehicles lined in silent rows.
We arrive at the main building. Nik kills the engine, and I step out. Instantly, armed men flank me on either side, rifles held loosely but with unmistakable precision. Another team meets me at the doors, trailing me to the surveillance room.
Only Nik follows me through the doors. It closes behind us with a solid thud, locking out the city. Inside, the hum of electronics and quiet movement fills the air.
I pull up the archived FBI documents Hart stole and compare them to Raelyn’s paper, pattern over pattern.
I didn’t need to steal her assignment. That’s why I only looked. My photographic memory has always been a loyal ally. Every line, every structure, every anomaly—I still see it all in my head.
The match is undeniable.
She’s the last vessel of an intelligence leak capable of crippling the Rusnak network if it ever reaches the public. I know she’s innocent. I know her father used her unknowingly, threading fragments into her work without explaining their weight.
But innocence doesn’t matter in this world.
Control does.
I need to take control of the situation before others get their hands on her. I’ve never failed or botched a job in seventeen years. I won’t start now.
I update her file.
IMMEDIATE EXTRACTION.
CONTAINMENT MANDATORY.
HIGH-VALUE.
Nik hums behind me.
“Extraction?” he asks.
I turn and give the order without elaboration.
“I want her brought to me,” I command. “Tonight.”
Nik nods, snapping straight.
“Keep the operation quiet and efficient. No witnesses.”
“Yes, sir!” Nik nods again and leaves the room.
I go to the door and lock it. Then I turn back to the screen and press a sequence of commands.
A remote camera feed blooms to life.
Raelyn appears on-screen, now in comfortable house clothes, moving around her apartment as she talks to her best friend, Ellie Carver, a very naive girl studying forensic linguistics. She’s harmless.
My attention never leaves Raelyn.
She laughs.
Something sharp and possessive coils in my chest.
Years of surveillance never revealed this part of her. Screens don’t capture innocence. They don’t show the softness in the eyes, the unguarded way someone exists when they believe the world is still safe.
I was always prepared for this moment—to find her, take back what her father stole, and dispose of her mercifully once she was no longer useful.
That was the plan.
But something has changed. The one thing that makes me restless. The thing that had me shifting in my seat the entire drive back to the compound.
Her innocence.
Fuck.
She’s intelligent. Fiercely so. Defiant. I’ve known that for years. But there’s something else in her eyes—something untouched. Something that suggests she still believes in angels, in fairytales, in miracles.
I almost laugh.
Sweetheart, the world is far darker than you think.
And now, whether she understands it or not, she belongs to it.
I turn away from the screen and head for the minibar. I pour vodka, knock the first glass back immediately, then pour another. I take a longer sip this time, exhaling as the burn slides down my throat.
I turn back to the feed.
She’s curled up on the couch, watching television. Relaxed. Unaware.
A smile touches my lips.
The realization hits like a slap.
I frown, step forward, and cut the feed.
The screen goes black.
What exactly is wrong with me?