Chapter 14 – Konstantin
I don’t sleep.
Sleep is a luxury for men who believe the night will pass without blood.
I’ve been in my office for hours, moving through reports, camera feeds, intercepted signals—working, yes, but mostly waiting. Waiting for my brothers to arrive with something concrete. A location. A name. A mistake Markov made that I can carve open and crawl through.
The glass wall to my right keeps me tethered.
Raelyn is there, wrapped in one of my shirts, the fabric swallowing her frame. She’s curled on the bed, her body turned inward like the world is something that bites. I can see her at all times. I made sure of that.
She fought sleep for nearly an hour earlier—silent, restless, twisting the sheets around her fists like anchors. When it became too much, I told Nik to bring her a book. Any book. Something to keep her mind still.
Now she sleeps.
Her cheek is pressed into the pillow, lashes casting faint shadows against her skin.
One small hand is clenched near her chest, the other relaxed, fingers barely touching the edge of the page.
The book lies abandoned beside her, spine cracked, pages folded where she must have lost consciousness mid-sentence.
Her breathing is soft.
Even.
Alive.
The sight of it tightens something brutal in my chest.
I have seen cities burn. I have ordered deaths without blinking. I have watched men beg and felt nothing but irritation at their voices.
But this—this fragile rise and fall of her breath—has made me acutely aware of how breakable human life truly is.
How easily it shatters.
How close she came to dying today without ever knowing the name of the man who pulled the trigger.
My jaw tightens. My fingers curl against the desk until the wood creaks faintly.
Anyone who reaches for her again won’t be warned.
They won’t be bargained with.
They won’t be buried properly.
I glance back at the glass, at the woman sleeping inside my walls, under my protection, inside the war I have already decided to finish.
Half an hour later, the office door opens, and my brothers enter. They all look at the glass wall first. Lev’s mouth tightens. Roman exhales through his teeth. Dimitri’s eyes linger a second longer than the others’. Then they turn to me.
Lev doesn’t bother sitting. “How,” he asks coldly, “did someone breach your perimeter?”
I shrug. “They’re skilled. Markov’s best men.”
Dimitri is already moving, pulling up exterior feeds. “Dead zone,” he mutters, rewinding footage. “Here. Seventeen seconds between sweeps. Whoever did this knew the pattern.”
Roman swears softly. “That drop—stone-weighted paper. Old method.” He looks up at me. “Markov uses kids for that. Ghost cells. Low value, high message.”
My fingers drum once. Twice. Even. Measured.
“He wanted her to find it alone,” I say.
Lev’s jaw flexes. “That means proximity.”
“That means intent,” I correct. “Last night was proof of reach. This was proof of confidence.”
Dimitri glances toward the glass wall, then back to the screen. “Sniper trajectory matches yesterday’s shot. Same discipline. Same patience.”
Roman shakes his head. “He’s escalating.”
“No,” I say quietly. “He’s settling in.”
Silence drops. Heavy. Charged.
Lev folds his arms. “Your response?”
I finally turn from the glass. “We dismantle the delivery chain first.”
Roman straightens. “Couriers.”
“Handlers,” I add. “Routes. Safe houses. Anyone close enough to pass paper over my walls.”
Dimitri nods. “I can map movement within twelve hours.”
Lev studies me. “And Markov?”
A pause. Not hesitation. Control.
“He watches,” I say. “While we erase his confidence piece by piece.”
Roman’s voice lowers. “Very personal.”
I look back at Raelyn—her hair spilled across my pillow, her fist curled near her face like she’s still bracing for something even in sleep.
“He made it personal.”
Lev exhales slowly. “You’re not thinking like a tactician.”
“No,” I say. “I’m thinking like an executioner.”
No one argues.
Dimitri closes the feed. “We move quietly.”
“We move with confidence,” I correct. “No warnings. No negotiations.”
Roman’s mouth curves into something sharp. “He won’t see it coming.”
“He doesn’t need to,” I reply. “He just needs to feel it.”
I turn back to the glass wall as they begin issuing orders behind me, voices low, efficient, lethal.
Raelyn shifts in her sleep, breathing steadily. I almost break through the glass to reach her.
I feel it before I see it. Lev’s gaze on me—steady, assessing, too perceptive. Then he asks the question I’ve been avoiding since the moment the first bullet hit reinforced glass.
“Is this about Hart,” he says, “or about your wife?”
The room stills.
I don’t blink. I don’t hesitate. I don’t soften it.
“Both.”
Something unreadable passes through his expression. Not surprise. Not judgment. Understanding, maybe. Or warning. He nods once, slowly.
Roman clears his throat. “We’ll talk to Lukin. Get the green light.”
Dimitri is already moving toward the door. Lev lingers half a second longer, eyes flicking once more to the glass wall—then to me.
“Don’t lose yourself,” he says quietly.
I don’t answer.
They leave.
The door shuts. The office falls silent again, except for the faint hum of servers and the soft, steady sound of her breathing on the other side of the glass.
I turn back to my desk.
Only one file is left open.
The one I never showed her.
Hart’s disappearance. Timeline. Surveillance gaps. Witness statements scrubbed clean by hands that knew exactly how to erase themselves. I scroll past what she already knows, past Markov’s involvement, past the money trails and intercepted chatter.
And stop where I always stop.
Two vehicles.
One confirmed—Markov’s men, sloppy in their arrogance, easy to trace once you know where to look.
The other—
Untraceable.
Government plates. Rotated twice in forty-eight hours. Logged, then erased. The kind of erasure that doesn’t happen by accident. The kind that requires authority. Clearance. Trust.
Someone her father trusted enough not to run from.
I lean back slowly, the chair barely making a sound.
Hart wasn’t just hunted.
He was delivered.
The thought settles heavy in my chest, familiar and sharp.
I’ve lived with it for years, turning it over, testing it from every angle.
Every version ends the same way: betrayal from inside the circle.
A colleague. A handler. Someone who smiled at him and shook his hand and sent him to his death with clean paperwork and a calm conscience.
I glance at the glass again.
Raelyn stirs, murmurs something in her sleep, her brow creasing like even her dreams aren’t safe from impact. She’s holding herself together by instinct now—barely stitched, still bleeding in places she doesn’t know how to name.
If I tell her this—
That her father didn’t just disappear.
That someone he trusted may have sold him out.
That the enemy isn’t only monsters like Markov, but men with badges and briefcases and polished lies—
It will break something fundamental in her.
I know that kind of fracture. I’ve lived inside it.
My jaw tightens.
She’s been asking for the truth. Demanding it. Looking at me like she’s measuring how much of herself she’s willing to lose by believing me. And I have been deciding—again and again—that this truth is too sharp, too deep, too cruel to place in her hands yet.
But what happens when she finds out I knew?
When she realizes I chose what she was allowed to grieve?
My fingers curl into a fist against the desk.
She might forgive my violence.
She might forgive my control.
She might even forgive my lies.
But betrayal—especially the quiet kind—cuts deeper than bullets.
I don’t last five minutes on my own.
The glass wall feels thinner than it should as I cross the room. I open the door quietly and go to her bed, my hand brushing her arm before my mind can argue me out of it.
“Raelyn,” I murmur.
She blinks awake, disoriented at first, eyes too big in the low light. Fear flickers—and then settles when she sees me. That alone almost undoes me.
I don’t ask.
I lift her into my lap, drawing her against my chest, my arms closing around her with more force than necessary, like if I loosen even an inch, she’ll slip through me. She exhales, tired and small, and rests her head against my shoulder without resistance.
Her weight grounds me.
Her warmth steadies the violence clawing at my ribs.
She smells like my soap and rain and something softer I refuse to name.
For a long moment, neither of us speaks. Her breathing evens out, slow but fragile, like it could shatter if I move too fast.
Then she whispers, voice rough with sleep and something worse.
“If you’re hiding anything about my father…I deserve to know.” Her fingers curl into my shirt. “I keep dreaming about him.”
The words hit harder than any accusation.
Nightmares.
I close my eyes once, briefly. Regroup. Contain.
“You do,” I say quietly. “You deserve the truth.”
She stiffens just a little, bracing herself.
“But not all of it tonight.”
Her head lifts. She looks at me, searching, measuring whether this is another cage wrapped in gentleness.
“I’m not lying to you,” I continue, lowering my voice. “I’m choosing what won’t destroy you at three in the fucking morning, Raelyn.”
Her lips press together. She doesn’t argue. She’s too tired for that. Too worn down.
“So, what can you tell me, Konstantin?”
Before I decide which truth will hurt her least, there’s a knock.
“It’s Nik.”
I don’t look away from her. “What?”
Nik opens the door just enough. “There’s a man at the gate. Says he was an old colleague of Agent Nathaniel Hart. Detective Samuel Reed.”
The name lands wrong. Too clean. Too late.
Raelyn sits up instantly, eyes wide, sleep forgotten. “What?”
My body goes rigid.
“Bring him to the main hall,” I say. “Now.”
Nik hesitates—just a fraction—then nods and disappears.
Raelyn is already on her feet. “We have to go see him. Konstantin, this could be—”