Chapter 16 – Konstantin
An hour later, Raelyn is still in my arms, and I’m not ready to leave. I can’t fall asleep—not really—so I just hold her, listening to the steady rhythm of her breathing, tracing her skin like a map I never want to forget.
My phone buzzes against the desk. I reach for it. Nik.
“I’m outside. It’s important.”
I frown, slowly pulling away from Raelyn. I adjust the pillow, cover her so she’s comfortable, then step into the hallway where Nik waits, his expression grim.
“There’s a visitor,” he says. “Someone you should see.”
I follow him to the sitting room.
Arms crossed, leaning slightly back, a familiar presence waits. The tattoos ink-black climb up his arms, eyes cold as winter ice, yet there’s a crooked smile tugging at his lips.
Mike Rusnak.
Another relation in the long line of Rusnak sons.
Mike is many things, all of it powerful. Intelligence specialist, explosive expert, a ghost in every network, the man who sits in the center of chaos and decides who walks away alive. A reputation for settling disputes with a smile—and a bullet. Terrifying. Charismatic. Unmistakably Rusnak.
The moment our eyes meet, he tilts his head, that crooked grin widening. I can’t help the faint ease that touches my chest. I haven’t seen him in years.
We move into a quick embrace, firm hands on shoulders, a handshake that’s more ritual than courtesy. “Mike,” I say, voice rough with a mix of surprise and relief. “It’s been too long. What brings you here?”
He shrugs, still smiling. “Heard you had a situation…thought I’d check in. Maybe offer some help while I’m at it.”
I study him, every detail, every flicker behind those icy eyes. Nothing about Mike is accidental. “You’re just in time,” I say, letting my tone sharpen. “This is about Raelyn. Anyone who reaches for her gets more than a warning.”
His grin tightens slightly, amused. “I thought you’d say that,” he replies. “Because I intercepted chatter,” he says casually, as if tossing a grenade across the table. “Markov’s men aren’t just mobilizing for intimidation. Someone wants Raelyn…taken alive. Someone other than Markov.”
My chest tightens. Cold. Precise. Every muscle in my body stiffens.
Mike leans over the table, flipping open a file.
“I put this together for you.” He tosses it to me with a faint smirk. I catch it, my fingers brushing the papers inside—surveillance photos, transcripts, logs. Then I see it.
A single image, frozen in time, and it steals my breath: Samuel Reed leaving a warehouse. Not just any warehouse—one tied to Markov’s distribution meetings.
The same Samuel Reed who told Raelyn her father was dead.
I stare at the photo, pulse hammering. My blood feels like ice. Every instinct screams the same truth: Reed lied. And now, everything is about to explode.
I clamp the file shut, my fingers white around the edge. “He dies,” I growl, voice low, lethal, unwavering. “And if anyone else reaches for her…they won’t get a warning.”
Mike tilts his head, cautious. “Reed might not be the mastermind, Konstantin. He could just be a pawn. But whoever’s running this…they want Hart’s evidence. And now they want Raelyn.”
I don’t even flinch at the words. My control snaps—not a slow burn, not a measured response. Pure, unfiltered fury locks every nerve in my body.
“I’ll find him. And I’ll bury him alive if I have to,” I say, teeth clenched. “Markov, Reed…whoever thinks they can touch her—they will regret it. Every second. Every breath.”
Mike doesn’t laugh, but his crooked smile is sharper, approving. “This isn’t the Konstantin I remember. When did you become a lovesick puppy?”
I don’t answer Mike. I don’t give him the satisfaction.
I turn and leave him standing there, already moving up the stairs, my pulse locked on one thing—her. Every instinct drags me back to Raelyn like gravity. I haven’t seen Mike in years, but none of that matters now. Not the files. Not the war plans. Not the men lining up to die.
I need to see her.
I push into the bedroom without knocking.
Raelyn is awake, sitting upright against the headboard, hair loose around her shoulders, eyes too sharp for someone who’s barely slept. She looks at me like she’s been waiting.
“Where were you?” she asks.
I don’t answer with words.
I cross the room in three strides and pull her into me, arms locking around her, holding her tighter than necessary. Her hands come up automatically, gripping my shirt like she’s afraid I’ll disappear if she doesn’t anchor me.
I press my mouth to her hair, inhale.
“Raelyn,” I say quietly. “Listen to me.”
She stiffens just enough to tell me she knows something’s coming.
“Reed didn’t lie about your father being dead,” I continue, forcing each word out carefully. “But he didn’t tell you the whole truth.”
Her breath catches.
“Your father wasn’t just hunted,” I say. “He was betrayed. Someone inside his own circle gave him up.”
She goes still.
Too still.
“I don’t know who yet,” I add. “But I will. And when I do, I will find every last man involved. I will end them.”
That’s when she breaks.
Not into tears.
Into rage.
Her body trembles, sharp and violent, like something cracking open from the inside. A sound tears out of her—not a sob, but a fractured, furious breath, and suddenly she’s shaking in my arms, fists clenched in my shirt, nails biting into my skin.
“They let him die,” she whispers, voice shaking with heat. “They let him—”
“I know,” I murmur, tightening my hold. “I know.”
She doesn’t pull away. She doesn’t tell me to let go. She presses closer instead, forehead against my chest, breathing hard, fury burning through her grief.
I hold her there, unmoving, a wall around the storm.
“You won’t do this alone anymore,” I say into her hair. My voice is steady, but it costs me something to keep it that way. “Not the investigation. Not the aftermath. Not the truth.”
She shifts just enough to look up at me.
“You have me now,” I continue. “You have my brothers. You have an entire network that answers when I speak. Men who don’t hesitate. Men who will bleed if I tell them to.”
Her throat works. Her hands tighten in my shirt.
“But will you bleed for me?” she whispers.
The question lands clean. No drama. No manipulation. Just the truth she needs.
I cup her face, forcing her to look at me, making sure she sees what’s already decided in my eyes.
“For you,” I say quietly, brutally, “I will kill.”
Her breath stutters. Not fear. Recognition.
The last restraint inside me snaps—not into violence, but into something far more dangerous. I kiss her forehead, then her cheek, then along the line of her jaw, unable to stop myself, needing to anchor her to me, needing to remind her she is not alone in this war.
My thumb brushes beneath her eye, wiping away nothing but heat.
“You aren’t chasing ghosts anymore,” I murmur. “You aren’t screaming into the dark.”
I rest my forehead against hers.
“You stand with me now.”
And as she closes her eyes, as she leans into my touch instead of away from it, I know with absolute clarity:
This obsession is no longer mine alone.
It has wrapped around both of us.
And anyone who steps between us will not survive it.
I pull her to her feet without ceremony and walk her onto the balcony, my hand firm at her lower back. The night air is cool, sharp, clearing the remnants of tears from her lungs.
I don’t explain. I show.
A guard shifts below, hand brushing the grip of his weapon as soon as I step into view.
Another moves along the perimeter wall, boots silent, eyes scanning the treeline.
Overhead, something hums—soft, constant.
Raelyn tilts her head and catches the faint blink of red lights drifting across the sky.
Drones. More than one. Moving in lazy, overlapping arcs.
I finally turn to her.
“You’ll never be vulnerable again.”
Raelyn grips the railing, knuckles white—not with fear, but with something hotter, sharper.
“I don’t feel vulnerable,” she says. Her voice is steady. Dangerous. “I feel angry. I feel like burning something down.” She looks at him, eyes bright with fury. “I want them to pay for killing my father.”
For a beat, I just watch her.
Then—I smile.
Not soft. Not gentle.
Predatory.
“You’ve never been more beautiful than you are right now,” I say. “Rage suits you.”
She exhales sharply and rolls her eyes. “You are unbelievable.”
My smile only deepens. “I have a meeting,” I say, already pulling myself back into command. “My brother’s waiting downstairs.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Stay in the room.”
She nods. I leave before I give myself a reason to stay.
The hallway closes around me. Nik is already there, waiting.
“Mike’s in the surveillance room.”
I nod once. “Get Ellie here. Raelyn shouldn’t be alone today.”
Nik doesn’t question it. He turns and moves fast.
I head straight for the surveillance room.
The door seals behind me with a muted hiss.
The air hums—screens lining the walls, live feeds rolling, the entire property laid bare in angles and data.
Mike stands at the center console, sleeves pushed up, tattoos crawling over his forearms, eyes locked on the displays like the world is a puzzle he already half-solved.
“Show me everything,” I say.
He doesn’t look up. “Already doing it.”
The screens shift. Timelines slide into place. Heat signatures. Movement patterns. Faces caught mid-step.
“Reed isn’t operating alone,” Mike says. “Too clean. Too insulated. Someone’s burning his tracks behind him.”
My jaw tightens. “Government.”
“Or something pretending to be.”
One screen freezes—Reed exiting the warehouse. Markov’s men part for him like he belongs there.
I lean forward, palms flat on the console. “He came into my house. Looked at her. Lied.”
Mike finally turns to me. “Unforgivable.”
“Yes.”
A city map flares on another screen. Red markers bloom—safe houses, transit points, extraction routes. A tightening net.
“They’re accelerating,” Mike says. “Which means you rattled them.”
I think of Raelyn on the balcony. The grief burned away, leaving fury behind.
“Good,” I say coldly. “Let them run.”
Mike snorts. “You know, most men panic when the city starts rearranging itself to steal their wife.”
“I’m not most men.”
“No,” he agrees easily. “You’re worse.”
I don’t smile.
He moves to the sideboard like he owns the place, reaches for a bottle I don’t remember authorizing, and pours two drinks with insulting confidence. He slides one toward me.
“You need it,” he says. “Your face is doing that thing.”
“What thing?”
“The one that makes people disappear.”
I take the glass anyway. The burn grounds me.
Mike leans back against the console, studying me over the rim of his own drink. “You didn’t use to look like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re already planning the funerals.”
“I am.”
He chuckles, low and amused. “Marriage really did soften you.”
That gets a sound out of me. Not a laugh. But close.
“Say that again,” I warn.
He lifts his glass in surrender. “Relax. As long as the Rusnaks are breathing, no harm comes to your wife.”
Something tight in my chest loosens—just a fraction. I don’t thank him. I don’t need to.
“I know,” I say instead. “Why’d you really come?” I ask. “Tell me the truth.”
Mike frowns, shoulders rolling in a careless shrug. “Maybe I missed my family.”
I scoff before I can stop myself.
He laughs, unbothered. “What? I can’t miss family?”
“You’re a Rusnak,” I say flatly. “We don’t operate with emotions. We disappear for years. We stay away from blood and walls and history. That doesn’t make our loyalty weaker.”
Mike doesn’t answer right away. He tips back the rest of his drink and swallows it in one go. The glass clicks softly as he sets it down.
“Maybe,” he says slowly. “But do you agree that a time comes when you stop wanting to be alone? When distance stops feeling strategic and starts feeling…empty?”
I study him. The tattoos. The eyes that have seen too much and still keep score.
“Is that what this is?” I ask. “What you feel?”
He meets my gaze, something unguarded flickering there for half a second.
“Yeah,” he says. “Maybe it is.”
I don’t believe him.
I don’t call him on it either. With men like us, truth comes when it’s ready—or not at all.
“If there’s anything you’re running from,” I say evenly, “or after…you have enough brothers to run with you.”
He snorts, shaking his head. “Konstantin, you have enough problems of your own.”
I smile, slow and sharp. “There’s always room for one more.”
He laughs under his breath, then slaps my shoulder, firm. With his other hand, he turns my face back toward the surveillance feed.
“We’ve got work to do,” he says. “Let’s concentrate.”
The screens glow in front of us—moving pieces, shifting threats.
And just like that, the banter dies.
War mode settles in.