Chapter 24 – Vivian
Zurich looks unreal from up here—too clean, too precise, too polished.
A city that feels like it’s holding its breath.
By the time we reach the safe house, my chest is tight, my hands cold, and Dimitri hasn’t relaxed once.
Not even in the jet. Not even for a second.
Sylvester moves around the space like he already owns it, setting up screens and encrypted lines, while a group of unfamiliar men—Lukin’s Zurich unit—stand waiting, all hard eyes and harder jaws.
It should terrify me.
But instead, I feel…steady.
Focused.
Because somewhere in this perfect glass city, my mother is being held like a pawn on someone’s chessboard.
Because the same man who tried to destroy our lives is sitting across the street in a tower of money with the audacity to breathe.
Because Dimitri is wound so tight he might snap.
I walk to the large window, drawn to the view. The Deveraux banking headquarters rises across from us—sleek, silver, untouchable. Except it is touchable, because Dimitri is here, and Dimitri doesn’t miss.
He steps beside me without a sound.
The tension coming off him is a living thing.
His reflection in the glass looks carved from ice.
“Is she there?” I ask quietly. “My mother?”
He doesn’t look away from the city. “We’ll find out in the morning.”
My throat tightens. My heartbeat stutters.
“Dimitri…if something happens to her—”
“It won’t.”
His voice is final. Absolute. The kind of promise men don’t make unless they intend to burn the world to keep it.
I swallow.
The city lights blink on the glass as I watch my own reflection tremble.
Dimitri finally turns to look at me.
His eyes are softer than his tone. A contrast I still don’t understand but lean toward anyway.
“We’re taking her back,” he says. “And when we do, Deveraux is finished. Completely.”
The words send a shiver down my spine. Not just fear. Not just fury. Something deeper. Something that makes me step closer until my shoulder brushes his.
The men behind us speak in clipped Russian. Screens beep. Sylvester curses under his breath. Zurich hums like an elegant trap.
And beside me, Dimitri stands like a weapon carved for a single purpose.
I shouldn’t feel safer because of him.
I shouldn’t feel anything at all.
But I do.
“You should get some sleep,” he says quietly. “We’ll have a long day tomorrow.”
I shake my head instantly. “No. No sleep.”
Dimitri studies me for a moment. Not judging. Not pushing. Just…seeing me. Then he nods once and leaves me to it, taking a comms device with him as he moves to coordinate with Sylvester and the Zurich unit.
So I sit.
All night.
All the way into dawn.
In front of the surveillance feed—four different angles of the Deveraux banking headquarters, rotating on a loop. Every person who steps in or out. Every car. Every service worker. Every pattern. Every anomaly.
The screens glow cold blue against my face as the hours drag. My legs go numb. My back starts to ache. My eyes burn. But I don’t leave. Not even for water. Not even to stretch. I’m afraid that if I blink too long, I’ll miss something vital. Something that leads to my mother.
Finally, night gives way and Zurich wakes up beneath a sky the color of steel. And I’m still there. Still watching.
Fighting sleep with the stubbornness of a child and the desperation of a woman who’s already lost too much.
Around six in the morning, Dimitri returns with two coffees in hand. He stops at the doorway when he sees me exactly where he left me—legs folded under me, eyes glued to the monitors, shoulders stiff.
His voice softens in a way I don’t think he notices. “Vivian….”
But I don’t look away from the screens. I can’t.
“I don’t want to miss anything,” I whisper, blinking hard as another figure steps through the banking doors. “Not this time. Not again.”
He sighs—quiet, frustrated, aching in a way he won’t admit.
Then he walks in and sets one of the cups beside me. As he turns to leave, he bends and presses a kiss to my forehead.
Soft. Brief. Gone before my breath even catches.
I’m so distracted by his mouth, I almost miss what’s on my screen.
A car pulls up to the Deveraux building. Black. Unmarked. Too slow, too deliberate.
I lean forward.
The back door opens.
And someone is dragged out.
My heart stops.
The figure is slumped, barely conscious, wrapped in a thin coat like she was yanked from a hospital bed. Her hair—silver, familiar—falls over her face.
“No…no, no—” My breath punches out of me. “Dimitri!”
Before I’ve even finished the word, he’s beside me, his hand gripping the back of my chair as the screen shows two men hauling the woman upright.
Her face lifts.
My mother.
Drugged. Frail. Confused. Barely walking.
Flanked by two guards wearing the Koval insignia.
They drag her inside.
“Oh God,” I gasp. My hands fly to my mouth. “That’s her—Dimitri, that’s my mother—”
He curses under his breath, low and vicious in Russian.
My vision blurs. Panic slices through me, sharp and cold.
“I’ve been trying to call my father since last night,” I say, voice shaking uncontrollably. “Since I found out all this—but he’s unreachable. He’s completely unreachable. What if—what if they—”
Fear claws at what’s left of my composure.
“No.” Dimitri’s voice cuts clean and sharp through the panic. “Vivian. Look at me.”
I force my eyes up to his.
“Don’t cry,” he says—not harsh, but firm, commanding. “It’ll only distract you from the goal. What matters is that she’s alive. She’s alive, and now we know exactly where she is.”
My breath trembles out of me.
Alive.
Alive.
I swallow hard, pushing the grief and terror down, caging them where they can’t ruin me.
He’s right.
I take a long, shaky breath and nod.
His tone shifts—gentler, lower, threaded with something too raw to name.
“When this is over,” he murmurs, “I want you gone from this life.”
I shake my head immediately. “There’s no gone anymore.” My voice is barely air. “There’s only after.”
Something flickers in his eyes—pain, pride, fear. All of it at once.
He pulls me into him, arms strong, steadying, grounding. His warmth sinks into me, loosening the tension that’s been strangling my chest since we landed.
He helps me stand.
“You’ve seen your mother,” he says. “Now it’s time for you to eat something and sleep a few hours.”
I open my mouth to protest, but he cuts me off with a look—the kind that brooks no argument.
“It’s about to get rough, krasavitsa.” His hand slips to the small of my back, guiding me toward the kitchen. “And I need you sharp when it does.”
***
The operation unfolds like a ballet of violence.
By noon, Sylvester slips into the building through the service tunnels, silent as a shadow, a ghost among the pipes and hidden passages. Every movement calculated, every step measured. He’s the unseen hand ready to tip the scales.
Meanwhile, Dimitri and I glide into the gala under our aliases—Sophia and David Winslow. The room is a temple of power and pretense: the rich perfume of cigars, the sharp fizz of champagne, marble floors gleaming under crystal chandeliers, and walls lined with men who would kill with a smile.
I force myself to breathe evenly, my pulse hammering beneath the facade. Every curve of my smile, every tilt of my head is deliberate, a weapon honed for precision.
Dimitri is beside me, perfect posture, casual charm masking the storm coiled beneath his suit. His hand brushes mine lightly now and then, a silent signal, a tether. I tighten my grip, letting him know I’m with him—locked in, unflinching.
I move through the room with practiced grace, pouring champagne into glasses with a steady hand, exchanging pleasantries with people whose wealth is built on lies. Every smile I give is a dagger, every laugh calculated.
And through it all, I feel the electricity of being his—not just in name, not just in danger, but in every touch, every glance. Together, we are a front. Together, we are the storm waiting to break. If he had come on this date with another woman, I would have died of jealousy.
Halfway through the event, Deveraux still hasn’t shown up. I lean toward Dimitri, keeping my smile glued in place for anyone who might be watching.
“I’m going for a drink,” I murmur.
His jaw flexes. He wants to follow—I see it in the quick flick of his eyes, the tension in his shoulders—but I shake my head once, sharp.
“Stay,” I whisper. “Be alert.”
He’s surrounded by a small circle of men discussing business, all pretending this is a harmless networking gala and not a gilded facade for money laundering. If he suddenly abandons them, it’ll draw attention.
So I turn away and walk toward the bar, my heels clicking against marble, my nerves coiled tight. I order a mocktail, needing the gesture more than the drink. My hand wraps around the glass, cool and steady.
I’m lifting it to my lips when a voice slices through the air behind me.
“I didn’t think Mrs. Rusnak would come to my event.”
My blood turns to ice.
That voice—smooth, familiar, venom wrapped in silk.
I whirl around, heart punching my ribs, and there he is.
Charles Deveraux.
Smiling like he’s been waiting for this exact moment.
And just like that, I know—
He knew I was here all along.
The trap has already snapped shut around me.
I glare at him and open my mouth to speak when gunfire erupts.
The ballroom dissolves into chaos.
“It’s over for you!” Charles snarls as he tries to grab me—but before his fingers can close around my arm, I’m yanked back, hard.
It’s Dimitri.
He shoves me behind a marble column with a force that knocks the breath from my lungs. I stumble, catching myself on the cool stone. By the time I look up again, Charles has vanished into the panicking crowd.
My heart twists painfully.
No—he can’t disappear now. Not with my mother somewhere in this building.
But there’s no time to chase him.
Strange men flood the ballroom, weapons raised. They’re not guests. They’re soldiers—Charles’s or the Kovals’, I don’t know. All I know is that they’re here for blood.
Dimitri unholsters his pistol in one smooth motion, and the change in him is instant. The elegance, the charm, the mask he wears for the world—all of it falls away.
What’s left is something terrifyingly beautiful.
A soldier.
A killer.
A man built to survive this.
“Stay down,” he growls without looking at me, and then he moves.
Precise. Controlled. Deadly.
Each shot finds its target. Each pivot, each glance, each breath is calculated. He fires with the confidence of someone who does not miss.
A bullet cracks against the column inches from my face. I gasp. Dimitri’s head snaps toward me, eyes blazing.
“Not a single step forward,” he warns—feral, protective, furious.
Then he turns back to the fight, shattering someone’s wrist with a shot that sends their weapon skidding across the marble floor.
I watch him, frozen.
The room is falling apart—glass raining from chandeliers, bodies rushing for exits, smoke curling into the air—but none of it compares to the destruction happening inside me.
He’s fighting for me.
For my mother.
For us.
Something hot and dark coils in my chest, refusing to be ignored.
I scan the room—panic, smoke, fallen bodies—searching for any opening, any path, any chance to help. And then I see him.
Deveraux.
Fleeing toward the elevators, cutting through the chaos with the confidence of a man who already planned every exit.
My pulse spikes.
No. Not again. Not this time.
Before I’ve fully decided to move, my body is already doing it—bolting after him, my heels pounding the marble, Dimitri’s voice slicing through the gunfire behind me.
“VIVIAN! STOP!”
I don’t stop.
I can’t.
If I lose Deveraux now, I lose my mother. I lose everything.
He dives into the elevator. It closes before I reach there. I wait impatiently for a few seconds before it returns and I enter, still ignoring Dimitri shouting my name.
When the elevator opens again, it’s into the basement vault—cold, cement-lined, humming with the low thrum of generators. The air tastes metallic.
And that’s when I see her.
My mother.
Chained to a chair in the center of the room, wrists raw, eyes half-open but—alive.
Alive.
My knees almost buckle. I stumble toward her—a click stops me.
Deveraux has moved behind her, pressing a gun to her temple.
A sick, triumphant smile curves his lips.
“You want her?” he asks softly. “Drop the weapon, Mrs. Rusnak.”
My heart slams against my ribs. My hands tremble around the weight of my gun.
He tilts his head, amused. “What will it be?”
My fingers loosen.
My knees shake.
I begin to lower the weapon.
My mother whimpers.
Deveraux’s smile widens.
And then—
A shift in the air.
A shadow glides behind him, silent as a phantom.
Dimitri.
He moves like death taught him personally—no sound, no warning, just cold precision. I don’t breathe. Deveraux doesn’t even know he’s no longer in control.
One shot.
Close-range.
Perfectly placed.
The bullet hits before Deveraux can flinch.
He crumples like a marionette whose strings have been cut.
The echo booms through the vault like thunder, rolling, final.
I collapse beside my mother, sobbing—raw, shaking, unable to stop. “Mama…. Mama….”
Dimitri kneels opposite me, fingers steady as he checks her pulse.
A beat.
Another.
Then his shoulders fall, just slightly, in the closest thing to relief I’ve ever seen on him.
“She’s safe,” he murmurs, voice quiet, rough. His hand comes to my back, grounding me. “It’s over.”