Chapter 13
ARTUR
Iwake with Katie’s hand spread over my chest.
Her palm rests on the unscarred skin below my chest, close to the scar along my right ribs, as her face stays tucked against my shoulder and one bare thigh crosses both of mine.
The white shirt she wore to bed has climbed above her hips, exposing the curve of her ass to the cold strip of morning light under the blinds.
My hand has found its way beneath her shirt, covering her left breast with one nipple hard against the center of my palm. I don’t remember putting it there, but Katie’s fingers spread over my stomach with the confidence of a woman who crossed the bed first.
I refuse to decide without evidence, and she wakes when my thumb moves. Brown eyes open against my chest, then her body goes still for one breath as she looks down at my hand under the cotton.
“You crossed the border,” she says.
“Your leg invaded first.”
Katie lifts her head. Sleep has roughened her voice, and her hair covers half her face. “My leg was seeking asylum.”
“My hand conducted a security inspection.”
“It appears to have settled permanently.”
I close my fingers once around her breast, and the soft weight fills my palm, warming as blood reaches the nipple under my thumb.
“The position has advantages,” I say.
Katie’s mouth curves, and she removes my hand, though she places it on her bare waist instead of returning it to my side of the mattress.
The bed smells of sex under cedar soap, while her skin still carries faint red marks where my mouth found her breasts, and the possessive satisfaction of seeing them returns with my erection.
Katie feels it against her thigh. “We have rules to discuss before your enthusiasm creates another scheduling problem.”
“The previous schedule was excellent.”
She sits with her back against the headboard, pulling the shirt over her hips. “The safe house can’t keep operating like a prison where I learn the day’s plan after armed men arrive.”
Her smile fades, though warmth lingers in her eyes, and I sit beside her and wait.
“We share schedules,” she continues. “I need to know where we’re going, who to expect inside this house, and when you intend to disappear into a meeting. If an emergency changes the plan, tell me as soon as security allows it.”
“Agreed.”
“Cherry contacts me whenever she wants. Nobody delays her calls or decides a conversation is inconvenient.”
The secure phone on the nightstand logs every number she contacts. The system records no words, but I still haven’t told her it exists.
I authorized the logging after men entered her apartment with a copied key.
At the time, suspicion offered a clean reason for every intrusion.
Katie has since reconstructed the club attack, exposed the casino captain, and chosen to stay when I offered a route out of Atlanta.
I no longer suspect her; the war makes contact records useful, but secrecy now serves my control rather than her safety.
Telling her now may damage the trust formed last night. Discovery without an admission will do worse, yet I still say nothing.
“Cherry’s calls won’t be restricted,” I say.
The accurate answer leaves a bitter taste behind my teeth.
Katie studies my face, then continues. “You knock before bringing soldiers into the house. An active attack is the exception. Your desire to begin a briefing when I’m naked isn’t.”
“That depends on the briefing.”
“Artur.”
“I’ll knock.”
Her shoulders ease. “If a discussion affects my safety or Cherry’s, I attend. I’m tired of learning what people decided about me after everyone with a gun has already voted.”
The request will irritate captains accustomed to treating protected women as cargo; that alone recommends it.
“You attend,” I say. “Operational details that expose unrelated people may stay restricted.”
“Explain the restriction instead of dismissing me.”
“Agreed.”
Katie looks down at the mattress between us. “And we establish which side of the bed belongs to whom.”
“You abandoned your assigned territory during the night.”
“I was unconscious.”
“A weak legal defense.”
She pushes my shoulder, then gets out of bed with the shirt still riding above the lower curve of her ass. My cock is too hard for standing to be tactically wise.
I watch her walk into the bathroom.
The border dispute is unlikely to be resolved.
By ten, we are inside the strategy room at the Dymov mansion.
Reinforced shutters cover the windows, turning morning into the amber light of shaded lamps.
A long walnut table occupies the center under screens showing our casinos and construction sites, while vehicle-yard feeds rotate along the lower row.
The room was built after Misha’s death; Ivan selected the reinforced shutters, and I chose a table where plans could spread without forcing captains shoulder to shoulder.
Every modification answered a weakness exposed by the bombing.
Even the air circulates through a separate system, carrying the dry smell of paper under warm electronics.
I have always felt safest here with Ivan beside me. Today Katie takes the chair at my right, and safety becomes harder to separate from habit.
Because Katie now attends every discussion affecting her security, Boris begins with the routine household report.
That morning, the emergency pistol at the safe house received its first scheduled reinspection.
After breaking the installation seal, Boris confirmed the weapon and magazine, then signed the replacement strip before a loading-dock alarm called him back to the casino.
Ivan completed the room and applied the new seal alone.
Katie looks from Boris to Ivan. “The pistol in our bedroom?”
“Loaded and intact when I checked it,” Boris replies. “Ivan closed and sealed the panel after I left.”
Ivan gives one impatient nod, as though the condition of a weapon inside my home is too ordinary to deserve more time. The detail disappears beneath the larger evidence waiting on the table.
Boris has placed the dead captain’s phone beside financial records from the Saranov shell company. The electrical contractor’s invoices cover work inside Dymov Casino six weeks before Sergei died. Each line describes ordinary repairs to lighting controls or service panels.
The payments originated with a freight company Pasha controls through two layers of ownership. Its southern routes cross Dymov territory near the rail yards, one of several Atlanta corridors our older captains divided long before either of us inherited the quarrel.
Ivan reads the report without sitting. “The casino captain approved the contractor and inspected the work. He had access to the service levels. Pasha bought one ambitious man.”
Katie sits at my right in black trousers with a dark red blouse covering her throat. “The captain was hired after Misha died. How did he know the senior inspection schedule well enough to photograph Artur’s private room before anyone expected Artur at the club?”
Ivan’s eyes move toward her. “Velvet Fortune wasn’t the captain’s assignment.”
“Which makes his knowledge of that schedule the question you haven’t answered,” Katie replies.
Boris opens the casino’s access summary: the dead captain could enter every garage level and request escort into electrical rooms. He couldn’t view the inspection calendar used by senior Dymov security, which determined when the staff-door credentials at Velvet Fortune were exported.
Ivan closes the report. “He could have learned the routine by watching it.”
“Then he watched with such care that he predicted a request you made,” Katie says.
The separate ventilation becomes audible as nobody answers her.
Ivan requested the temporary credential list on the morning of the attack for legitimate reasons.
Two guards had been rotated after a dispute, so any security chief would have reconciled active badges before my arrival, yet the routine also gave him the exact file Pasha’s men needed.
Beside my chair, I touch the control, and on one wall screen appears the private-room model Boris built after our reconstruction at Velvet Fortune, with the chair already marked in its original and altered positions.
Nobody needs Katie to perform the full dance again.
What matters is the access timeline beside it, where the public shooter’s corridor assignment and Igor’s disabled service alarm converge on the credential export.
“The assassins prepared for the chair where Artur always sat,” Katie says. “Moving it forced Igor through the service panel early, but someone had already given him the route. The chair explains how their first plan failed. It doesn’t explain who opened the building.”
Boris enlarges the credential timeline: Ivan’s request appears in the center, followed by the file export. The service alarm went dark hours later.
Katie folds her hands on the table. “You investigated George. You investigated me before I knew your surname. Every dancer’s draw was checked, and now every guard hired after Misha is under review.”
She looks at me rather than Ivan. “Your relatives keep explaining why their access was normal.”
Ivan’s mouth hardens. “Family access is normal. I designed the security systems protecting this organization before you entered one of its clubs.”
“That makes the access broader,” Katie says. “It doesn’t make questions disrespectful.”
My first instinct is to defend him.
Ivan held Misha’s body beside me after the bombing. He rebuilt the mansion gates as I recovered from the burns across my ribs. Every locked door in this organization carries some part of his work.
He also taught Misha to shoot, then pretended not to notice when my brother missed practice for a woman.
At family dinners crowded with dark rye, buckwheat, and sour cabbage, Ivan gave him the crisp end of every roast because Misha stole it from the platter anyway.
My uncle’s love had been visible long before the car exploded.