CHAPTER 19
LIAM P.O.V.
The lingering scent of Rose, a potent mix of spent desire, emerald green dress, and her goddamn defiance, still clung to the air in the comms room.
It was a phantom limb, an aching phantom limb I couldn’t sever, no matter how much I tried to focus on the screens glowing before me.
My dick still throbbed, a dull ache of memory and unfinished business.
I’d fucked her hard on that map table, branded her as mine, but the look in her eyes as she’d writhed beneath me, screaming my name, had held a dangerous, exhilarating glint of something more.
She wasn’t just mine. She was becoming a force, a wild, untamed fire that burned as hot as my own.
And the thought, while infuriating, was also... undeniably useful.
Konstantin Volkov. The old bastard. The architect of my family’s misery, the puppeteer behind Dmitri’s mad rage, the snake who had coiled himself around the very heart of the Bratva.
He thought he was playing a long game, a grand chess match.
But he hadn’t accounted for Rose. He hadn’t accounted for the savage hunger she awakened in me, the ruthless clarity she brought to my war.
“Anatoly’s team is reporting success, Pakhan,” Vasily’s voice cut through the haze of my thoughts, his eyes still glued to a monitor displaying a grid of flashing red lights. “The Serpent’s Tongue is severed. Five locations hit simultaneously. Clean. No witnesses left to sing.”
I grunted, a grim satisfaction spreading through me. Anatoly was a beast, efficient and unforgiving. The street-level rats of Konstantin’s network, the eyes and ears in the shadows, were now blind and deaf. This was the first incision, a deep, bloody cut into the enemy’s flesh.
“Good,” I barked, my voice rough. “Ensure the clean-up is thorough. I want no trace. No single fucking thread for Volkov to pull.”
Vasily nodded, relaying orders into his comms. “Sergei’s team is still inside Thorne’s office. They encountered minimal resistance. Security was... complacent.”
“Complacent because they trusted a pig like Thorne,” I scoffed, my lips curling in disdain. “He thought his political immunity protected him from the real world. Idiot. What have they found?”
“Initial reports are promising. Digital servers are being mirrored. They’ve located several encrypted hard drives and a hidden safe behind a false panel in his desk. Sergei is working on it now.”
My mind raced, already anticipating. Digital was for the small shit. The paper, the hidden safe—that was where the real leverage lay. Konstantin was an old dog; he still trusted paper trails for his most egregious sins. And that was where we would find the rope to hang him.
“Keep me updated on the safe,” I commanded, pushing away from the console, my gaze sweeping over the tactical map. The red and black markings of Konstantin’s network still glowed, but now, some of the red had dimmed, replaced by a satisfying, ominous grey. The hunt was truly on. “And Markovic.”
Vasily glanced at me, a flicker of something—intrigue? apprehension?—in his eyes. “You’re moving on the lawyer already, Pakhan? We still need more concrete leverage from Thorne.”
“Rose has a point,” I admitted, the words tasting like ash in my mouth.
Fucking woman. She knew how to get under my skin, how to make me see things her way, even when every instinct in me screamed for brute force.
“Markovic is a different beast. He won’t break with simple blackmail.
He needs a lifeline, an escape route. We show him the abyss, and then we offer him a hand up.
Our hand. And for that, we need to move fast. Before Konstantin realizes Thorne is compromised and silences Markovic himself. ”
“So the plan is to turn him, not just break him,” Vasily mused, comprehension dawning on his face. “Make him work for us, from the inside.”
“Exactly. He’s the viper in Konstantin’s garden.
We make him bite his own master. Get me everything on Markovic.
His family. His hidden assets. His deepest fears.
And start assembling a ‘deal’ for him. A way out.
A chance to reinvent himself, to become the ‘hero’ who exposed Konstantin.
All while secretly feeding us every fucking detail of Volkov’s network. ”
Vasily nodded, already tapping on his tablet, his movements precise and efficient. “Consider it done, Pakhan. We’ll have a preliminary dossier and a framework for the deal by morning.”
The safe house was a hive of controlled activity.
Muffled conversations from different rooms, the soft click of keyboards, the low hum of servers.
My men, loyal and lethal, moved like shadows, preparing for the next phase of the war.
They were well-oiled machines, instruments of my will.
But even their efficiency couldn't quiet the gnawing unease in my gut. Konstantin wasn’t stupid.
He’d react. And his reaction would be brutal.
My eyes drifted to the closed door of the bedroom, where Rose was presumably still asleep, or trying to be.
The raw, untamed passion we’d shared earlier had been a brutal release, a temporary balm for the storm raging inside me.
But her words, her challenge, still echoed in my mind.
“You want to command me, little queen? You think you can break me?” And then, “I think I can make you burn. Make you want me so badly you forget who you are. Forget your control. Forget everything but me.”
She’d almost done it. Almost made me forget. But my control was paramount. My empire. My war. My fucking woman. They were all intertwined, but I had to be the one holding the reins. Always.
A sudden, sharp ping from Vasily’s screen cut through my thoughts. He swore under his breath, his face tightening. “Pakhan, a new development. Konstantin just sent a message. Directly to the remaining council members of the Bratva. It’s... a warning.”
My jaw clenched. “What kind of warning?”
Vasily zoomed in on a cryptic message displayed on the screen.
It was written in an old Bratva dialect, a harsh, unforgiving language.
“He’s accusing you of weakness, Pakhan. Of letting an outsider...
a woman... influence your decisions. He’s calling you soft.
Says you’ve lost your way. And he’s implying that any loyalists remaining in your inner circle should... reconsider their allegiance.”
A cold, deadly fury ignited in my blood, burning away the last vestiges of the morning’s exhaustion.
Soft. That old bastard dared to call me soft?
He dared to question my control, my judgment, my fucking fitness to lead?
And he dared to use Rose’s involvement against me, to try and undermine my authority within my own ranks.
“And what’s the veiled threat?” I snarled, my voice low, dangerous.
Vasily scrolled further. “He’s hinting at... consequences. For anyone who remains loyal to you. For anyone who doesn’t see the ‘error of your ways.’ He implies he has evidence of your... ‘unorthodox methods.’ And he mentions a certain... historian. A piece of art that doesn’t belong in a war.”
My knuckles cracked as I clenched my fists. This wasn’t just a warning. This was a direct challenge. A public declaration of war against me, against my legitimacy as Pakhan. And against Rose. He was trying to isolate me, to turn my own men against me, using my woman as the wedge.
“He underestimated me once,” I growled, my eyes narrowing to dangerous slits. “He won’t get a second chance. He wants to play dirty? He wants to challenge my control? He’s about to find out what a Morozov truly capable of. And he’s about to learn what happens when he touches what’s mine.”
My gaze automatically swung back to the bedroom door. Rose. He was threatening her. Using her name, her existence, as a weapon against me. A red haze descended over my vision. He wanted to make me bleed? He was about to drown in his own fucking blood.
“Vasily,” I commanded, my voice like crushed ice.
“Double the security around this safe house. Triple it. No one gets in. No one gets out without my explicit order. And I mean no one. Anyone who even looks at this place sideways gets a bullet in the head. And track the source of that message. I want to know who is disseminating Konstantin’s propaganda. ”
“Understood, Pakhan,” Vasily said, his face grim, already issuing orders. He knew the level of my rage. He’d seen it before. It was a terrifying thing.
I turned and walked to the bedroom, my footsteps heavy, resolute. The door was still ajar, a sliver of light spilling into the dark hallway. I pushed it open without knocking.
Rose was sitting up in bed, wrapped in a blanket, her hair still damp.
Her blue-green eyes, usually so defiant, were wide with a mix of fear and something else – understanding.
She must have heard my voice, the tone of my command.
She must have sensed the shift in the air, the cold, deadly escalation of the war.
“Liam?” she whispered, her voice small, a fragile sound against the roaring storm inside me.
I stalked towards the bed, my gaze fixed on her, devouring her. She was soft, vulnerable in that moment, but the fire, the defiance, the intellect that had started this inferno, was still burning in her eyes. And Konstantin was trying to extinguish it.
“He threatened you,” I stated, my voice a low, guttural growl, raw with primal possessiveness. “Konstantin. He’s making it personal. He’s using your name, Rose. Trying to delegitimize me, to turn my men against me, by implying I’m... soft. Because of you.”
She flinched, pulling the blanket tighter around her, her jaw tightening. “I heard your voice. I knew it was bad.”