Chapter 35
Maksim
“We can’t reach them.” Vladimir’s voice is strained, irritated, worried. “None of them are answering, Maksim.”
I take long, hurried strides toward the front door. The car keys are clenched in my fist. I have no time to waste.
“Track the cell phones.”
“Yuri’s already on it.”
I hang up and hit Yuri on speed dial. He answers before it even rings.
“I’m almost there...” I hear fingers flying across a keyboard. “Her phone goes dark at four forty-one. Someone destroyed the device or pulled the battery. Grisha’s, Antoniev’s, and the others went dark too, in that window between four forty and four forty-six.”
All at the same time. A fucking attack.
“Last location?”
“P-33 Highway, kilometer nineteen. The empty stretch before the property entrance.”
It’s so close. Fifteen minutes. She was fifteen minutes from home and they got her.
The hall is full when I get there. Igor is already in his coat, phone pressed to his ear as he gives quiet orders, his eyes on me. Vladimir comes through the door with six more men behind him, all armed.
When I head for the door, he stops me. He steps between me and the exit.
“Pakhan.” It’s a warning I ignore.
“Get out of my way.”
“Listen.” He doesn’t move. “Five armed men don’t just vanish by accident. This is an operation. They took down your wife’s escort fifteen minutes from home, on the road you drive every day. Demidov and his men could be hiding in those trees with a long-range rifle, just waiting for you to show up.”
He’s right.
It’s the most irritating thing about Vladimir—he’s always right. Even when he’s only saying what’s already circling in my head, he’s the only one who’ll say it out loud and stand his ground. That excessive caution has kept me alive more than once.
“Send Igor with ten men,” he continues. “Send a clean team. They’ll sweep the area, secure the perimeter, and confirm it’s safe for you to go in. Just twenty minutes, Maksim.”
“Twenty minutes?”
“Just twenty.” He holds firm, and I stare at him.
“If it were Ekaterina,” I say quietly, spitting the words with anger, “would you wait twenty minutes?”
His face doesn’t change, his expression frozen and firm, but I catch the brief hesitation in his eyes. It’s subtle, but it means that for the first time in years, Vladimir backed down—lost an argument with himself.
“That was a low blow,” he murmurs.
“It was the truth,” I say harshly, pushing past him. “Fuck if it’s an ambush. I’m going to get my wife.”
We made the trip in nine minutes.
Igor drove my car because my hands were shaking too badly. I didn’t need to ask—he just held out his hand for the keys and I gave them to him. I’ve never seen him drive so fast, so focused. He killed the headlights for the last kilometer, navigating in the dark on a road we know by heart.
“Let us go first,” Igor says when we arrive, gripping my arm before I can get out.
“No.”
“Maksim, please.”
“I said no.”
I get out quickly, irritated by the interruption and the delay. Every second counts.
Igor gets out right behind me, rifle slung over his shoulder, while the other men fan out on both sides of the road. They’re silent, scanning for any sign of an enemy lying in wait.
I walk down the middle of the road, not crouching, no cover to shield me from a bullet. If there’s a sniper waiting for me out here, I’m the easiest target he’ll ever have. But I can’t bring myself to care. The need to find Anya is too overwhelming for caution.
The first thing I see is the escort car.
It’s sideways across the road, both doors open, windshield shattered, the metal riddled with bullet holes. Two of my men lie on the ground beside it. I recognize them both—Sergei and Konya. Sergei had a three-year-old daughter. I keep walking, the bitter taste of defeat filling my mouth.
The second car is wheels-up on the shoulder, about thirty meters away. It’s so crushed I need a moment to figure out where the front was. Hard to believe anyone survived that rollover.
It was the car carrying Anya.
She has to be alive.
I run toward it, fighting the fear of what I’ll find. I can’t imagine what I’d do if Anya is dead. After so long alone, closed off from the world, living in my cold, powerful fortress, I finally discovered what happiness was—with her. She can’t die. Not yet. Not now.
When I get close, I see Grisha still hanging from his seatbelt, upside down behind the wheel.
There’s a bullet hole in his temple, his face covered in blood, eyes open, expression slack.
He worked with me for seven years. Always a loyal soldier.
When I needed someone to handle Svetlana’s security, his was the only name that came to mind.
My mourning will be vengeance. I'll honor my men by spilling the blood of everyone who set foot on this road.
There's no body in the back seat. The air rushes out of my lungs, and brief relief washes over me. Brief, very brief. There's a bloody handprint—small—near the edge of the rear window, and farther up, partial fingerprints.
She got out of the car.
“Pakhan.”
Igor calls to me from the other side of the car, the side Anya escaped from. He's looking down, his expression serious, murderous.
A boy sits with his back against the fender of the mangled car.
His right leg is bent at an impossible angle, and two empty pistols lie on the ground beside him.
Casings litter the area around him—dozens of them.
He sat there with his broken leg, shooting until his ammunition ran out, until three bullets tore through his chest.
“Antoniev,” Igor says. “Twenty-three. Joined eight months ago.”
I look at the scattered casings.
He didn't try to run. Even with no way to escape, knowing all his companions were already down, this kid—barely initiated into the Bratva—sat there firing at the enemy. Antoniev showed what true loyalty looks like, right up to his last breath.
He gave his life to buy my wife a chance to escape.
“He was covering her.” My voice comes out hoarse, faltering.
Igor nods once.
“She made it to the woods.” He points his chin toward the trees. “Footprints over there.”
I head where he indicates and find the tracks, but it's not just one set of footprints—it's a jumble of them, impossible to tell what kind of shoes made them.
Several people came through here.
Men. Large and heavy, judging by how deep the earth is pressed down. I scan the area for more—traces of blood that might mean they hurt her, or worse, torn clothing. I clench my jaw, enraged by every unspeakable thought running through my mind.
And as if calling out to me, a faint gleam catches my eye. The headlights illuminate something small lying in the dirt. When I crouch to pick it up, I realize what it is.
My mother's silver bracelet.
No. Anya's.
I close my hand around it, squeezing the thin silver chain until the prongs holding the diamonds bite into my skin. I remember the day I gave it to her—the day we finally accepted that we were completely lost in each other.
I'm grateful when I see Igor striding toward me, determined, something clutched between his fingers. Better to focus on getting answers than to lose myself in memories that won't bring her back.
When he reaches me, he holds out his hand—a crumpled, soaked piece of paper between his fingers.
“This was about ten feet from Antoniev's body.”
I take it, unfolding it carefully to avoid tearing the wet paper. It's a payment receipt. The tab lists seven shots of vodka, two beers, and a pack of cigarettes. Two things catch my attention, though:
The date—four days before the attack on my house. And the name of the establishment: TAVERNA U SEMYONA — VYSOTSK
Vysotsk.
It's like getting slapped in the face by the truth. I already knew Aleksei had handed over Svetlana, that it helped Demidov's men get to me. But now I have confirmation stamped on cheap, smudged thermal paper—right where my wife vanished.
I toss the damn paper aside. It's useless—just confirms what we already knew. I slip the bracelet, still clenched in my fist, into the inside pocket of my coat and pull out my phone to call Vladimir.
“They took Anya,” I say the moment he answers. “Grisha and Antoniev are dead, along with the others. Send a team to collect my men—I want all of them home before dawn. The families will be notified personally. We'll take care of them.”
“Da, Pakhan,” he confirms solemnly. “And their dead?”
Of course they had casualties. I trust each of my men and the rigorous training they go through before swearing loyalty to the Bratva. None of them would go down without taking some with them.
But there are no bodies.
“They took the bodies and the wounded. They had time, and they came prepared.” I clench my teeth, and a stab of pain shoots up to my temple. “And contact the brigadier who handles Vysotsk. Now!”
“Voronov?”
“I want men at that house in forty minutes. No one goes in, no one comes out. That wretched old man and his stupid wife don't set foot outside. For nothing—no emergency, NOTHING. Understood?”
“Of course,” Vladimir agrees, his tone serious.
“And tell them not to lay a finger on them. I want every hair on their heads intact. Just lock the house with them inside.”
“So they're going to stay alive?”
“They're going to wait.” I look at the overturned car that was carrying my wife. “I'll be paying them a visit soon.”
Frustrated, I head back to the mansion. After the call with Vladimir, there wasn't much else to do out there except put myself at risk. Now the work is internal—gathering intel, cross-referencing data, and pulling every thread until it leads me to her.
Yuri types on the keyboard nonstop, hood up, nothing pulling his attention from the three screens in front of him.
The phone vibrates in my hand—a video call from Yelena.
The image is dark, shaky, poorly lit, just the faint glow from the phone itself. Yelena's inside a car, panting, her hair loose and wild. She has a cut above her left eyebrow, and the blood has already run down the side of her face and dried on her chin.
“Lena…”
“It's nothing.” She wipes her forehead with the back of her hand, only smearing the blood further. “Listen.”
“Where are you?”
“Listen, Maksim.” She leans closer to the camera. “I know where she is.”
Everything goes silent. For a moment, I think it's just me, but then I realize Yuri has stopped typing and turned his chair toward me. Beside me, Vladimir looks up from his phone too.
“Talk.”
“I've been tailing Demidov's car since he disappeared yesterday. Found his driver at a gas station off the Luga[30] exit, and he didn't want to talk at first.” She gives a crooked, ugly smile, pointing to her own injured face. “But he talked after.”
“What did you find out?”
“There's a warehouse.” She glances over her shoulder, checking something behind her. “Registered to a shell company linked to him in Tallinn. Eighty kilometers from St. Petersburg, toward Luga. I followed the trail there and I'm parked two kilometers from the gate.”
“And?”
“Two cars showed up about twenty minutes ago,” she says, voice low. “They pulled someone out of the trunk—a thin woman with dark hair. It was Anya, Maks. I'm sure of it.”
I close my eyes for a second. Just one.
“Was she moving?”
“I don't know. I was too far away.”
Yelena's voice is heavy with regret—a tone I don't want to hear. Until I have confirmation that my wife is dead, I'll treat her as if she's alive. There's no room for grief here. Only determination and a hunger for revenge.
“Don't do anything,” I order. “You're going to stay exactly where you are and report every car that goes in and out. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“Yelena.” I use my hardest, coldest voice. I wait until she looks at the camera before speaking again. “If you do anything alone, I'll kill you before Demidov does.”
“I know.”
She almost smiles, fully aware of my order and what's at stake. Yelena has never disappointed me. The screen goes dark as the call ends.
I look up and find the rest of my Circle there. Yuri and Vladimir staring at me, Igor coming through the door—probably summoned urgently by the counselor.
“Yuri, track Yelena. Send the location to the cars and try to hack into whatever security system that warehouse has.”
“Yes, Pakhan.”
“Igor, let's go.”
I start toward the door and notice Vladimir following me too.
“Vladimir…”
“Everything for the Bratva.” He places his closed fist over his heart and meets my eyes. “She's my queen too, Maksim.”
I stare at his face for a second, chest tight. I give a slight nod.
“Let's go get our Queen.”