Chapter 15
MILO
Three words. That's all Viktor said.
Приходи. Прямо сейчас.
Come. Right now.
I stared at the screen, my blood turning to fucking ice. And for what felt like a long time but was probably only seconds, I didn't move.
Viktor’s threat echoed in my skull, and my stomach twisted in knots. I looked at the woman waking up beside me and felt a terror so sharp it nearly crippled me.
What the hell was this new game? Why was he calling me?
I didn't want to find out. I just wanted to lay back down, pull Raven into my arms, and fuck her until the sun came up. Or throw her over my shoulder and run for our lives, which I would've done already if my contact had gotten me the things I needed to make us disappear.
But what if he'd found the real leak?
I forced myself to sit up, swinging my legs over the side of the bed.
She reached for me in the dark, her fingers finding my wrist and closing around it, and for one second—one fucking second—I let myself feel it. The warmth of her hand. The way her thumb found my pulse like she was checking to make sure I was still real.
"Milo—"
"Stay here and lock the door. Don't open it for anyone until I come back for you."
I pulled on my jeans and shirt without turning on a light as she jumped out of bed and pulled on her robe, but I didn't need one.
I'd learned her apartment the way she lived in it.
By feel. By memory. By the geography of objects I could navigate with my eyes closed.
I always left my boots next to her shoes.
My keys next to the bowl that held hers. My jacket on the other hook.
Her apartment had become more familiar to me than my own.
"Anyone, Raven."
The door closed behind me and I stood in the hallway and listened for the deadbolt. It took her four seconds. Four seconds of silence where I could hear her breathing on the other side of the door, shallow and fast, the rhythm of a woman trying not to ask questions she already knew the answers to.
The bolt slid home, and I silently thanked her for listening to me. I couldn't do what I needed to do if I was worried about her.
I took the stairs two at a time and I was on the street at 3:51 a.m.
February in central Texas wasn't real winter.
Not the way people in Chicago or Boston would define it.
But at four in the morning, with the wind cutting through the buildings and no sun to soften it, the cold almost made me wish for the god awful heat of summer.
I zipped my jacket and walked to my car.
It was parked two blocks south because I didn't want to risk leaving it right in front of her building where I wouldn't have had time to scan the area before I went inside.
Viktor had eyes. Viktor always had eyes.
The drive to the restaurant was done on muscle memory alone.
Luckily, the city was pretty empty at this hour.
Just the occasional cab and the pulse of traffic lights cycling through their patterns for absolutely nobody.
My phone sat on the passenger seat, and I kept glancing at it even though the screen remained dark, Viktor's words still rattling around my skull like bullets in a trash can.
Come. Right now.
Not "we need to talk." Not "I found the rat." But why else would he call me unless something had changed? Right?
Right?
I pulled into the lot behind The Silver Table at 4:07 a.m. The restaurant was dark, but the light in the back office bled through the blinds in a thin yellow line, and there were two cars parked near the kitchen entrance.
Viktor's black Mercedes and a Bentley I'd never seen before.
Dark blue, almost black in the predawn light. The plates weren't Texas plates.
I sat in my car for ten seconds. Staring at that Bentley.
Konstantin. It had to be.
I killed the engine, got out, and crossed the lot with my hands in my jacket pockets and my face arranged in the same expression I'd been wearing since I was nineteen years old.
Easy and relaxed. The kind of face that made people think you didn't have a care in the world, that you were just a laid-back guy who happened to clean up dead bodies for a living.
The surfer-boy mask.
It had gotten me through a decade of crime scenes, interrogations, and conversations with men who could order my death over dessert without blinking an eye. It would get me through this.
The kitchen entrance was unlocked. I walked through the dark restaurant, past the empty tables with their white tablecloths—ghostly in the security lighting—past the bar with its bottles gleaming like a row of sentinels, past the Steinway sitting on its raised platform.
I didn't look at the piano.
I couldn't.
If I looked at it, I'd think about her sitting there, and how mesmerizing she looked when she played, the music flowing through her body.
The way she tilted her head, chin lifted, hair spilling over bare shoulders.
The way her fingers moved over the keys with a tenderness and precision that made my chest ache…
The way she cataloged every conversation in that room, filing voices and secrets and patterns of behavior like a human surveillance system disguised as a helpless, blind woman in a silk dress.
I shook off the thought. The office door was closed, but light spilled onto the floor underneath it. I knocked twice.
"Enter," Viktor said.
Cautiously, I opened the door, half expecting to get jumped or shot.
The first thing I noticed was the smell. Not Viktor's usual cologne. Something else. Something rich, layered, old-world. It was pipe tobacco. The expensive kind, not convenience store garbage, but hand-blended, probably imported.
The second thing I noticed was the utter stillness.
Viktor sat behind the desk that I now knew used to belong to Raven's father. He was leaning back in the leather chair with a glass of vodka in his hand, and for once in his life, he didn't look like the most dangerous man in the room.
That distinction belonged to the man sitting opposite Viktor.
This must be Konstantin.
He was in his late fifties, maybe early sixties.
Hard to tell with men like him who aged like old leather, getting tougher and more weathered without ever looking weak.
He was wearing an expensive suit, black, cut close enough to suggest a tailor who charged by the hour.
No tie. Top button undone. The kind of calculated casualness that said I don't need to impress you.
He sat perfectly still. Not the fidgeting stillness of a man at rest, but the stillness of a man who was waiting. The way a predator sits when it doesn't need to chase, knowing its prey will wander close enough on its own.
His eyes found mine the second I walked in. They were pale gray, almost silver in the office light. And absolutely fucking empty.
I'd seen empty eyes before. Hell, I saw them every morning in the mirror. But there was no life in these eyes. Only death.
Another one of Viktor's guys was there too.
One I'd seen around once or twice. He was standing by the small bar, fingers drumming against the counter in a nervous rhythm he probably didn't realize he was broadcasting.
His eyes bounced between Viktor and Konstantin like a dog at a tennis match, trying to figure out which master to please.
"Milo," Viktor said, gesturing to the remaining chair across from the desk. "Sit."
I sat. Crossed one ankle over my knee. Leaned back.
Casual.
Easy.
The mask in place.
"This is my associate, Dmitri," he told me, gesturing to the man standing by the bar. "And this is Konstantin Volkov," Viktor said, indicating the man sitting opposite him. "From Moscow."
"I assumed," I said, with a nod toward the parking lot. "The Bentley's a nice touch. Very subtle."
A flicker in Konstantin's expression. It wasn't quite a smile. More like an acknowledgment that I'd said something he could've found amusing under different circumstances.
"Mr. Scott." He gave me a slight nod. "I have heard a great deal about you."
"All good things, I hope."
"Interesting things." He reached into his jacket and produced a pipe, but he didn't light it. Instead, he just held it, turning it slowly between his fingers like a man handling a rosary. "You have been with Viktor's operation for how long?"
"I don't actually work for Viktor. I'm an independent contractor. Cleaning work. I don't work for any one organization."
"Yet here you are." He set the pipe down on the arm of his chair.
His eyes hadn't left mine. Not once. Not to blink, not to glance at Viktor, not to acknowledge Dmitri's fidgeting at the bar.
And for the first time in my career, I understood what it felt like to be truly seen by a predator who was smarter than me.
Every muscle in my body wanted to tense, my body's way of preparing to fight or flight. I didn't let it. "Viktor needed someone to do a job," I told him with a little shrug. "And the money was right."
"The money." Konstantin picked up his pipe again. "Yes. Let us talk about money with this job. Specifically, the money we've been losing."
He reached into a leather briefcase beside him and produced a folder, opening it on the desk in front of him. Inside were printouts, spreadsheets, shipping manifests. All annotated in red ink with neat, precise handwriting.
"Six shipments," he said. "Intercepted across four months.
Three from Galveston." He tapped the relevant pages.
"These interceptions were not random. Not a coincidence.
They were systematic. Professional. Someone with knowledge of routes, schedules, and personnel has been feeding information to law enforcement. "
He looked up from the folder.
"Mr. Volkov would like some answers, Milo," Viktor told me. "And so would I."
I leaned forward. Studied the documents. Gave them the attention they deserved—because they did deserve it. Whoever was leaking information knew exactly what to give and when to give it.
The tourniquet around my ribs tightened.
"I've been keeping an eye on everyone who works here, at Viktor's request." It was hard to keep the sarcasm from my voice. "I've run every man on the ground. Checked phones, followed movements, dug into finances. Nobody's talking to the Feds."
"Perhaps you've been looking in the wrong place," Dmitri said from the bar.
I kept my eyes on the folder, and didn't turn around. "Meaning?"
"Come now," Konstantin said. "Let's stop with the bullshit, yes? We all know who the leak is. The woman. The pianist."
I shook my head. "It's not her. She can't see," I said. "She's blind…"
Dmitri's fingers were still drumming. "She arrives before her shift. Stays through close. Sits ten feet from the back booths."
"She's a pianist," I said. "That's what they do. Show up and play."
"Dmitri." Viktor's voice, quiet. A warning.
But Konstantin raised one hand. Just slightly. Two inches off the arm of the chair. And Viktor went silent.
"Continue," Konstantin said to Dmitri. But his eyes were on me, to watch my face while he said it.
My blood turned to ice.
He wasn't listening to Dmitri.
He was watching me.
Measuring my reaction. Watching how my body responded to the mention of her name.
The way my jaw didn't clench. The way my breathing didn't change.
The way my posture stayed exactly the same.
Because that's what trained liars do. They hold too still.
They control too perfectly. And men like Konstantin had seen enough trained liars to know what that stillness meant.
I was fucked.