16. Artem
Artem
Benedikt's office exists to make people feel small.
Nothing Benedikt Volkov does is accidental.
It still works on me a little.
He’s standing when I arrive, which means he's been here long enough to be restless, which means I'm not as early as I thought I was. He's wearing an immaculate charcoal suit that probably cost more than my first car.
He glances up when I enter and nods once.
"Artem."
"Benedikt.”
I drop into the chair across from his desk without waiting to be invited, mostly because he'd find it irritating if I stood there waiting like one of the foot soldiers. Getting under Benedikt’s skin in small doses is one of the few pleasures the job affords.
He sits, then folds his hands on the desk, and looks at me with the expression he uses when he wants information and has no interest in preamble.
"The Gallagher girl," he says flatly.
"What about her?”
"Where are we?”
"She's careful. Knows how to present. Misha's comfortable with her, which means he's not watching for anything she doesn't want him to see.
" I pause. "She's been running searches on Lucas Manifold, the task force expansion of his donor networks, and his public calendar.
Her father is building something on that front. "
"And the bratva? Has she found anything?"
"No."
That part is true.
Since I made myself an unavoidable fixture in her life, Cady Gallagher hasn't run a single search on Benedikt, our operations, or anything that would damage us. She's been too busy being furious with me to remember what she came here to do.
Benedikt studies me for a moment with dark, flat eyes that have unnerved better men than me. He's not suspicious; he's just thorough, and he applies the same attention to everything.
"She's a distraction," he says. “And I’m not a fan.”
“I understand.”
"The Gallagher family isn't subtle, but they're also not stupid.
" He stands, moving to the window, and I recognize the shift.
He's transitioning from intelligence review to logistics, which means something's in motion that needs my attention.
“Colin Gallagher has been building toward something for months.
The Manifold connection is part of it. If he gets his people inside the task force structure, he controls who gets looked at and who doesn't. That's not just an Irish advantage; that's a direct threat to how we move. "
"I know."
"Then you understand why I need his daughter handled before she becomes a liability."
Handled.
The word sits in the air between us for a moment.
"I'm on it," I say.
He turns from the window. "The Vitrenko shipment moves on Thursday.
Rotterdam to the port. Same route, different contacts on the receiving end.
The last rotation burned when Ilya's man talked, so I've restructured the chain.
" He moves back to his desk, pulls a folder, and slides it across to me.
"Four new faces. I need them vetted before Wednesday night. "
I take the folder. I'll go through it later, alone, where I can think. "Timeline's tight."
"Timelines are always tight." He says it without apology, because the concept of an inconvenient deadline has never once slowed Benedikt Volkov. "I need confirmation by Tuesday. If any of them have outside connections I don't know about, I want to know before the cargo is in the water, not after."
"Understood."
Satisfied, he closes the folder on his side of the desk. There's a brief lull, and then my phone buzzes in my jacket pocket.
Benedikt's eyes drop to my pocket for a second, and I pull out the phone.
I’ve built a system that monitors Cady's devices and set alerts for certain keyword clusters. I’d get an alert if she found something she shouldn't have, or if she was about to do something I needed to know about before she did it.
I glance at the notification.
Search activity flagged: multiple queries, residential listings, cross-state.
Transit routes.
Low-cost accommodations.
She wasn’t searching for Benedikt. She wasn’t searching for our shipment routes, our financial contacts, or anything that would suggest she's gotten closer to what her father sent her here for.
She was looking at apartments in other states. Bus routes, cheap rentals, and cities she's never been to. She’s quietly calculating what it would take to disappear.
Something shifts in my chest.
“Anything important?”
"No.” I pocket the phone. “Routine."
He watches me for a beat longer than necessary before deciding against further interrogation.
"There's one more thing.”
"There always is,” I mutter.
"The Gallagher situation. Colin Gallagher reached out three days ago," he says.
That gets my attention. "Reached out how?”
“Through appropriate channels. Formal.” The dryness in his voice says exactly what he thinks of it. "He proposed an alliance. Not an operational or a tactical one. Something… structural."
I know what that means before he finishes.
There’s no fucking way.
“Please don’t say—”
"He wants to merge the families," Benedikt confirms. “Immediately.”
"That's fuckin’ insane."
“That’s politics. The Gallaghers have reach we don’t have on the eastern corridor. Colin has been gathering leverage on Manifold for months, and if he gets what he needs, he controls the oversight structure in this city. An alliance with him isn’t nothing.”
"An alliance isn't a merger."
"No." He looks at me steadily. "It isn't."
I think about Cady in her office with her laptop, digging through Manifold's public records. I think about Cady in her penthouse, glaring at me. I think about the way she told me to go fuck myself and meant every word.
I also remember the way my face stung afterward, and how I sat on her floor thinking about her for too long before I remembered I was supposed to be working.
I think about my phone notification.
Apartments in other states.
Bus routes.
Cheap rentals.
An exit plan.
"Benedikt," I say carefully. "What did you agree to?”
"Misha is going to marry Cady Gallagher." He holds my gaze as he delivers the blow.
It takes everything I have to keep my expression neutral.
Misha.
My impulsive, charming, shallow brother, who has never once considered the morning after. He’s set to marry the woman I've spent the last two weeks with around the clock.
I've been watching her think, work, spy, and argue.
"That's your play." I’m proud of my even tone.
"It's the smart play. She becomes family. Colin gets his alliance. We get access to everything her father has built with it. And Misha gets… what Misha always gets."
Pussy.
“He doesn’t know she’s working for her dad.”
He shrugs. “He will."
“You’re going to tell him?”
“Not unless you don’t want me to. That’s up to you, Artem.”
"And if she runs?"
Benedikt looks at me with flat, careful eyes.
“That,” he says, “is why you’re still monitoring her.”
I pick up the folder from his desk and stand, because if I stay in this chair any longer, I might say something I can't take back.
"Tuesday." Benedikt has already moved past the conversation.
"Tuesday," I confirm.
Then I walk out.
The elevator is empty when I step in, the doors closing behind me, the city disappearing behind polished steel. I pull my phone out and look at the notification.
Misha is going to marry Cady Gallagher.
I close the alert, open the monitoring system, and disable the alert.
I don't need it anymore.
I know what Cady Gallagher is planning. I also know that it doesn't end with her on a bus to somewhere no one can find her.
It doesn't end with a ring on her finger that belongs to my brother, either.
I don't need an algorithm to tell me where Cady Gallagher is going.
I already know I won’t let her get there.