20. Artem
Artem
I find it on a Tuesday.
I'm running a routine pull on Misha's financials, the kind I do for everyone in my orbit every few months, because trust is a nice concept but verification is better. It takes me twenty minutes to get through his accounts, the shells, and the shells behind those.
Then, I find the thread.
It's intentionally small, broken across three accounts over fourteen months, and designed to look like nothing.
But I've been doing this long enough. I pull it and keep pulling, and what comes out on the other end sits on my screen for a long time.
Three million dollars.
Misha owes Lucas Manifold three million dollars.
The timeline builds itself as I read. A year and a half of losses at gambling tables, debt that changed hands quietly in the way debt does when the person holding it wants leverage more than repayment.
Manifold bought it eight months ago and didn't collect. He just held it, knowing he'd need it eventually.
Eight months ago is right around the time Manifold started making noise about the task force expansion, and right around the time he started making noise about us.
The Hargrove Foundation Gala raises money for children's literacy and exists primarily so men like Manifold can stand in rooms full of people who believe in them and feel clean about everything else.
The venue is warm light, round tables, and a string quartet, with waitstaff moving through the crowd with champagne and small things on small plates.
I've been here forty minutes in a black suit with untouched champagne, working the room.
I know where Manifold is, where his security is, where the catering staff disappears to between passes, and what I'm putting in his drink and when.
It's not complicated. It rarely is when you do it right.
I move toward the bar, running the sequence, and timing the approach.
Then, I see the red dress.
Cady Gallagher is standing at the edge of the dance floor in a dress that has no business being worn in public.
She's laughing at something the man beside her has said, her head tilted back, and the man is young and good-looking and has his hand on her waist.
She lets him.
I’m going to break that hand.
I watch for about four seconds before handing my champagne to a passing waiter and walking onto the dance floor.
I put my hand on the man's shoulder and tell him I've got it from here in the tone that leaves no room to argue.
He looks at me, makes the smart decision, and disappears.
Cady stares daggers at me. "You've got to be kidding me.”
"Dance with me."
"I was dancing with someone.”
"He left."
"Because you scared him off."
“Then you picked the wrong man to dance with.”
“I did not.”
“You want a man who isn’t scared of confrontation or a man who runs at the first sign of it?”
"You've been following me," she accuses.
"I'm here for the children's literacy program."
"Artem…”
"You look like trouble in that dress."
"Is that a complaint?”
"It's an observation."
Her eyes move over my face. "Why are you actually here?”
"Business."
"Manifold's here.”
"I know."
I watch her think.
“Where’s Misha?”
She scoffs. “Probably fucking someone.” I perk a brow. “I’m not as dumb as you think.”
“Never said you were.”
“Good. Keep that mindset.”
“Break up with him.”
She averts her gaze away from me, annoyed. “I can’t.”
"Come with me."
I don’t wait for her to agree, guiding us off the dance floor to a storage room off the east corridor. It’s small and smells like cleaning products and folded linen, and when the door closes behind us, the noise of the gala drops to a muffled hum.
Cady turns with her arms crossed and her chin up. “Talk.”
"Misha owes Lucas Manifold three million dollars."
“Three million dollars? That’s impossible.”
“It’s true,” I grind out. “I found it.”
I turn her around and walk her backward until her shoulders meet the wall with a little grunt that comes off her lips.
“Focus, lisichka. I’m not telling you this shit because I’m bored.”
She bows her head and mutters, “What for then?”
"Gambling. Fourteen months of it. Manifold bought the debt eight months ago and has been sitting on it." Her eyes widen a little. “That's why Misha said yes so fast. Five million from your father clears what he owes and leaves him two million to keep."
“And did your little bro ask you to bail him out?”
“No. He hasn't told anyone."
“Then you're here to handle Manifold," she says, and I don't have to confirm it. "If Manifold is gone, the debt is gone.”
I don’t answer.
“I’m telling you to call the shit off when I’m done. If the debt is gone, Misha has no reason to go through with the marriage."
She holds my gaze. "Misha has to be the one to call it off. Benedikt agreed to it. It can't just disappear without a reason."
"Misha calling it off because his girlfriend caught him with someone else is a clean reason," I tell her. "Benedikt won't push back on that. Even he has limits on what he'll ask a woman to accept."
"I’d need proof."
"It wouldn't be hard to find."
“No,” she agrees quietly. “It wouldn’t. But even with proof, my father won’t let me be the one to end this. Misha would still have to.”
“You’re a smart girl, right? You’ll figure it out.”
“Oh, we will,” she claims. “And you’re going to help me.”
I cock my head to the side. “Excuse me? I’m not helping you do—”
“Fuck me.”
My cock comes to attention at those two words.
She looks back with the steady calm of a woman who has played a card she's been holding and has no intention of taking it back.
And the worst part, the genuinely destabilizing part, is that she's not performing it.
There's no manipulation in her face right now, no angle I can identify and neutralize.
There's just Cady, chin up, blue eyes level, asking me for the one thing I told myself I wasn't going to give her.
Every sensible thought I have lines up in a neat row.
She is my brother's.
I am Benedikt Volkov's right-hand man, and I have never let something personal compromise something operational, and I won’t start now.
“Here,” she whispers, her voice sweet now and soft, before her fingers dip underneath the waistband of my slacks. “This might work.”
The moment her fingertips brush against the skin of my lower belly, the last shred of my resolve snaps.
I’m frozen by her touch. My breath hitches in my throat.
Cady grips my biceps and spins me around against the wall she just occupied.
Then she sinks to her knees on the cold floor of the storage closet, the scent of dust and old cardboard swirling around us, but all I can smell is her.
She undoes my belt and slides the zipper down, the sound loud and jarring in the oppressive silence of the small room.
When she reaches inside and frees my cock. It springs out hard and pulsing, throbbing against the air with a familiar neediness it’s felt every time she’s around.
She doesn't recoil at the size or the intensity of my arousal; instead, she looks up at me, her eyes dark with a hunger that mirrors my own.
"You're so hard." Her breath is hot against my thigh. “And tense.”
Then, she opens her mouth without another word and slides her lips over the head of my cock.
I let out a guttural groan, my head slamming back against the wall behind me, but I barely feel it.
All my focus is narrowed down to the wet, searing heat of her mouth.
She sucks hard, her tongue swirling around the ridge of my glans before she slides deeper, taking as much of my length as she can manage.
"Fuck," I hiss, my fingers threading into her thick, red hair.
I told myself I wouldn't do this.
I told myself she was off-limits.
But as she bobs her head, her throat tightening around me, the image of my brother vanishes. The loyalty to the Volkov name, the operational discipline—it all burns away in the heat of her mouth.
I stop fighting the current and let myself drown in her.
She’s relentless. She uses her hand to stroke the base of my shaft while her mouth works the top, creating a vacuum of pleasure that makes my toes curl in my shoes.
I can hear the wet, sloppy sounds of her sucking, the rhythmic slap of her cheeks against my thighs.
She looks up at me while she does it, her eyes wide and defiant, watching the way my face contorts with raw, unfiltered lust.
I lose it.
The broody, controlled mask I wear for the world shatters.
I reach down, my other hand cupping her jaw and guiding her rhythm, pushing her deeper.
I want to feel her choke on me.
I’m not the right-hand man in the Volkov empire in this moment. I’m just a man being driven to the edge by a woman who knows how to break me.
“Is this how you sucked my brother’s cock, Lisichka?” The thought barrels into my head, and it’s probably a warning my brain is trying to get out to me to stop. “Can you go deeper?”
I shove my cock a little more into her mouth, and she takes it.
I stroke her jaw with my fingers, showing my appreciation. “So, you can be a good girl, Lisichka. I’ll remember that.”
Her lips slide off my cock, and it twitches at the loss. “So, you’ll fuck me?”
“You’re going to need to do more than suck my dick in a storage closet, Lisichka. I’m gonna need to lose my mind first.”
I fully expect her to stand, push me away, and tell me to go fuck myself again.
She smiles a little devilish smile that says my challenge has been accepted. “That can be arranged.”
Then her tongue darts out, licking my tip, and she goes right back down on me.
Fuck me.
Her lips are plush, warm, and perfect.
She sucks me off like she’s trying to get me to go crazy, and I’m almost there.
The pressure builds until it’s a physical ache. A white-hot tension coiled in my gut that threatens to snap.
Every wet, sliding motion of her tongue, every desperate gulp as she takes me deeper, is a nail in the coffin of my restraint.
I feel my pulse thundering in my cock, the head pulsing against the back of her throat, and the way she's claiming me right here, right now is driving me insane.
I don't just want to come; I want to be ruined by her.
I want to erase every trace of Misha from my mind and replace it with the sensation of her lips molding around me.
I stop fighting the urge to take control and instead lean into the depravity of it.
I wrap my hand firmly around the back of her head, my fingers digging into the roots of her hair.
I force her to take every single inch, guiding her rhythm with a brutal, demanding pressure.
I want to feel her struggle for air. I want to hear her muffled, wet whimpers as she hits her limit, only for me to shove her just a fraction deeper, forcing her to accommodate me fully.
"That's it," I growl. "Take it all, Lisichka. Show me how much you want to break me."
She responds by swirling her tongue around the head of my cock, flicking it with a precision that makes my hips jerk.
She knows what she's doing.
She uses the suction of her cheeks to create a vacuum that feels like it's pulling my soul out through my shaft.
I speed up, my hand on her head becoming more aggressive, driving her onto me in a fast, punishing pace. I can feel the buildup reaching a breaking point, that precarious edge where pleasure borders pain.
"I'm going to... fuck," I hiss, my knuckles white as I grip her hair.
She feels the tension in my thighs and the way my breath hitches.
She doubles her efforts, her throat tightening in a series of rhythmic contractions that milk me relentlessly. She sucks harder, her tongue working overtime, determined to draw every last drop out of me.
I lose the battle. My back hits the wall with a heavy thud, and I let out a choked roar.
I pump into her mouth in thick, hot bursts, my vision blurring as I spill everything into her.
Even as I tremble, she stays right there, swallowing every bit of me, her eyes locked onto mine with a triumphant, predatory glint.
She doesn't stop until the last spasm fades, licking the remnants from the tip of my cock with one final swipe of her tongue.
Then she pulls back slowly, a thin string of saliva and cum connecting her lip to the head of my cock.
She stands up gracefully, smoothing out her dress and adjusting her hair as if she hadn't just spent the last three minutes on her knees.
She reaches over and gently zips my pants back up, her fingers lingering for a second on the fabric.
She leans in, her lips brushing against my ear, her voice a low, teasing velvet.
"Think about it."
Before I can find my voice or grab her arm, she turns and slips out of the closet, leaving me alone in the dark, trembling and undone.
And fucked.
It’s only a matter of time now.
I will have my cock so deep in that woman that it will destroy all the relationships I have.
And knowing that won’t stop me.