Chapter 23
Dubai, present day
Katya
ARCHEON’s idea of a ‘safehouse’ looked a hell of a lot like a luxury penthouse, which was almost funny considering we’d been hauled here under armed escort not fifteen minutes ago.
Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the glittering sprawl of Dubai at night, the city lights reflecting off the glass like a second sky.
Heavy blackout shades were rolled halfway down, enough to give us a view, but not enough to let anyone see in from above.
The furniture was low and modern, all cream leather, the air cool and filtered, the silence just a little too quiet.
There were no obvious guards inside the suite, but I could feel them all around us. In the hallway. In the stairwell. On the roof. They were everywhere.
We were all here.
That was the strangest part.
The Markovs occupied one side of the living area, still radiating the kind of pissed-off energy you only get from being forced to cooperate.
Their limo had made it farther than ours, but not by much.
ARCHEON had boxed them in on the outskirts of the city, surrounded them with guns, and ‘invited’ them into an armored convoy the rest of the way here.
Roman was slouched on the arm of a sofa like he was trying not to punch a wall, Lev sat in a chair angled near the window clocking all the exits, and Dmitri stood with his arms crossed, shoulder against the wall like he was two seconds from walking out if this went sideways.
Kara sat between Roman and Lev, with her knee bouncing, fingers curling and uncurling around a glass of water she hadn’t touched.
On the other side, the Dragunov brothers had made their own little gravitational cluster.
Mikhail stood near the center of the room, anchored like a dark pillar.
Andrei leaned on the back of a chair with his arms folded, and Viktor was sprawled sideways on the couch beside where I sat, one arm draped over the backrest behind me like it lived there.
And at the head of it all, claiming the space as hers, stood ARCHEON’s director. She was wearing an immaculate navy suit with her hair in a neat, sophisticated twist. She gazed at us all, cataloguing every person in the room.
Her eyes flicked toward me for a beat when I looked at her. Not hostile. Not exactly friendly either. More like just aware.
“I suppose,” she said crisply, “we should begin with what you’ve all been waiting for.”
Viktor raised a lazy hand. “Is this the part where you tell us that you’re our friends?”
“Yes,” she said. “That part.”
Tension flooded the room. Even Roman straightened up.
The director regarded us for a moment, as if weighing which version of the truth to give. Then she looked directly at me.
“ARCHEON didn’t try to down your jet,” she said. “It was Revenant.”
My eyes flicked to Andrei, remembering the blood on his forehead, the way his hands shook when he finally got the jet under control. He kept his face neutral, but his jaw clenched hard.
“Why?” Andrei asked. His voice was calm, but there was murder in it.
“Because you became a liability,” the director replied, her eyes sliding to land on me.
Andrei made a low sound. “They used a remote override to try to take down our flight systems.”
“Correct,” she said. “They’ve used similar methods before. But you were more stubborn, or maybe ingenious, than they expected.”
“I suppose that’s supposed to be flattering,” Andrei muttered.
Dmitri’s gaze sharpened. “And ARCHEON?”
She turned her head toward him. “We were observing what was happening from afar,” she said. “We became aware of the compromise mid-flight. By the time we’d confirmed it wasn’t operator error, Andrei and Ms. Volkov had already severed the external control. Impressive, by the way.”
Her eyes flicked to me again. I didn’t blush, but I felt a sliver of pride slide under my skin.
“So now what?” Roman asked. “We’re out of Revenant’s control. We’re in your hands now.” He spread his hands. “Are we prisoners? Guests? Protected assets?”
The director inclined her head. “You are not prisoners,” she said. “Not today, anyway.”
Kara arched a brow. “That’s comforting,” she muttered.
The woman’s mouth tightened faintly. “You’re here because Revenant is hunting all of you. They have resources, yes, but their attention is… divided at the moment. We mean to make that distraction worse.”
Dmitri’s voice cut in, steady and wary. “When you called me on the phone to get us here, you told us that the Dragunovs and ARCHEON and have aligned interests now. Spell that out for the rest of us.”
She clasped her hands loosely in front of her.
“Revenant has become a destabilizing factor and we don’t like that.
They interfere in operations that require steady and complete control.
They arm unpredictable actors. They tamper with systems they don’t fully understand.
We can’t allow them to continue what they’re doing. ”
“So, you’re going destroy them,” Dmitri replied.
“That is the idea,” she replied with zero expression on her face.
“I’m supposed to trust that you’re doing this because you’re altruistic now?” I asked. “You want to be the good guys?”
She turned and held my gaze without flinching. “I’m not naive enough to call ARCHEON good, Ms. Volkov, and neither should you be. But in this instance, we are on the same side. Whether you like us or not is irrelevant.”
Beside me, Viktor murmured, “She’s got a point.”
Mikhail sighed. “I know you don’t like ARCHEON, Katerina,” he said, his eyes cutting to me, “and they don’t particularly like you either, but we need this to work.”
He wasn’t wrong.
I folded my arms, forcing myself to listen.
Mikhail focused in on Andrei. “What about the drones? What did you arrange?”
Andrei straightened, all lazy charm gone. “The shipment never went to Revenant’s people or their insane client group,” he said. “The manufacturer delivered them to one of the Markov warehouses. They’re in our orbit now.”
The room went very still.
Roman’s brows shot up. “I’m sorry—one of what warehouses?”
Lev leaned forward in his chair, eyes narrowing. “You routed a shipment of experimental weapons into our supply chain without telling us?”
Dmitri’s mouth curved, but there was no humor in it. “And when, exactly, were you planning to mention you’d parked a small private war fleet under our floor?”
Andrei didn’t flinch. “You have a receiving facility even Revenant doesn’t know about. High security. Clean records. I needed somewhere they couldn’t touch and wouldn’t think to look. Your warehouse was the safest option.”
The director nodded. “We’re aware. Once we discovered what Mr. Dragunov had done, we elected to keep the shipment where it was.”
Roman blinked. “You what?”
She turned to him. “You have a secure receiving facility. It’s discreet. Well-guarded. Off the books. It was efficient to keep using it. Moving the drones again would have increased risk. So we left them where they are, for now.”
“You let the weapons… stay with us,” Lev said slowly.
“We are not in the business of trusting Bratva, but we are in the habit of taking advantage of certain opportunities,” she said.
Kara finally spoke, her voice quiet. “What kind of opportunities?”
The director smiled slightly. “The kind that allow us to remove a problem without exposing either of our organizations.”
Mikhail’s expression didn’t change, but the air around him seemed to draw in more gravity. “You sound like you already have a plan.”
“We do,” she said.
“And Revenant?” Andrei asked. “Where do they fit in this plan?”
“They’re going to have their own problems tomorrow,” she replied.
That made everyone go still.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “What happens tomorrow?”
“We’ve arranged a few things,” the director said.
Cold slid through me. “What do you have planned?”
The director’s mouth curved without humor.
“We have several logistics hubs. One of them is a nice, unremarkable warehouse in St. Petersburg. Revenant doesn’t know it exists.
The drones will launch from there on a fixed schedule.
They’ll be auto programmed to hit Revenant’s primary tower in the morning. ”
“In other words,” Viktor said, “you’re going to let their own toys eat them alive.”
“Something like that,” the director replied. “It will look like a catastrophic failure in a system Revenant built and modified for their own use. ARCHEON will express concern, of course. Offer assistance. But the world will see that this technology is not safe in their hands.”
“You’re wiping them out,” Roman said.
“Severely degrading their capabilities,” she corrected.
“By blowing up their headquarters,” I said.
She didn’t deny it.
Lev stared back at her. “And our warehouse?”
“It’s been scrubbed clean,” she said. “No recordings. No trails. Nothing that leads back to ARCHEON or any of you. If anyone tries to trace the origin, they’ll hit a wall of shell companies and dead ends.”
Kara let out a breath that sounded more like a laugh. “So, we get to sit on the sidelines and watch the monster eat itself like a very destructive ouroboros.”
“For once,” I said, “I think I could live with that.”
The director turned her attention to Kara then.
“As for you, Ms. Lennox,” she said, “you should know your situation has changed as well.”
Kara’s shoulders tensed. “That usually isn’t good news.”
“In this case,” the woman replied, “it is. ARCHEON had compiled a rather extensive file on you. There were several… incriminating records tied to your time in their employ.”
Kara’s jaw clenched. “I know.”
“We’ve erased it all,” the director said simply.
Silence followed.
Kara stared at her. “Come again?”
“Every file,” she said. “Every trace that tied your name to our operations. As far as our systems are concerned, you walk away from this as nothing more than a temporary nuisance. No standing warrants. No active red flags. You’re free from us now.”
“Why?” Kara asked. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“No,” the director said. “But take it as a measure of goodwill and thanks to the Markovs for their assistance in this whole matter.”
Roman stood, closed the distance between him and Kara and hauled her straight into his chest, wrapping her up like he could shield her from every bad thing she’d ever done in ARCHEON’s name.
Lev stepped in on her other side, palm finding the back of her neck, grounding her.
Dmitri hesitated only a heartbeat before closing the circle, one large hand settling at her waist.
For the first time since I’d met Kara Lennox, she looked… unarmed. Not in the physical sense—she’d probably shank someone with a butter knife if she needed to—but in the way her expression cracked, eyes shining, breath catching like the weight of years had just slid off her shoulders.
Andrei folded his arms. “So Revenant is about to lose their home base. They’ve lost their drones. Their clients. Their leverage. What do you want from us?”
The British woman considered him for a moment. “Nothing,” she said. “For now.”
Viktor snorted. “You people love that phrase.”
“For now,” she repeated evenly, “you all go back to your lives. Your… unusual arrangement.” Her gaze flicked briefly between me and the three Dragunov brothers in a way that made my skin heat and then it settled on Kara and the Markov brothers.
“Revenant will be occupied. ARCHEON will quietly stabilize what they broke. And if we require your… unique talents again, we’ll ask. Politely.”
“And if we say no?” I asked.
“Then we find another way,” she said. “But for what it’s worth, Ms. Volkov…” She paused. Her voice softened by a fraction. “You did more good here than you may ever realize.”
I didn’t know what to do with that. Praise from ARCHEON felt wrong. But some hidden, wounded part of me soaked it in anyway.
The director checked her watch. “Our business here is concluded. ARCHEON forces will maintain a discreet perimeter around your estates for the next ninety-six hours. After that, you’re on your own again.”
She turned toward the door. Her men fell in behind her like well-trained shadows.
“Wait,” I blurted out.
She turned and looked at me expectantly.
“I have something for you,” I said. “Data I pulled from Revenant before we escaped. Their internal communications. Their activities. Asset lists. Where their money went. Everything.”
She nodded once and held my gaze, acknowledging the weight of what she’d just acquired.
“Send it to us. We can use that. It will help dismantle whatever scraps of infrastructure Revenant will have left after their headquarters are destroyed. With all of that, they will never recover. Revenant is as good as dead.”
“Good,” I said. “It’s what they deserve.”
For years, I’d thought taking down men like this would take an army. Turns out, it just took the right leverage and the right bastards to aim it at.
“For what it’s worth, Ms. Volkov,” the director added, “you’ve done ARCHEON and the world a significant service.
” She paused, a thoughtful expression on her face.
“One last thing,” she said. “When the news breaks about Revenant tomorrow, I suggest you all act surprised. It will be easier for everyone.”
Then she was gone.
The door clicked softly shut behind her.
For a long moment, no one spoke.
Viktor finally broke the silence. “So,” he said, sounding almost cheerful, “we survived Revenant, teamed up with ARCHEON, and get to watch our enemies blow themselves up tomorrow. And we keep the girl.”
“Viktor.” Mikhail sounded exasperated.
“What?” he asked. “Tell me which part of that isn’t great for us.”
Andrei glanced at me, his expression softening. “She’s not an accessory,” he said.
“I know,” Viktor replied. He met my eyes. “She’s the reason we didn’t fall apart through all of this.”
I rolled my eyes to hide the way my chest tightened. “You three are insufferable.”
Roman chuckled. “You love them.”
Kara snorted. “She absolutely does.”
Mikhail’s gaze landed on me then. “Whatever comes next,” he said, “we’re done letting other people decide what we are.”
I held his stare, then glanced at Andrei, then Viktor.
They were mine.
I was theirs.
We’d decided that together.
Revenant would burn tomorrow. ARCHEON would clean up the ashes. The world would keep turning and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like a weapon waiting to be used.
I felt like a woman who had survived, chosen, and walked away with her sexy monsters on her own terms.
And that, in my world, was as close to a happy ending as anyone ever got.