Chapter 20
ADRIAN
I’m standing at the kitchen counter when Fedor’s vehicle pulls through the gate.
I’ve been standing here watching the security feed on my phone and tracking the convoy’s position through Grigor’s GPS relay.
The espresso I made when Aurora called has gone cold in my hand.
I set it in the sink and walk to the door.
She comes through it looking composed, which tells me she held herself together for the drive. The composure is a lid. I can see what’s underneath it. Fedor follows three steps behind her and gives me a nod that says the route was clean after they left the restaurant.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.” She sets her purse on the counter and turns to face me. “I’m sure it was the same man, Adrian. He had the same build, same jacket, same way of standing. He was watching me, and he left when he realized I’d spotted him.”
I pull her toward me and hold her. She lets me, which tells me how rattled she actually is. I keep my arms around her until her breathing settles and she stops gripping my shirt.
Viktor arrives shortly after. He walks in carrying his tablet and a folder, and he looks grim.
“Low-level surveillance has been detected near two recent locations connected to Aurora.” He opens the folder on the kitchen table.
“The college campus and today’s restaurant.
Grigor pulled security footage from both venues.
The man Aurora described appears in the campus footage well before her arrival and leaves after she does.
Today, he was positioned across the street from the restaurant long before Aurora sat down. ”
“He’s not following her. He’s arriving first.”
“Correct. He’s anticipating her movements, which means someone is feeding him location information in advance or he’s monitoring communications we haven’t detected yet.”
Aurora sits at the table. “Could Eric be giving him information?”
Viktor looks at me. I nod for him to answer honestly.
“Combined with Hayes’s off-book contact with Yevgeny Melnyk in Karpov’s shipping operation, the possibility is real.
Hayes has the investigative skills to track Aurora’s patterns and the motive to find her.
Karpov has the manpower to deploy surveillance.
If they’re sharing resources, we have a coordinated threat instead of two separate ones. ”
“There’s something else.” Viktor pulls up a notification on his tablet. “Internal affairs has formally suspended Hayes from the Echelon case pending review. He no longer has even a pretense of official access to Aurora’s whereabouts.”
Aurora frowns. “Shouldn’t that make things better?”
“A working detective has rules, oversight, and a chain of command that limits what he can do.” I sit across from her. “A suspended detective with Karpov contacts and a personal obsession has none of those constraints. He’s more dangerous now, not less.”
She looks at me for a long moment. “You knew this might happen. You knew Eric was meeting with Karpov’s people, and you still let me believe I had room to breathe?”
“I was trying to buy you time before the walls closed in again.” I hold her gaze. “I misjudged the risk because I wanted to be wrong about how fast this would escalate.”
She’s glaring at me. “You decided what I needed to know and gave me just enough to feel like I was making my own decisions. An illusion of choice is still control, Adrian.”
I understand where I went wrong in trying to protect her, and I want her to believe I truly do. “I know. The reasons were to keep you and the babies safe, but I should have told you what I was seeing instead of deciding how much you needed to know.”
She closes her eyelids for a second. “Part of this is on me too. I process things through a filter that makes every protective gesture look like Eric, and that isn’t fair to you. I’m working on it.”
“You don’t have to work on it alone.”
She opens her eyes and looks at me, acknowledging we’re both fighting patterns older than this relationship. “I’m going to take a nap. I’ve been running on adrenaline for three hours, and the babies are making me pay for it.”
She walks down the hall and closes the bedroom door, and the lock clicks. She’s not locking me out. She’s locking out the world. I’ve learned the difference.
Viktor is already pulling up files on his tablet. “We need her to sit with a sketch artist. The surveillance footage gives us angles but the resolution isn’t good enough for facial recognition.”
“Can we identify him from Karpov’s known associates?”
“Unlikely. We have files on Ludo Cassarian and Yevgeny Melnyk, but Karpov’s operational staff below that level is mostly unknown to us.
If this man is a contracted surveillance operative, he probably doesn’t appear in any database we can access.
” He sets down the tablet. “A composite sketch gives us something to circulate through our contacts in the port district. Someone may recognize him.”
“Set it up for tomorrow. Aurora needs to decompress today.”
She sleeps for two hours and comes out of the bedroom looking steadier. I’ve spent the time with Viktor planning countermeasures, and by the time she sits on the couch with a glass of water and pulls the blanket over her legs, I’ve decided what to tell her.
“I need you to know something.” I sit beside her and face her directly.
“The restructuring I mentioned, separating the legitimate businesses from the criminal operations, is already underway. My attorneys are dissolving shell companies. Viktor is building exit strategies for the branches that can’t be cleaned.
I’ve set a twelve-month timeline to transfer the shipping network and close the offshore accounts. ”
She pulls the blanket tighter. “You’re serious about leaving?”
“I’m serious about building something that doesn’t require armed guards and encrypted phones.
The hotels, the clubs, and the real estate generate enough revenue to sustain everything independently.
I want our children to grow up outside this world, and I want you to finish school without worrying about if the man sitting next to you in class is an operative or a student. ”
She winces. “New fear unlocked. Thanks.”
I shake my head. “I’m serious.”
“I know, and it’s a beautiful picture.” She takes a sip of water. “Can you actually do it?”
“The numbers work, and the legal framework is clean. Viktor is preparing the inventory of which operations can be closed, sold, or handed off.”
“I’m not asking about the numbers.” She sets the glass down. “I’m asking whether Karpov, Eric, and the people who depend on your criminal infrastructure will let you walk away.”
“Karpov gets handled first. I can’t dismantle anything while he’s still active.”
She frowns at my half-answer. “What happens after Karpov?”
I keep my gaze steady on hers so she can see I’m being completely transparent.
“After Karpov, the restructuring accelerates. The people who depend on the criminal side will be transitioned to other operators or compensated. Viktor has contacts who can absorb the shipping routes without disrupting the supply chain.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “I believe you want this and you’ll try. I’m not convinced the world you built will let you leave it, but I want to be wrong about that.”
I exhale harshly. “I want you to be wrong about it too.”
She reaches for my hand. I take it, and the contact is warms me. She’s not forgiving me for the surveillance lapse or for filtering information, but she’s choosing to stay in this with her eyes open, which is harder and matters more.
“I’m tired of being afraid.” She says it without ceremony.
“I’m tired of looking over my shoulder and wondering if the man at the crosswalk works for Karpov or Eric or nobody.
I’m tired of living in someone else’s properties and sleeping next to a loaded weapon on the nightstand.
I want the life you’re describing, and I want it with you.
Wanting it makes me vulnerable, but that doesn’t scare me as much as it used to. ”
I pull her toward me and kiss her. The kiss starts slowly and carefully, matching how we’ve been with each other since the argument, testing the ground before committing weight. She kisses me back with her hand on my chest and curls her fingers into my shirt.
“Not on the couch,” she says against my mouth. “Take me to bed.”
I stand and pull her up with me. We walk down the hall together, and I close the bedroom door behind us.
The loaded Glock on the nightstand catches the dock light through the window, and I move it to the drawer before turning back to her.
The gesture isn’t lost on either of us. I’m putting the weapon away so I can touch her with hands that aren’t reaching for it, and this distinction needing to exist in our bedroom is its own kind of damage that she absorbs but continues.
I undress her slowly. She lifts her arms, and I pull her shirt over her head.
Her body has changed with the pregnancy, showing subtle shifts that make me want her more, not differently.
Her breasts are fuller, her waist is slightly thicker, and when I press my palm flat against her stomach, it’s firmer than it was.
Thinking of the babies growing inside her hits me hard enough to make my eyes sting.
She puts her hand over mine and holds it there.
“They’re in there,” she says in a reassuring tone. “I’m here too.”
I kiss her stomach, then her ribs, then the space between her breasts, and she threads her fingers through my hair and guides my mouth back to hers.
We fall onto the bed together. She undoes my belt and pushes my pants down while I unclasp her bra and toss it.
I press my mouth to her nipple, and she arches into me, tightening her fingers in my hair.
I move to the other breast, sucking and biting gently until she makes a sound low in her throat that sends heat straight to my cock.