Chapter Twenty-Eight
Nikolai
Pullman Yard sits on the outskirts of Atlanta—a relic of the early industrial age, all raw brick and iron, the kind of place that has absorbed enough history to feel heavy with it. On some nights, there’d be music here, crowds moving through the old freight buildings.
Tonight there’s nothing.
Just darkness, and silence, and the specific quality of a location that has been cleared deliberately.
He owns this ground tonight.
He’s had time to prepare it, and I haven’t.
I stand at the edge of the concrete wasteland that separates me from the main building and let my eyes adjust. Somewhere behind me, beyond the tree line, Popov and his men are watching.
Timur is positioned at the northeast entrance, waiting on my signal.
I can’t see either of them, which means Aslanov’s men can’t either. I hope.
I think of Hannah and let the thought do what it needs to do—sharpen everything, quiet everything else.
Then I step over the fence and walk.
A light snaps on ahead, a hundred meters out. A single beam, trained on the entrance. Signaling, or warning, or both.
I check the gun in my pocket—a formality, since they’ll take it at the door and we both know it—and keep moving through the dark, picking my way across a landscape of old tires and debris, the building growing in front of me as I close the distance.
Two guards at the entrance.
They have the posture of men who have done this before and found it boring. They grab me the moment I’m in reach, hands moving over me with professional efficiency.
One of them finds the gun and pockets it without a word.
“Expected,” I say.
Neither of them responds. They push me toward the door and I go without resistance, storing everything I’m observing—entry points, spacing, sightlines—in the part of my mind that is already planning what comes after this conversation.
Inside, another guarded door. Beyond it, a large room kept deliberately dim, spotlights cutting down from the ceiling just enough to see by. The darkness at the edges is intentional—it’s where his men are standing, how many I can’t yet confirm.
At the center of the room is a desk.
Behind the desk is Ronan Aslanov.
Four years since I last looked at this man directly.
He hasn’t changed in any way that matters—the same deliberate stillness, the same quality of having all the time in the world, the same expression that gives away nothing because there’s nothing he’s afraid to show you. He built an empire on that face.
I walk toward him and stop at the edge of the desk.
He looks at me the way he always looked at me—like the outcome of this meeting was decided before I walked in, and everything that follows is merely confirmation.
“Look what crawled out of the grave.” The smile is unhurried. Satisfied. “You should have stayed dead, pridurok. Would have saved us all the inconvenience.”
I say nothing. I’m not here for the preamble.
“Where is she.”
It isn’t a question. He hears that and his smile doesn’t waver—if anything it settles deeper, like I’ve confirmed something he already knew about me. He turns his head slightly and looks at one of his men. A silent instruction. The man moves to a door at the back of the room without a word.
The door opens.
She is led out of the shadows and the sight of her hits me like something physical.
Hannah.
Her hands are bound behind her back, tape across her mouth, her eyes scanning the room with a terror that has clearly been running for hours. She’s still in the clothes she was wearing when she fell asleep. She must have been in this building since yesterday afternoon.
My hands close into fists at my sides.
Then her eyes find me.
The fear doesn’t leave her face entirely, but something shifts underneath it—recognition, and relief, and the particular trust of a child who believes that the adult in front of her can fix things. She draws a breath through her nose and her small shoulders lift.
She trusts me. She thinks I’ve come to make this right.
That costs me more than anything else in this room.
I pull my eyes back to Aslanov before the feeling can surface on my face.
He’s watching me with the expression of a man who has just seen exactly what he came to see.
He rises from behind the desk, crosses to where the guard is holding Hannah, and lifts her with a deliberateness that is designed entirely for my benefit—settling her against his side, one hand on her back, performing a tenderness that turns my stomach.
He looks down at her.
Then he looks at me, and the smile reaches something colder underneath.
“Look, malen’kiy,” he says to her, almost gently. “Your daddy’s here.”
The word daddy hangs in the air between us.
Hannah goes still. Then her eyes find mine—really find them, the way they haven’t before, searching for something she doesn’t yet have a name for—and I watch the understanding move across her face slowly, the way it does with children, piece by piece.
Her eyes fill.
Blyad.
She’s only four, but already sharp enough to understand. I hold her gaze and keep my voice as steady as I can make it. “It’s going to be okay, Hannah. I promise.”
She gives me the smallest nod, tears spilling over, and she looks so much like Lauren in this moment that it physically costs me.
Aslanov watches the exchange with the satisfaction of a man who choreographed it. “I thought someone should tell her the truth,” he says pleasantly, “since her parents couldn’t manage it. Tell me, Niko—what kind of father lies to his own child?”
“Don’t touch her again, mudak.” The words come out low, precise. “It’s me you wanted. I’m here. Let her go.”
He ignores that entirely, the way he ignores everything that doesn’t serve him.
“You broke our agreement. You lied, you hid, you built your little coalition—and you did it all assuming I wouldn’t find out.
” He tilts his head slightly. “Did you really believe I don’t have eyes everywhere?
Inside your operation? Outside of it?” A pause, weighted.
“Inside your pretty little penthouse in Chicago?”
Claire. The corrupted footage. The questions through Hannah. It all resolves into a single clear line.
Of course.
I keep my face still.
“You tried to make a fool of me, Niko.” He closes the distance between us until there’s almost nothing left of it. His voice drops. “That is one thing I do not forgive.”
Then he puts two fingers to his lips and whistles.
The door behind me opens.
I turn.
Two guards come through it, and between them—hands bound, jaw set, a cut above his eye still fresh—is Timur.
The room goes very quiet.
Timur’s eyes find mine and hold them. His face has taken serious damage—I can see that even in the low light. But he’s upright, jaw set, and the look he gives me carries everything we can’t say out loud.
Blyad.
Sophia is pregnant. He needs to walk out of here.
“This fucker took out three of my best men outside.” Aslanov’s voice has shed its pleasantness. “After you gave me your word you’d come alone.” He lets that sit for a moment. “You’re still the same, Nikolai. A lying piece of shit. You haven’t changed at all.”
I stay quiet.
He remains still for a moment, then moves back toward the center of the room, unhurried, and turns to face me fully. The performance is over. What’s underneath it is quieter and considerably more dangerous.
“Give me one good reason to let your daughter go.”
The room holds still around the question.
I have nothing to offer him that he wants.
No leverage, no negotiation, no argument he hasn’t already anticipated.
He’s had four years to prepare for this confrontation and I’ve had twenty-four hours.
He knows that. The question isn’t a genuine inquiry—it’s a demonstration.
He wants me to stand here and find nothing, and understand what that means.
I keep my eyes on him.
Somewhere behind Aslanov, Hannah is watching me. I don’t look at her. Looking at her right now is the one thing I can’t afford. Not when my fucking heart is breaking for her. Not when we’re this spectacularly fucked.
Everything is riding on Popov now.
Either he moves when I need him to, or he doesn’t—and I’ll find out which one it is when it happens.
I hold Aslanov’s gaze and wait for the final blow.