My gaze shifts to meet Nikolai’s as he stands to one side, watching us.
Neither of us says anything as we stride toward the office to talk with Grigory and Matvey, who’ve also just arrived back at the Kremlin.
Grigory sits behind his desk, Matvey leaning against it, arms crossed. We all wear the same grim expression.
A map of Las Vegas and its surrounding districts is spread out over his desk, pins and marks dotting the thing and making a pattern. And at the center, a bleeding red mass of dots, which indicates that fucking arrogant Albanian syndicate.
My jaw tightens. Come after me all they want. But Avelina? My brothers? This is fucking personal now.
“She’s safe?” Grigory asks as he watches me carefully.
I nod.
Matvey leans over the map, running his finger along a highlighted stretch near the northern strip of the county. “They’ve been using abandoned warehouses as drop points. This one is scheduled for renovation next quarter, but it’s been empty for goddamn months.”
“A good place to store weapons,” Nikolai mutters. “Or stage another hit.”
The fear claws at my chest again. They could try again. Theywilltry again.
Grigory leans back in his chair, tossing a thick dossier onto the table. It flops open, spilling grainy surveillance photos and other intel across the desk. “That’s the Albanians’ chief strategist. Keeps his hands clean, but his handiwork is all over this.”
I lean forward, dragging the files and photos toward me. They blur slightly in front of me, my head throbbing from the sensory overload crash I’m about to face. But I force myself to focus. “How many enforcers are we talking?”
“Eight, maybe ten,” Matvey replies. “But they have proxies—paid locals.”
“Then we start with the enforcers and go on from there,” I say, my voice low and cold.
No one flinches. They all know what I mean. We don’t scare these men with warnings.We end them. We make them afraid to ever breathe near Vegas again. They made it personal, so we’re going to show them what a big fucking mistake they’ve made.
Grigory narrows his gaze. “We go in hard. Coordinated hits. Same night. Zero survivors.”
“We wipe them out before they can goddamn blink,” Nikolai adds.
Matvey closes the file. “It’ll take a couple of days to get everything in place.”
We nod in unison. No argument. No delay. This is how we work. And this is how we win.
I exhale slowly. The quiet buzz of the AC hums around me, and it’s just frequent enough that it gets to me. But I’m not here really. I’m thinking about the image of Avelina curled up in the SUV, hands over her ears.I hate it. But there are no safe corners in the world. Not for me anyway. All I can do is burn down anyone who tries to come for her—until there’s nothing left but fucking ash.
“She’s a strong woman,” Grigory says, knowing what I’m thinking.
“I know.”
“And she’ll be okay,” Nikolai adds.
I nod once. I want to believe that. To know that for sure. But I can’t, and I don’t. The fear sits in my chest like a fucking rock. Each of my brothers gives me a grim look.
We know what we have to do.
We know what it means and what it could cost us.
But this war has already begun.
Because it started when they targeted her.
When they targeted someone I love.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
