Sophie for Mikhail. My woman for my grandfather. The girl I'd promised to protect for the man who'd raised me, taught me, made me everything I was.
The trap was perfect. Elegant. Exactly the kind of seventeen-moves-ahead strategy Mikhail himself would design.
My hand was on my gun. The weight of it was familiar, comforting in its simplicity. Three pounds of metal and gunpowder that could end this conversation, could remove Anton from the board permanently. Kostya was ready to move—I could feel his anticipation, his barely contained need for violence. The guards were positioned. The angles were calculated.
But if we started shooting now, if Anton died here, Mikhail died wherever they were keeping him. The trap would spring shut and I'd lose the man who'd taught me chess, who'd shown me how to think strategically, who'd believed I could be Pakhan when everyone else saw me as too young, too anxious, too careful.
The grandfather I'd failed to protect because I'd been too focused on being Daddy.
"Twenty-four hours," Anton repeated, already turning toward the door like the conversation was finished. Like my answer was inevitable. "After that, we start sending pieces of the great Mikhail Besharov back to you."
He paused in the archway, looking back with that predator's smile.
"Starting with the fingers he used to teach his grandsons chess."
The threat hung in the air like smoke. Like prophecy. Like the endgame of a match I hadn't realized I was playing.
Then Anton and his soldiers were gone, retreating through the entrance they'd violated, disappearing into Brooklyn's Sunday afternoon like they hadn't just delivered an ultimatum that would destroy me regardless of which choice I made.
Chapter 15
Sophie
Nikolaipaced.Threestepsto the desk, pivot, four steps to the bookshelf, turn. The phone pressed against his ear like he could force answers through cellular towers and satellites by sheer will. His free hand kept going to his hair, messing it up in ways that would have been endearing if my chest wasn't currently trying to collapse in on itself.
"I need to speak with Alexei Volkov," he said into the phone, his voice carrying that flat Pakhan authority that made people listen. "Tell him it's Nikolai Besharov. Tell him it's about his cousin’s daughter."
His cousin's daughter. That was me. The daughter of the exiled Volkov, the man they'd cast out twenty-five years ago for stealing to save his dying wife. My father, who'd loved me despite everything falling apart around him. Who'd called me his little ballerina even when medical bills were drowning us both.
My bad knee was starting to ache from standing too still. The familiar throb that meant I'd pushed it too hard yesterdayat the beach, building sandcastles while Little Sophie had been safe and happy and completely unaware that someone was photographing every vulnerable moment. That those moments would become weapons. That my regression—my joy, my healing—would be the thing that got Mikhail kidnapped.
"I don't care if he's busy," Nikolai was saying, and something sharp had entered his tone. "Tell him the Belyaevs have my grandfather. Tell him they want his first cousin in exchange. Tell him we need to talk. Now."
The Volkovs had exiled us when I was barely born, and we'd stayed exiled—moving from city to city, my father's gambling debts following us like shadows, until Brooklyn finally became the place where everything ended.
This morning I'd been Little. Actually, properly Little in ways I hadn't been since Sergei died. I'd played with Mr. Hoppy and Rosie, had painted with my hands, had let Nikolai read me stories while I sucked my thumb without shame. The Garden Room at Littlespace NYC had felt like a sanctuary. Like proof that I could be small and safe simultaneously, that being vulnerable didn't equal being destroyed.
And now Nikolai’s grandfather was in a Belyaev warehouse somewhere, probably hurt, definitely scared, because I'd been too visible. Too needy. Too much.
My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against the cool glass of the window, watching Brooklyn spread out below—buildings and streets and lives being lived by people who didn't have to choose between the man who'd saved them and the grandfather who'd taught that man everything he knew.
Nikolai ended the call, immediately started another. "Maks. I need everything you can find on Mikhail's movements Saturday morning. Security footage, traffic cameras, anything. They took him in broad daylight—someone saw something."
His voice cracked on "took him," just slightly, but I heard it. Nikolai, who controlled everything, who planned seventeen moves ahead, who'd built his entire identity around being the strategist who never got caught by surprise—he was fracturing. And it was my fault.
The door opened without ceremony. Kostya filled the frame—massive, scowling, radiating the kind of violence that sat just under his skin waiting for permission. His eyes found me first, something that might have been sympathy flickering across his brutal features before settling back into professional assessment.
"Got a location," he said. "The Volkovs will meet us. I just spoke to Ivan. Warehouse in Red Hook, two hours. Alexei, Dmitry, and Ivan will be there."
All three brothers. The full Volkov leadership, gathering to discuss what to do about the cousin they'd never wanted and the mess she'd dragged into everyone's lives.
"Neutral ground?" Nikolai asked, though his expression suggested he already knew the answer.
"Technically." Kostya's jaw worked. "But it's their territory, their building, their security protocols. If this goes bad—"
"It won't." Nikolai cut him off, but I could see the lie in the tension across his shoulders. Everything could go bad. Everything was already bad. We were walking into a meeting with men who'd exiled my father, who had no reason to help and plenty of reasons to let the Belyaevs take me.
Nikolai finally looked at me directly, and the guilt in his grey eyes was devastating. Like he was the one who'd failed, who'd made the wrong choice, who deserved to be punished for this situation.
