I slam the folder shut before the anger swallows me.
This wasn’t just a legal win. This was entry.
A first step.
I tell myself again what I’ve whispered every night since I chose this path: I’ll gut their empire from the inside. Piece by piece. Until there’s nothing left but ash.
Alexei Sharov, he’ll burn first.
The message comes just as I’m about to put the folder away. My phone lights up with a single vibration, the glow sharp in the dimness.
You’re in. Be careful. He’s not stupid.
The words cut like a blade, clean and cold. I stare at them for only a heartbeat before my thumb moves on instinct, holdingdown until the bubble vanishes, then clearing the conversation entirely. Not even a trace. Not even in deleted files.
I press the phone to my chest, and let the silence stretch. The contact is careful—never the same number twice, always just enough to let me know they’re still there, still watching my back. Or maybe just watching. Paranoia creeps in, curling around my ribs. I can’t afford to trust anyone, not really.
I wrap myself in a towel and pace the length of my apartment. The city hums faintly beyond the windows, a constant reminder that even at night New York doesn’t sleep. I feel the shadows thicker than usual, heavy enough that I catch myself checking the locks twice, then three times.
You’re in.
The words ring again in my head, less a reassurance than a sentence. Yes, I’m in. In their good graces. In their line of sight. In their world, where a misstep means more than failure—it means a bullet.
I sit at the desk, drag the Sharov file closer. Alexei’s photo glares up at me, that cold gray stare captured even in pixels. My pen scratches across the paper as I add today’s details, but I pause before finishing. The memory of him outside the courthouse won’t leave me alone—the deliberate way he studied me, as though he already suspected something beneath the surface.
Not stupid.
No, he isn’t. That’s what makes this harder. Most men like him revel in brutality, fists first, questions never. He’s different. He watches. He waits. He lets the silence tell him more than words. That kind of man is harder to fool, harder to predict.
I bite down on the inside of my cheek, staring at his name circled in red ink.
Alexei Sharov.
The man behind my father’s murder.
At least, that’s what the Bureau contact told me two years ago. A whisper dropped in the corner of a bar, his eyes darting over his shoulder as though the words themselves might cost him his badge. I remember it as clearly as if it happened yesterday: the sour tang of beer in the air, the way my hands trembled around my glass.
“It was the Bratva. Ordered from the top. Alexei Sharov signed off.”
I’d known then what I had to do. My father’s face had haunted me for years, the way he looked before he left the house that last night: proud, stubborn, promising me he’d be home for dinner. He never came back. The official record said suicide, case closed. But I knew better. My father wasn’t a man who bowed out without a fight. He’d been silenced, and the Sharov name was the anchor tied around his corpse.
I touch the photograph now, running my fingertip across Alexei’s jawline. The image is flat, but the memory of his presence earlier burns hot in my chest. I’d expected cruelty carved into every line of his face, expected menace dripping from his every word. Instead, there was calculation. Control. He looked at me as if I were a puzzle he intended to solve, not a lawyer who happened to win a case.
I hate that part of me noticed more. The breadth of his shoulders under that tailored suit. The way his voice lingered, low and deliberate. The faint smirk that almost passed for charm. My stomach twists, revolted at myself. He’s not a man to admire, not one to want. He’s a target. A monster.
Yet I can still feel the way his gaze pinned me. Like a hand closing around my throat without ever touching me.
I shake the thought away violently, flipping through the rest of my notes. Contacts. Business fronts. Associates. Every scrap of information is a step toward tearing his empire apart. It’s never enough. He keeps his past locked tight, his present cleaner than most men in his position. Even when I think I’ve caught a thread, it unravels in my fingers before I can pull it free.
I rub my temples, fatigue pressing behind my eyes. My father’s voice echoes in my head—sharp, commanding, full of conviction.“Justice is the only thing worth bleeding for, Vivi. If you’re not willing to fight for it, you don’t deserve it.”
Justice. Revenge. I don’t know the difference anymore.
I close the file and shove it aside, standing abruptly. My apartment feels too small, too fragile to hold everything burning inside me. I pace again, dragging my hands through my damp hair, the towel loosening around me. The city outside glows in fractured light, horns blaring faintly below. Somewhere out there, Alexei is sitting in a black SUV, or in a dimly lit room full of wolves, plotting his next move.
Here I am, pretending to be one of them, pretending to serve their interests while plotting to slit their throats from the inside.
You’re in.
