I check the bedroom first—empty. The bathrooms—empty. The library—nothing. Every room is a cruel confirmation of my fear.
“Lev,” Roman says softly, his voice cutting through the haze of panic. He comes up beside me, steady as ever. “You need to be strong for her. She needs you calm, not losing it.”
I grind my teeth, my hands balling into fists. “Strong?” I growl. “Strong doesn’t fix this, Roman. She’s—” My throat tightens. I can’t even finish the sentence.
Roman places a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll find her. We’re going to get her back, Lev. That’s a promise. Trust me on this one.”
I swallow hard, trying to draw in a steady breath, but my gaze keeps darting around the empty rooms. Every second she’s gone is a second too long.
I finally rise to my feet, and a strange calm settles over me. What was I doing, letting my panic take over? Heartbreak won’t get Sasha back. There’s no time for despair. I’m not leaving her to them—not for a second. I’m getting her back.
I stride into my study, Mikhail and Roman following in a precise tow behind me. Their eyes meet mine, reading the same fire I feel burning under my skin. No words are needed. They know.
The air in the room feels charged, thick with static and fury. I take my seat at the desk, and the weight of the chair feels heavier than usual—like it knows what’s coming. My fingersmove on instinct. The laptop hums to life, the glow of the screen cutting through the shadows like a blade.
Back in London, before I came home, I’d spent five years in tech and cyber security—not the kind they teach in classrooms, but the kind that makes governments nervous. Encryption, surveillance bypass, satellite mapping—my playground. I haven’t needed that side of me in years; finance became my new weapon when I returned to the family. But right now? I can’t delegate this. I can’t trust anyone else’s hands to move as fast or as ruthlessly as mine.
I have to find her myself.
Mikhail paces behind me, restless energy coiling in his muscles. He mutters in Russian, half prayers, half curses. Roman sits across from me, his leg bouncing, eyes following every flick of my hand on the keyboard. The only sound in the room is the rapid click of keys and the low hum of the servers powering up.
I connect to my private network—layers upon layers of firewalls and ghost routes. The interface blooms across multiple screens. Every feed from the villa, every external camera, every traffic node in a five-kilometer radius loads in real time.
“Talk to me, Lev,” Roman says. His voice is calm, but I hear the tension under it.
I don’t look up. “I’m syncing all the security feeds. If they took her by car, they’ll show up somewhere—highway cams, port CCTV, private satellites.”
Mikhail stops pacing and leans over my shoulder. “You think they knew about the blind spots?”
“They knew,” I say, jaw tightening. “No camera caught her leaving. That means whoever took her had access to our systems—or help from someone inside.”
Roman curses under his breath. “You’re saying—”
“I’m saying nothing yet,” I cut in. “I’ll know soon enough.”
I pull up the satellite overlay, zooming in on the coast. The system I built in London years ago—the one I swore I’d never use again—unfolds like a living organism. Within minutes, the map of Greece glows with motion markers. Vehicles, boats, aircraft, all tagged and traced by AI. I start narrowing parameters, filtering by timestamp and velocity.
My hands don’t shake. My pulse doesn’t race. I am calm—terrifyingly calm. Because panic won’t find Sasha. Precision will.
My focus narrows to a single moving blip on the screen—a black SUV with a scrambled license plate, leaving the villa’s vicinity at the exact time the cameras glitched.
I freeze the frame. My chest tightens.
“Got you,” I whisper.
Roman is on his feet before I finish the sentence, the old reflex of a soldier snapping into place. “Any lead?” he asks, voice flat.
I nod once and drag the map wider, fingers flying over the track. The SUV’s vector feeds through my filters: exit, service road, a single ragged line that ends at an abandoned dock two kilometers north of the industrial quay. The dot blinks, poi locked.
“Dock,” I say. The word lands like iron.
I don’t wait for debate. I grab my jacket, throat already tight with the clean, cold edge of what needs to be done. Roman and Mikhail fall in behind me without a word—you move, they move. That’s how we’ve always worked.
“Roman,” I bark as we pass the console, “you take point, stealth approach. No fireworks until I give the signal. Mikhail, lock down the villa perimeter, patch comms to me. I want drone thermal on a ninety-second loop over that quay and a fast boat standing by at point Charlie. Pull the northern port cams—now.”
They execute. Their faces harden into business. They slip into roles like armor.
Outside, the night is thin and cold. Roman holds the keys and slides behind the wheel without ceremony. Mikhail takes the back with the comms pack; I climb in front, already running contingencies in my head: entry points, choke lines, escape vectors, worst-case extractions. The car tears from the drive, tires spitting gravel. Roman slams the gas, and the villa collapses behind us.
