“Everything alright?”
I shrug, eyes still locked on the screen.
“Yeah. Just tired.”
He nods and goes back to work.
The deal we just flew out for wasn’t clean, not really.
Mikhail’s coastal shipping empire has been under federal investigation for Smuggling, laundering, and cross-border arms trafficking.
And when it looked like Mikhail might finally slip into their hands, my grandfather, Roman Petrov, made his move.
He’d wanted Mikhail’s network for years — the ports, the private docks, the shadow routes carved through the Baltic like ghost veins. Trade lanes that didn’t exist on any official map, yet bring in an untraceable large amount of wealth. And now, with the law creeping up Mikhail’s back like a blade, he had no choice but to hand it to us.
Not because we paid the most.
Not because he trusted us.
But because deep down, Mikhail knew the truth: The government might have the law, but they can never touch the Petrov family.
Now the entire coastal network is ours. Ports. Warehouses. Vessels.
My father hates it. Hates that we’re still tied to the Bratva, to Petrov’s empire of silence and blood. But it doesn’t matter; the legacy has always been ours—mine, Anton’s, Maksim’s, and the rest of the Petrov family.
We were born into this, carved from it.
And yet…
As I sit here, thousands of feet in the air, whisky warm in my hand and the hum of the jet in my bones, none of it matters.
Not the power or the wealth, what claws at me is Lucas.
He doesn’t know what kind of war he wakes inside me without even trying. He doesn’t know how much of me becomes soft, unrecognizable, when I’m near him.
He doesn’t know just how much power he has over me
He thinks the trust fund is too much.
But if he knew—if he truly knew just how far I would go for him, then he’d understand that the trust fund is only the beginning.
Because I’d strip the world bare if it meant seeing him smile.
And I’d burn it down if anyone dared take that smile away.
***
“Welcome back, Mr.Petrov,” Mike says, opening the back door of the Escalade parked at the private airstrip.
“Penthouse?” he asks,
I shake my head. “No. Lucas’s apartment.”
I settle into the back seat, and the door shuts with a soft click. Inside, the world dims—leather seats, faint cedar scent, the purr of the engine beneath me. Outside, the city moves glowing, breathing, but I barely look. My mind’s too full.
I haven’t seen him in five days.
Five long, goddamn days since that night, since I kissed his skin until he was trembling, breathless beneath me. Since I touched him and made him moan my name like a prayer.
