The engine hums to life. Neon lights from storefronts reflect off black lacquer as we pull into traffic. The interior smells like leather and gun oil, masculine and secure in ways that should make me uncomfortable but don't.
Through the tinted windows, Chicago passes in fragments. Buildings, people, the river cutting through the city like a vein. But I'm not really seeing it.
I'm thinking about how somewhere between playing the obnoxious socialite and trying to maintain my secret life, I started caring about the people I was supposed to keep at arm's length.
About men who should be temporary obstacles but feel increasingly permanent.
About a marriage that was supposed to be a transaction but keeps feeling like something else entirely.
The SUV turns onto the street where the warehouse sits like a fortress made of glass and steel. The river glints beside it, catching afternoon light and throwing it back in silver fragments.
Home.
The word echoes in my mind, and the tightness in my chest loosens.
Something that feels dangerously close to belonging.
11
ZAKHAR
The security room hums with quiet machinery. Fans spinning. Static bleeding through audio feeds. The faint electronic pulse of systems that never sleep.
I sit in cold blue light cast by monitors, coffee gone bitter beside my elbow. Haven't left this room for hours. Haven't moved except to switch between camera angles, to review footage, to search for patterns in data that refuses to reveal its secrets.
The screens flicker. Twenty different angles of the warehouse. The street outside. The dock entrance. The garage. Every corner, every shadow, everything under surveillance.
Everything controlled.
Except Eryan Nis.
The name sits in my mind like a splinter I can't extract. For weeks now, I've been hunting information, deploying every contact, every informant, every resource the Severyn Bratva has cultivated over years of careful operation.
And I have nothing.
No face. No real leads. Just rumors and whispers and the growing understanding that this ghost is more powerful than we initially calculated.
He doesn't just operate in the States. His reach extends worldwide. I've confirmed operations in Naples, Marseille, Rotterdam. Eryan Nis appears like a phantom, disrupting shipments, liberating cargo, vanishing before anyone can identify him.
Three days ago, he hit a Romanian operation in Naples. Extracted an entire shipping container before it could leave port. The Romanians are furious, scrambling to explain the loss to their bosses.
Probably just counterfeit merchandise. Handbags, electronics, the usual low-level smuggling that funds bigger operations.
But the audacity is impressive.
And the precision is concerning.
This is someone with resources, intelligence networks, and the kind of operational security that makes my job exponentiallyharder. Someone who understands how to move in shadows we thought belonged exclusively to us.
I need to know who he is. Need to know if he's a threat to our operations, if he'll eventually turn his attention from rival organizations to us.
A knock interrupts the analysis.
"Come in," I say without looking away from the monitors.
The door opens. Vitor steps inside, closing it behind him with quiet efficiency.
I chose Vitor carefully. Former Spetsnaz, Russian special forces. Quiet as granite and twice as hard. Pushing fifty but still formidable, with the particular competence that comes from surviving wars most people only read about.
