I press my hand over his.
“Then we make them regret starting it.”
His mouth curves—not quite a smile, but close.
“That’s my girl.”
ROMAN — Volkovskaya War Room, 14:22
The vent hisses wrong.
I’ve listened to this mansion breathe for twenty years, learned every wheeze and rattle the way other men learn prayer, and this sound carries an electronic hum that doesn’t belong—threading through the familiar noises.
Luka catches it half a second after I do, his hand drifting toward the Makarov beneath his jacket in a motion that looks casual unless you’ve spent more than a decade learning to read violence in the way a man’s breathing changes. His chin lifts, and his eyes find mine across the mahogany.
No words. Wolves who’ve hunted together long enough don’t need them.
Kto-to slushaet.Someone is listening.
Across the table, Sergei keeps his gaze fixed on the ledger I handed him five minutes ago—supply routes, shipment manifests. He hasn’t looked up once, and that absence of curiosity tells me everything I need to know. An innocent man would have turned. A guilty man freezes.
I let three seconds pass.
“Sergei.”
His eyes lift. Brown, too wide, wearing a shape that doesn’t fit, because real surprise should make a man scan for threat first, should square his shoulders. His hand moves to his collar, tugging at it with the nervous energy of someone who knows the ground is about to open beneath him.
“V koridor.” Into the hall. The words come out flat, stripped of anything that might soften the command into a request.
His fingers fumble with the ledger’s edge—that instinctive grab for something solid when everything starts shifting. I almost hope I’m wrong. I’m not.
“Boss, I need to finish the—”
“Seychas.” Now.
Sergei goes.
The ledger stays clutched against his chest as he crosses to the door, and I watch every step the way my father taught me to watch—reading a man’s walk toward judgment for everything it reveals about how he lived. His shoulders curve inward, and his gait shortens, walking like a dead man.
Luka moves before the latch clicks, crossing the room in four fluid strides while his knife snicks open. The vent cover comes away with a metallic shriek, and something small and black tumbles into his palm—a circuit board catching the light before his fingers close around it.
Zhuchok.
Bug. Professional grade. FSB surplus.
“How long?” My voice stays level even though something cold and vicious is uncoiling in my chest.
Luka examines the oxidation with the attention of someone who’s disarmed enough surveillance to read its history in the dust. “A week. Maybe ten days. Recent enough that whoever planted it thinks they’re still listening to something useful.”
Ten fucking days.
Ten days ago, I was still calling Anya an asset, still telling myself the way her eyes caught light when she solved a problem was irrelevant to her value, still planning to deliver her research to Vadim and pretend it was strategy.
The bug heard all of it.
And everything that came after.
Anya’s in the east wing lab right now—I checked the security feed twenty minutes ago, and she was bent over her workstation with her hair twisted up and that focused look she gets. Safe. Mine. Working on something that might get us both killed, but at least she’shere, where I can reach her in under sixty seconds if anyone so much as breathes wrong in her direction.
