My heart slammed against my ribs with every fraction of motion.
I wanted to move. I wanted to step back, to flee—but my legs refused. The boy’s grip anchored me in place.
He was walking toward me. Not away. Not to turn around and leave.
My mind scrambled for an explanation.
And yet, as he closed the remaining distance between us, something inside me stirred—something I hadn’t felt in years.
Not hope, exactly. Not relief. But recognition. The faintest spark of possibility that maybe, just maybe, the world hadn’t entirely abandoned me.
He stopped three feet away.
Close enough that I could feel the faint hum of authority radiating from him.
Close enough that I could see the storm-gray depths of his eyes.
Close enough that I realized he hadn’t come to intimidate me.
He had come to intervene.
And in that moment, I knew—instinctively, with every fiber of my being—that my wedding, my inheritance, my survival, and perhaps even my chance at finally living on my own terms, were about to shift irrevocably.
Chapter 3
RUSLAN BARANOV
The study smelled of aged leather, salt air drifting in from the Pacific, and the faint burn of expensive scotch left too long untouched in its crystal tumbler.
Late afternoon sunlight slanted through the floor-to-ceiling windows, cutting the room into bands of gold and shadow.
It illuminated the dark mahogany desk where maps of Athens’ port districts lay half-forgotten, weighed down by encrypted burner phones, shipping manifests, and a single red folder stamped with a name I had not spoken aloud in ten years.
Maria.
I was reviewing the latest intel on the woman who had murdered her—cross-referencing satellite images with outdated surveillance photos, tracing shell companies through three layers of laundering—when the door flew open.
Petros didn’t knock. He never did when the news was bad.
“Boss,” he said, voice low and clipped, the way men speak when they’re bracing for impact, “Andreas and Christos got taken down.”
For a moment, the room tilted.
Not outwardly. Not visibly. But inside, something collapsed—like a building losing its central support.
My chest caved inward as though someone had driven a fist straight through my sternum and held it there.
I looked up slowly from the file, the paper crinkling under my tightening fingers, every muscle in my body going rigid.
“And my son?”
The question came out quieter than I intended. Controlled. Almost calm. That calm terrified even me.
Petros’s jaw worked as if he were chewing glass. He didn’t meet my eyes. That told me everything before he even spoke.
“We think he’s been taken,” he said carefully. “But our men are already moving. They won’t touch him. They know what happens to anyone who lays a finger on Yannis Baranov.”
I rose to my feet so slowly the chair barely scraped the floor. The room felt too small now, the air too thin.
