“Yes, boss,” Petrov says.
Viktor lifts his phone so I can see the recent messages. “Sergei is on point. Daniil drives the second car. Leon?—”
I shake my head. “Not Leon. He thinks with his trigger finger first and his head last. I want someone else who is carefulminded, not bloodthirsty. Take Renat instead; he’ll be smarter about when things need to get messy.”
“Renat, then,” Viktor agrees.
“Petrov,” I add, “you ride in a third car. Keep your distance. Take long guns,” I instruct.
“Understood,” Petrov says.
“Comms,” I add, “encrypted. No chatter. We’ll use their code. If you hear ‘river,’ everyone moves fast. If you say ‘smoke,’ you all get out of there and you leave one hell of a decoy.”
“Virtual overwatch?” Viktor asks.
“Ears only,” I say. “No eyes I can’t control. A drone is risky. Put Ivan’s man on the roofline two streets over. He owes us for his cousin’s bar license.”
Alina watches with a small frown, trying to keep up. She has no idea how often we have days like this. She thinks violence is just chaotic improvisation. It isn’t. It’s careful choreography with more surveillance than knives or bullets if it’s well planned.
“Go,” I tell my men, wishing I could go with them, but knowing Gavriil is right; I’m more of a liability than an asset at the moment.
They leave without another word. The door closes and the room seems bigger without my men in it. I breathe once and count the pull of thread across skin.
Alina takes a seat, hands folded tight in her lap, knuckles white. “So, you believed Archer.”
“I believed enough to move,” I say.
“You wanted to go with them,” she remarks, and I can’t tell if she’s surprised or relieved. I want to hope it’s the latter even though this is one of the few times I won’t be in the line of fire with them.
“Of course, I did. They’re my men. This is my call. But I know I’m not a hundred percent yet. I’m a…liability.” Speaking mybrother’s word to describe me is bitter on my tongue. “If I were at least ninety percent, I would’ve gone.”
“You always go?” she asks. She says it like it’s obvious, like she’s already memorized the qualities of the man she thinks I am.
I let the corner of my mouth twitch. “You’ve known me a handful of days, hellcat. What do you think?”
“Yes, you do. You’re there when it matters.”
I nod my confirmation because she already has me all figured out. “But if I died in a warehouse in Kearny because my pride wanted to be useful, who would protect you from the consequences afterward?”
She shakes her head in denial. “Your brother…I would make him listen to me.”
“Just because you backed Gavriil down once doesn’t mean it will ever happen again.”
Alina refuses to accept that. I can see the doubt and stubbornness written on her face. A face that looks so young and naïve it scares me. As if brushing that truth aside for now, she straightens her spine, finds the steel again. “They could be walking into a trap.”
My hands tighten on the desk. I hate that she’s right.
“They could,” I agree. “Which is why three cars full of men go instead of one, and why I choose a man who hates sloppiness as my second.”
“And if Popeye has more men than Archer thinks?”
“Then we’ll kill more men,” I say gently, because the truth doesn’t become less true if I sugarcoat it or whisper it to her.
Alina swallows. Her eyes are bright but dry. She’s made of stronger things than tears, and that… pleases me more than it should. It worries me as well.
“You’re still bleeding,” she says, her gaze sliding to the edge of my shirt where the bandage has printed a darker patch thanks to my movements. “You told Yelena you’d take it easy.”
“I didn’t promise Yelena anything,” I say. The truth is, if I inhale wrong, the wound snarls at me. The ache helps, though. It pins me to the chair when instinct wants me to jump up and run out the door.
