I fold my arms, my voice steady but ice-cold. “He made it personal. He knew exactly what he was doing.”
Kaz slams his palm against the table. “Then we end it. For good.”
Dimitri’s gaze meets mine—steady, ruthless. “Tell us what you need.”
I sweep my gaze across the faces of my brothers—Kaz, Lev, and Dimitri. They’re all killers, but each brings a different kind of weapon to the table. This isn’t about bloodlust; it’s about absolute strategic paralysis.
“Everything,” I confirm, my voice echoing the ice in the room. “We don’t just kill David Chang. We execute his empire first. The goal is to cripple him financially and logistically, leaving him nothing but the air he breathes before we take that too.”
I walk to the center of the office, pulling up a digital schematic on the wall monitor—a complex web of offshore accounts, shell companies, and shipping lanes that mark Chang’s global network.
“This attack was noise,” I state, tapping the diagram. “A desperate attempt to reclaim his asset and stir the authorities. We respond with calculated devastation. I want counterstrikes against his entire network, starting tonight.”
I point to three distinct areas on the screen.
“I’ve been planning this attack for weeks. I guess it’s time to use it.”
They nod.
“First, the laundering channels. Lev, you’re on point for this. Chang uses museums as cover, but the money moves through four key offshores.” I list them quickly.
“I want every liquid asset frozen, every bank contact exposed, and every account tied to the museum shipping manifests flagged for government inquiry. We use his ownweakness—the risk of public scandal—to choke his money flow. He must feel the burn immediately.”
Lev nods, his eyes already calculating the angles.
“Second, the supply chain. Kaz, I need your teams to hit his logistics. Disrupt every warehouse, every private flight, every truck carrying anything associated with his business—legitimate or otherwise. He needs to lose his ability to move product, to move people, and most importantly, to move money.”
My finger drills into a specific shipping port. “This is where his next ‘auction’ shipment was scheduled to move. Make sure that the entire dock is unusable quickly. This will send a clear message to the foreign buyers that the product is officially off-market.”
Kaz’s dangerous grin flashes. “A little constructive demolition. Understood.”
“Public noise. Dimitri, this falls to you.” I turn to him.
“Chang threw a public accusation of kidnapping. We don’t deny it; we twist it. I want a whisper campaign that he’s panicked, unstable, and destroying his own assets to cover his debts. Feed the press plausible deniability that he faked the kidnapping for insurance fraud. Turn his outrage into ridicule.”
Dimitri leans forward, a cold light in his icy eyes. “I can make him look like a desperate fool, Roman.”
I lean over the desk, my voice dropping to a final, absolute timbre. “I will continue to secure the estate, but the counterstrikes are the priority. Every move we make must reinforce the same truth: Elara Chang is mine, she is protected by the Rusnaks, and anyone who comes near her pays with everything they own.”
I look at them, steady and firm. “When the foundation crumbles, he will surface. And that is when I take the final step.”
“Understood,” they say in unison. The air in the room, once charged with panic, is now focused and heavy with murderous intent. Just the way I like it.
The men leave immediately to set things in motion, leaving Luka and me alone in the office. Luka hangs back by the door. I turn to him without leaving the table. “Has a doctor seen my wife?” I ask.
“He checked her,” Luka says. “Minor bruises. Shock mostly. He sedated her to help her sleep. She’s stable.”
The word stable lands, and I let it. I should go to her. I should see her face, hear the tremor in her voice again. Instead, something harder takes hold—a discipline I learned in the field: Feeling is a weakness you can’t afford until the job is done.
Her confession replays behind my eyes, the way she said it like a blade—I feel safer with you than I ever have in my life. The memory of her small body trembling in my arms, the raw, terrified honesty of it, pulls at me, and then I clamp down on it. If I go soft now, everything unravels. Men die because someone cracked at the wrong time. That has to be enough to keep me away.
“I don’t want anyone coming in and out of her room unless I say so,” I tell Luka. “Keep the perimeter tight. No visitors. No cameras facing inward.”
He nods, the easy obedience of a soldier. “Understood.”
I grind my glass against the coaster until the ice sings. Outside, the light fades to the cold blue of approaching night. I settle back into the chair, elbows on the map, and let the work swallow me. Plans. Timelines. Men to move, accounts to freeze. Each task is a tiny, exacting violence I can control—unlike the pulse that hits when I think of her.
Every so often, my thoughts slip—one second a coordinate, the next the feel of her hair under my fingers—and I yank them back like a leash. I will not give her this body of mineuntil there’s no threat left. I promise myself that in a way that is both protection and ownership.
