Aleksei snorts. “On his wedding night he will be making love to his laptop. Spare some poor girl that nightmare, Leonid.”
The words ‘wedding night’ and ‘making love’ slam into my brain, creating a strange visual. Callista, under me on a bed I have never seen, silk sliding off her shoulders as she pulls at her wedding gown. Her mouth flushed from my kiss. Her eyes glassy and wet and angry, not because she is afraid, because she is drowning in the same fire that is curling through my blood right now.
I feel hot. My body has been feeling tense since I kissed her. I have kissed other girls before. Fucked them, too. But it never made me feel anything. It was cold, transactional. And I forgot about it soon after. But Callista’s tear-streaked face, soft voice, and trusting eyes are imprinted into my brain like a tattoo.
My kiss with Callista was meant to be a transaction, too.
But it was a revelation. A revelation that I can feel more than I thought I was capable of feeling.
Her beauty softened something inside me. She made me ache for an emotion I cannot even name.
All I need is leverage. A tool. Most women I sleep with are shallow. What you see is what you get. But Callista is complex. She’s like an onion. The more layers you peel, the more layers she has. And seeing a part of her she doesn’t show other people felt like intimacy.
For one second, I felt alive in a way I never feel in classrooms, never feel even when the numbers hit the exact shape I planned. Her lie is better than other people's truths. She thinks she ispretending to be someone else, but the version she is concealing is louder, brighter, more interesting than any of the girls who orbit these parties.
I breathe. I keep my voice flat. “It was nothing.”
Aleksei narrows his eyes. “You are red like a teenager.”
“Eat your pie,” I say.
He grins, then sits forward, elbows on knees. “What is her name.”
I let the silence do the work. He will feel me lock down and leave it. He always does when it matters.
Leo sets his glass aside. The mellow look shifts and the room tilts toward business. “Since we are confessing, there is a thing you should hear. We have trouble on the east side. The laundromat on Blackstone. People in suits have taken an interest. Two visits in a week. One of the cashiers is talking too much to the wrong men.”
The warmth drops out of my stomach. The buzz of the kiss is gone, just like that. The dull math of risk calculation returns, fast and clean.
“Feds,” I say.
Leo nods. “They look like it.”
Aleksei goes still. The silly big brother who mourned his late night snack is gone. The enforcer is here now, quiet and sharp, eyes like ice water. “Names.”
“Not yet,” Leo says. “They are careful. I want you to look at the cameras and the alley route. Go tonight if you can, tomorrow at the latest. Do not spook the clerk. We switch him out after you are done. Dmitry will reroute cash until then.”
“I will go,” Aleksei says. He is already somewhere else in his head, walking a hallway, counting steps.
I push my plate away and lean back into the sofa. “I will close that branch for three days. I will push two days of intake to the florist registers and one to the car wash. The florist has capacityif I bump the morning inventory and print a wedding order sheet. We can justify a spike.”
Leo nods once. “Do it.”
The baby monitor crackles again. A tiny voice breathes and then hums for a second, like a song caught in a dream. Aleksei stands before the hum can turn into a cry. He moves toward the hall, stops, looks back at us, and something warm crosses his face.
“Thank you for eating my dinner,” he says. “It reminds me that I live with animals.”
“Go kiss your girl,” I say, and he rolls his eyes and disappears down the hall.
I stack the plates, wipe the crumbs with a hand, and think of Callista licking salt from her bottom lip after champagne. I think of the way her body softened against mine even as her spine stayed straight. I think of the photo on my phone, and the power in my pocket, and how power feels useless because it cannot give me what I really want.
I need to talk to Aleksei. The secret society we operate at Allister College is called The Griffin Society. It’s how we recruit high-level talent, even soldiers sometimes. Recruiting muscle through the society is Aleksei’s job. But I need financial whizzes, hackers, and other smart people who can help us launder money and deal with government security. A lot of bright college students with big student loans come to Allister. If I could make them join the society, trap them in a web of dark debt and obligation, they could come work for me.
We need more qualified finance people working for the Antonov bratva. Which is why I’m going to use Callista’s connections to lure bright, desperate students into joining me.
Sleep doesn’t come.
The clock on my laptop tells me it is past two, but I am still sitting in front of the screen, trying to read emails that mean nothing. Lines of code blur. Bank transfers, wire logs, numbers that should feel clean and logical all melt into noise. My brain is a furnace, burning with the memory of her face.
