Or smart enough to run.
Chapter two
The Petrov King
Maksim
The smell of coffee and old wood fills my office at eight in the morning, same as it has every morning for the past fifteen years. Philadelphia compound, third floor, corner office with windows that overlook the grounds. Everything exactly where it should be.
Except me.
I haven't slept. Again. Spent the night in my study with a bottle of vodka and Elena's photograph, tracing her name on the mahogany desk until my finger went numb. A prayer I don't believe in anymore, to a god who stopped listening fifteen years ago.
"Pakhan." Sergei's voice cuts through my thoughts. He's standing in the doorway, tablet in hand, looking exactly like he always does—pressed suit, neutral expression, the kind of loyalty you can't buy but somehow I earned anyway. "Morning briefing."
I wave him in without looking up from the contract I'm pretending to review. It's for a new, completely legitimate shipping venture, the kind of business Alexei Morozov keeps pushing as the future of our world.
"Start with the money," I say, because money is simple. Money doesn't bleed out on cream-colored carpets while you hold it and promise things you can't keep.
Sergei scrolls through his tablet. "Philadelphia operations are up twelve percent this quarter. The shipping contracts are performing above projections. The restaurant investments are—"
"Skip all that and go straight to the problems."
He doesn't even pause. Knows me too well. "There's been some chatter about stolen Fabergé eggs surfacing in Manhattan. High-end pieces from the Russian imperial era being sold through a private gallery."
I should care about this. Stolen Russian artifacts are usually connected to our world somehow—either stolen by us, from us, or traded between families as currency when cash is too traceable.
But I don't care.
"And?" I keep my eyes on the contract, the words blurring together into meaningless shapes.
"The gallery owner is Sonya Morozova."
My hand stops moving.
Morozova.
The name hits me like a fist to the chest, and suddenly, before I realize what I'm doing, I’m tracing Elena’s name on the contract, my finger moving on autopilot while my brain tries to catch up with what Sergei just said.
"Morozova," I repeat, my voice coming out rougher than it should. "As in—"
"Alexei's cousin. Second cousin, specifically. Former ballet dancer." Sergei's watching me now, and I know what he sees. Sees the tracing, sees the way my jaw tightens at "ballet dancer," sees fifteen years of grief trying to claw its way out of my chest.
Former ballet dancer.
No.
No, I'm not doing this. I’m not letting two words rip open scars that never healed right in the first place.
"Full file," I manage. "Everything. Now."
Sergei nods and leaves, and I'm alone again with Elena's photograph and the contract I've traced her name across without meaning to. The letters are messy, frantic. Not the careful, deliberate pattern I usually create.
I'm losing control.
I stand, walk to the window, force myself to breathe. The compound spreads out below me—high walls, security checkpoints, men who answer to me without question. Philadelphia is mine. Has been mine since I took over at twenty-nine, since the day I buried my pregnant wife and transformed into something harder, colder, stronger.
Steel.
