Right now, I was presenting myself as calm. Controlled. The Fox with intelligence to deliver.
Inside, I was screaming.
Anton was back. Anton, who'd tried to destroy us. Anton, who'd nearly shattered the alliance that kept the five families in balance. Anton, who should have been dead but wasn't because Nikolai had shown mercy.
I should have pushed harder for the kill. Should have made my brother understand that leaving enemies alive was a luxury wecouldn't afford. But Nikolai had his reasons, and I'd deferred to my Pakhan's judgment.
I wouldn't make that mistake again.
The secure room door opened at my touch—biometric lock, keyed to family members only. Nikolai and Konstantin were still inside, reviewing something on Nikolai's tablet. Sophie's prenatal schedule, probably, or the security arrangements for her doctor visits.
They looked up when I entered.
I set the documents on the table. Let them speak for themselves.
"Anton's back," I said. My voice came out steady, which surprised me. "And he brought Moscow with him."
The silence that followed was the kind that preceded violence. I watched my brothers process the information—Nikolai's jaw tightening, Konstantin's hands curling into fists, both of them shifting from family men to what they'd always been underneath: soldiers preparing for war.
Thenexthourwaschaos.
Nikolai issued orders in that voice he used when there was no room for argument. Security protocols elevated to Level Three. All family members confined to the compound until further notice. Communication lockdown—nothing sensitive over any channel that hadn't been personally vetted by me.
Konstantin was already on his phone, mobilizing the men we kept on retainer for exactly this kind of situation. Ex-military, most of them. Professionals who understood that loyalty paid better than freelancing. I listened to him rattle off names and positions, watched him transform from the softer version Mayahad created back into the enforcer who'd earned his reputation through blood and broken bones.
Sophie, Katya and Maya would need to be moved to the safe room. The one we'd built for exactly this purpose, reinforced and supplied, buried deep enough that a direct strike wouldn't reach it. Nikolai was already thinking about it—I could see the calculation in his eyes, the way he was weighing his wife's safety against the chaos of relocating a pregnant woman who was barely keeping down crackers.
I let them handle the tactical response. That wasn't my strength.
My strength was asking the questions no one else thought to ask.
"How did they know?"
Nikolai paused mid-instruction, turned to look at me. "What?"
"Anton's timing." I moved to the room's secondary terminal, pulled up our external surveillance feeds. "He's been in exile for eight months. Living off whatever scraps the Deshnevs threw him, waiting for an opportunity. Now he shows up with a full team of operators, ready to move. Why now? Why today?"
Konstantin's jaw tightened. "Someone tipped him."
"Maybe. Or maybe he's been watching." My fingers flew across the keyboard, pulling archived footage from the past week. "Our security is good, but it's not invisible. Someone patient enough, resourceful enough—they could map our patterns without us knowing."
The footage loaded in chunks. Our main gate. The service entrance. The side streets where deliveries came and went. Seven days of mundane activity, hours of nothing happening.
Until three days ago.
"There." I pointed to the screen.
A black sedan, parked across from the service entrance. Occupied. The angle of the shot was bad—our cameras weren'tdesigned to capture faces from that distance—but I could make out two figures in the front seat. One of them was holding something to his face.
A camera.
"They were here for six hours," I said, scrubbing through the footage. "Arrived at seven AM, left at one PM. Photographed everyone who came and went."
Nikolai leaned over my shoulder. "Can you identify them?"
"Working on it."
The plates were stolen, of course. Reported missing from a rental lot in Queens two days before the surveillance. Dead end in terms of registration. But I had other tools.
