I execute a full lockdown.
Every Rusnak guard on the eastern seaboard tightens in around my building until the penthouse feels less like a home and more like an armed bunker.
No one enters.
No one leaves.
Every floor is secured, every hallway monitored, every elevator coded.
If anyone so much as breathes funny near my wife, they’ll be on their knees before they get the chance to regret it. By afternoon, my study is a war room.
Screens everywhere. Maps, intel, feeds. Niko sits on the edge of my desk, jaw tight, analyzing satellite images. Lev stands by the board, marking out potential safehouses the Kovals might be using.
I’m pacing again—energy burning me alive—but my mind won’t settle.
I keep seeing Vivian asleep this morning, soft and real and mine, and it only fuels my rage. The idea that someone blew up property under my name and left me a note?
Cowards.
Dead men walking.
“We know Koval isn’t acting alone,” Lev says, crossing his arms. “He’s too small to pull this off by himself.”
“Then who the hell is backing him?” I snap.
Niko exhales slowly. “We’re working on it. But a hit that precise? Someone wants you rattled.”
“They failed,” I growl, though the tension in my chest says otherwise.
My phone buzzes once. A text from Sebastian flashes across my screen a second later.
Found something. Following it now. Back by evening.
Be ready.
My pulse spikes.
If Seb says to be ready, it means whatever he’s found is big—big enough to shift the floor beneath my feet.
I put the phone down and stare out the tall glass windows of my study, the city sprawling beneath me.
Someone declared war on me.
Fine.
I’ll answer.
But beneath the cold calculation, one thought burns hotter than the rest:
If they ever touch Vivian…if they ever so much as breathe in her direction…I’ll burn their entire bloodline off the planet.
I can feel the promise vibrating through my bones long after I say it.
An hour crawls by before one of my guards steps into the study. “Sir, your wife wants to speak to you. She’s waiting in the hall.”
For a moment—just one—I almost get up.
Vivian.
