My free hand moves fast, yanking the Glock free, jamming the barrel under his chin. “Let. Go.”
He freezes, eyes flicking to the gun then back to my face. “You wouldn’t.”
I pull the trigger. The shot is deafening, ears ringing instantly, his head snaps back, blood sprays hot across my cheek and the white marble, and he staggers, hand flying to his neck where the bullet grazed him. He roars, pure fury, and lunges. I spin for the door. Too slow.
Two men burst in from the side hallway, one already with a syringe uncapped, the other diving straight for my gun arm. I fire twice, first shot catching the diver in the shoulder and he drops with a grunt, second shot going wide as the syringe guy slams into me from the side, and we crash into the glass coffee table, it shatters under us, jagged edges biting into my back through the hoodie, pain flaring hot and bright.
I drive my elbow into his nose, feel cartilage crunch, blood sprays, he reels but doesn’t let go, his knee pinning my gun wrist to the floor, and the syringe guy drops on my other side, needle stabbing deep into my neck, cold flooding my veins fast. “No,” I snarl through gritted teeth, bucking hard, knee driving up into his groin, making him wheeze, but the plunger is already down.
My limbs go heavy, fingers numb, the Glock slips from my grip and clatters across the marble. Konstantin’s voice swims above me, thick with pain. “Get her on the jet. Now.” Hands grab me under the arms, legs dragging behind me, elevator, garage, car door slamming, engine rumbling. The world tilts and blurs. I fight the black creeping in at the edges. And fail.
When I come to,I’m strapped into a wide leather seat on a private jet, engines screaming, wrists zip-tied to the armrests, ankles bound, duct tape over my mouth, back burning where the glass has cut me, blood sticky under my hoodie.
Konstantin sits across the aisle, white gauze taped to his neck, red already seeping through, face pale but eyes locked on me, steady and cold. “You shot me,” he says, voice raspy from the wound. “In my own suite.”
I stare back, no fear, just cold calculation running through the fog in my head. He leans forward and winces. “We’re going home, Anastasiya. Russia. We will marry and life will go back to normal.” I shake my head once, slow and deliberate. His mouth twists. “You will. Because if you don’t, Roman and his entire club burn. Slowly. And I’ll make sure you’re in the front row.”
The plane rotates, accelerates, wheels lift off. The city drops away below us, clouds swallowing the wings.
I close my eyes and breathe through my nose around the tape. They think they’ve won. They forget who raised me. Papa and my brothers with their endless drills and range days, the way they always say “If they take you, little sister, you wait, you watch, you find the crack, then you break everything.”
So I start working the zip tie against the sharp edge of the armrest, slow and patient, skin scraping, blood welling up, but it doesn’t matter. Konstantin thinks I’m going back broken. I’m going back armed, every contact, every safe house, every weapon cache from Moscow to the Urals burned deep into my brain like a map I could draw blindfolded, and if Konstantin wants his precious legacy so bad then fine, I’ll burn it down to ash myself, every last brick and deal and blood promise turned to nothing, and when Roman comes for me, because he will,because that man doesn’t know how to quit, I’ll be waiting there with the match already lit, ready to hand it over or strike it myself.
The seatbelt sign dings off above my head, soft and indifferent, and I keep working the zip tie against the sharp edge of the armrest, slow and patient, one frayed thread at a time while blood wells up under the plastic and my back throbs from the glass cuts, but none of it matters. This isn’t the end. It’s the fuse. And I’m about to blow the whole goddamn thing sky high.
EIGHTEEN
ANYA
I'min the clubhouse office staring at the bank of monitors, scrolling through overnight perimeter feeds with one hand while the other holds cold coffee, when the property alert app pings hard on my phone, red banner screaming UNAUTHORIZED EXIT. VEHICLE: TRUCK. TIME: 09:47. NO PASSENGER RETURN. My stomach drops because that alert only trips when someone leaves without the gate code or my override, and Anya's the only one at the house right now.
I pull up the live cam feed, heart already pounding too loud, and there she is on the driveway camera, hoodie up, face turned half away like she knows the lens is watching and doesn't want to give it her eyes, pulling the SUV out smooth and steady, no pause, gate closing behind her while I sit here frozen watching the taillights fade down the road.
I flip to the tracker app on her phone, the one I put there just in case, just because I'm built paranoid, and the dot that's supposed to be her is frozen dead at the house, not moving, not pulsing, just gray OFFLINE SINCE 09:45, and that hits like ice because she never turns her phone off, not since Volkov.
I call her and it goes straight to voicemail, her voice cool and clipped telling me to leave a message. I hang up, call again, same thing, third time I leave one that comes out rough, "Anya, pick up the phone. Right fucking now. Tell me where you are."
She doesn’t call me back. I'm out of the chair fast, boots hitting the floor as I head down the hall, past the bar where a couple prospects are restocking bottles, and I snap at the closest one, "Go get Lucky and Blade, tell them office, now," then keep moving back to my desk, fingers already flying across the secure laptop pulling tower pings, traffic cams I keep access to through old favors, and it doesn't take long, maybe five minutes before the picture slams together ugly and clear: her phone goes dark at the house, truck pings toward the Meridian Hotel downtown, stops in the underground garage, no movement for twenty-three minutes after that, then an airstrip feed shows a blacked-out SUV rolling up to a Gulfstream, two suits hauling a limp body, her hoodie, her hair, her boots, up the stairs, jet taxis and lifts off east, flight plan filed for Moscow via Iceland refuel, registered to a shell that traces straight back to Orlovsky Holdings in three clicks.
Konstantin took her. My vision narrows, blood roaring in my ears so loud I almost miss the door banging open. Lucky steps in first, Blade right behind, both of them reading my face and going still because they know this look, the one I don't wear often.
"Brother, what's going on?" Lucky asks, voice careful, like he's approaching something that might explode.
I spin the laptop toward them so they can see the flight tracker glowing red across the Atlantic, the frozen airstrip still of her being carried like dead weight.
Blade leans in close, squints at the screen, then swears under his breath. "That's Anya. They took her."
"Yeah," I say, and my voice comes out flat, too flat, the kind that makes people back up. "Konstantin put her on a jet to Russia. She drove herself to the Meridian this morning, alone, didn't tell me a damn thing, and they sedated her, carried her up the stairs like luggage."
Lucky grips the back of my chair, knuckles white. "She went to meet him on her own?"
"She left the house at 09:47." I point at the gate timestamp. "No text, no heads-up, just gone. Phone's dead now. SUV is still parked at the hotel."
Blade rubs a hand over his jaw, eyes flicking from me to the screen and back. "She's not stupid, man. If she went to him, she had a plan."
"Her plan didn't include coming back," I snap, and the words taste bitter because I know who she is, a Dragunov raised on blood and guns and never folding, but that doesn't stop the cold fist twisting in my chest. "They carried her up those stairs unconscious. Whatever she tried, it didn't work."
The office goes quiet for a second, then Lucky straightens up. "We need to bring this to Mason and the table. Right now."
