I watch myself throw her to the ground and cover her body with mine. Even in the grainy security footage, I can see the violence of it. The way her head snaps back and how she crumples under my weight. I’d been rough. Brutal, even.
But gentle wouldn’t have saved her life.
The bullets tear through the space where her head had been moments before. If I’d been one second slower...
I close that line of thinking immediately. She’s alive. That’s what matters.
I rewind again. This time, I focus on the windows. The angle of the shots. The pattern of destruction.
Professional. That’s the word that keeps coming back to me. Whoever did this wasn’t some random opportunist or a rival family taking a shot in the dark. This was planned and coordinated.
Someone knew exactly when that meeting would happen. They knew where everyone would be positioned. They knew our security protocols, which guards would be stationed where, which exits would be monitored, and which blind spots existed in our coverage.
This wasn’t an outside attack.
This was betrayal.
The thought sits heavy in my gut. Someone on the inside gave up that information. Someone I trust (or someone the Ashfords trust) sold us out.
I pull up a blank document and start making a list.
The Volkov side includes Konstantin, Roman, Mikhail, Sergei, Viktor, Boris (Konstantin’s right-hand man), and our security team which includes five men. The Ashford side includes Vincent, Marcus (his name is darker from how my pen presses against the paper—how I wish I could gut him alive), their various advisors and security personnel. Then I list the staff—people who arranged the location, who set up the room, and those who had access to scheduling.
The list is longer than I want it to be. Too many people. Too many potential leaks.Fuck.
I stare at Konstantin’s name at the top. My uncle. The man who guided me after my father died and taught me everything I know about running this organization. He stood beside me through every crisis, every decision, every moment of doubt.
No. Not Konstantin. He’s the one person I can trust without question. He’s family and has proven his loyalty a thousand times over.
I draw a line through his name. Whatever is happening, Konstantin isn’t part of it. I’d stake my life on that.
But that leaves everyone else as potential suspects. And at the top of that list, underlined twice, is Marcus Ashford.
The man who killed Alexei. The man who had every reason to want the peace to fail. The man whose smug expression at that meeting suggested he knew something was coming.
Trust no one.
The phrase echoes in my head like a mantra. It’s the first rule of this business, the lesson beaten into me from childhood. Trust is a weakness. Trust gets you killed.
I thought I’d learned that lesson and that I understood it.
But apparently, I still had people I trusted. I still had blind spots. And one of those blind spots nearly got Vera killed yesterday.
The thought makes me want to punch something.
I pull up the footage again and watch myself cover her body. I can still feel the phantom sensation of her trembling beneath me, and hear the echo of my own voice ordering her to stay down.
I’d been fucking terrified.
Not for myself. I’ve been shot at before, and been in worse situations than a simple ambush. Danger is part of the job, and it’s part of the life I chose.
But watching those bullets tear through the air where she’d been sitting, knowing I had seconds—less than seconds—to move her out of the way...
My heart had stopped. It had actually stopped. For one brief, horrible moment, I’d imagined those bullets hitting her. Imagined her blood spreading across that conference room floor, and having to tell Vincent Ashford I’d failed to protect his daughter.
I imagined losing her.
That last thought stops me cold.
