Kazimir
The conference room smells faintly of polished wood and espresso. It’s the kind of quiet luxury that corporations mistake for power. Glass walls look out over the Connecticut harbor, steel-gray water, and expensive yachts. The men across the table talk in low, careful voices about contracts, supply chains, and federal procurement timelines.
I let them talk.
My pen moves lazily across the margin of the proposal packet, not writing anything useful, just carving shallow grooves into the paper while I calculate numbers in my head. How many aircraft could we refit by Q3? How many engines could we strip and rebuild? How much would the government pay to pretend they built it?
It’s all straightforward. Predictable.
Control is a simple thing when you have enough money and enough fear backing it.
My phone buzzes once on the table. Nika doesn’t text unless something is on fire or bleeding. I glance down, expecting a logistics update or a confirmation that the port crews have been rotated.
Instead, there are six words:We were wrong. She’s been taken.
For a second, the world narrows to the white of the screen.
Taken.
Not late. Not missing.
Taken.
My pulse doesn’t spike the way it should. There is no dramatic rush of fear, no cinematic punch to the gut. Instead, everything inside me goes cold and orderly, like a room after the air has been sucked out.
Across the table, a man in a navy suit is still talking about compliance regulations.
I don’t hear a single word.
My mind is already moving pieces on the board. Who knew her schedule? Who had eyes on the clinic? Which of Hinto’s crews are still unaccounted for? How long would it take to get back to Savannah if I commandeered airspace instead of filing a flight plan?
My phone rings.
Liev.
I answered and put it to my ear without greeting him. I don’t trust my voice.
There’s breathing on the other end, rough and controlled in a way that means he is barely holding himself together.
“If anything happens to Alyona,” he says quietly, each word sharpened to a blade, “I will kill you myself, Kazimir. I don’t care what you’ve built or how many men stand between us. I will bury you with my bare hands.”
It’s a promise. I accept it the same way I accept gravity.
If she dies because of me, I deserve worse; I would dig a grave and climb down into it without fighting.
“Understood,” I say.
It’s the only word I give him before hanging up.
The men across the table finally notice the shift in the room when I stand. My chair slides back with a harsh scrape that makes one of them flinch.
“Mr. Baranov,” someone starts, nervous smile already forming, “we still have a few line items to?—”
“Meeting’s over.”
My voice is calm, almost bored, which unsettles them more than shouting ever could.
“We’ll finalize through counsel.”
