But as the car turns the corner and he disappears from view, one question burns through my mind with terrifying intensity.Is that a good thing?
14
NIKOLAI
The Golden Lion's private entrance opens with a whisper of well-oiled hinges, and I step into the familiar corridor that leads to my office. The scent hits me immediately—leather, expensive vodka, the faint trace of cigar smoke that clings to the walls despite the ventilation system. It should feel like coming home. Instead, it feels like stepping into a stranger's skin, one that no longer fits quite right after three weeks of salt air and Aria's warmth pressed against me in the darkness.
My shoulders carry tension that has nothing to do with the car ride from the landing pad and everything to do with the reckoning I know awaits me. The island changed me. I can feel it in the way my body moves through this space, in the disconnect between the man who left on that yacht and the one who returned. The Pakhan who departed would never have hesitated to activate that beacon. Would never have chosen a woman over his empire, even for a single day.
Cyril stands by the window when I enter my office, his pale blond hair catching the afternoon light in a way that makes the jagged scar running from temple to jaw stand out in sharprelief. His posture is military-straight, hands clasped behind his back, and he doesn't turn when I close the door. The grim set of his shoulders tells me everything before a single word passes between us.
"How bad?" My voice comes out rougher than intended, the Russian accent thicker after weeks of speaking mostly English with Aria.
"Bad." Cyril finally turns, and his gray eyes—those unsettling, colorless eyes that have stared down death more times than either of us can count—assess me with clinical precision. "Matvey moved fast. Faster than I anticipated."
I cross to my desk, the massive slab of dark wood that has witnessed countless negotiations, threats, and occasionally, executions. My fingers trail across its surface, and I notice the faint ring where someone placed a glass without a coaster. Small. Insignificant. But it speaks to the chaos that unfolded in my absence.
"Tell me." I lower myself into the leather chair, and even that feels wrong. Too soft. Too civilized. My body has grown accustomed to sand and rough shelter, to Aria's curves fitting against me like she was designed for that purpose alone.
Cyril moves to the sidebar, pouring two glasses of vodka with the efficiency of long practice. He slides one across the desk to me before taking the chair opposite, and I notice the exhaustion etched into his features. My second-in-command looks like he's aged five years in three weeks.
"Three captains switched allegiances." His voice is clinical, emotionless, but I hear the fury beneath. "They took their crewswith them—approximately forty men total. Matvey absorbed them into his organization within days of your disappearance."
The vodka burns down my throat, but I barely register it. One of them I expected. The man had been making noise about territory disputes for months. But the other two? Those betrayals cut deeper. I'd trusted them, elevated them, given them opportunities they never would have had under another Pakhan.
"Two more are wavering," Cyril continues, his gray eyes never leaving my face. "Waiting to see if you still have the strength to hold what's yours. The docks are contested ground now. Matvey's men have been intercepting shipments, rerouting product, and bleeding our revenue streams. We've lost approximately thirty percent of our monthly income."
My jaw tightens, rage building in my chest like a storm gathering strength. Thirty percent. The numbers are devastating, but it's the principle that makes my blood run cold. Matvey didn't just exploit a power vacuum. He orchestrated a systematic dismantling of everything I've built.
"Casualties?" The question tastes like ash.
"Seven dead. Twelve injured, three critically." Cyril's fingers drum once against his glass, the only tell that he's affected by the losses. "I held the line as best I could, but without your presence, without your reputation backing every order…" He trails off, and I understand what he's not saying.
Without the Pakhan, the organization began to fracture like ice under pressure.
I should have activated the beacon immediately. The thought circles in my mind like a vulture over carrion. Every day I spenton that island with Aria cost me territory, cost me men, cost me the absolute control I'd spent twenty years building through calculated ruthlessness and strategic brutality. The rational part of my brain catalogs what must be done with cold efficiency. Reassert dominance. Make an example of the traitors. Remind everyone why they fear the name Alekseev.
But my body still carries the memory of Aria's touch, the taste of her skin, the sound of my name on her lips when I was inside her. The contrast between that tenderness and the violence I must now unleash makes me feel split in two, like I'm trying to inhabit two different men simultaneously.
"What about Matvey's operations?" I force myself to focus, to think like the Pakhan rather than the man who spent three weeks learning what it means to care about someone more than power.
"Expanding rapidly." Cyril pulls out his phone, swiping through images that make my stomach tighten. Surveillance photos of Matvey's men at our former territories, receipts showing diverted shipments, and financial records that paint a picture of systematic theft. "He's been planning this for months, maybe longer. Your disappearance just gave him the opening he needed."
The rage in my chest crystallizes into something cold and lethal. Matvey didn't just take advantage of an opportunity. He'd been waiting for one, preparing for the moment when he could strike. The yacht party. The storm. My absence. All of it played into his hands with a precision that suggests either incredible luck or inside information.
"Do we have a leak?" The question comes out soft, dangerous.
Cyril's expression darkens. "I've been investigating. Nothing concrete yet, but there are… inconsistencies. Someone knew your schedule, knew you'd be on that yacht, knew the storm was coming."
The implications make my blood run cold. If someone in my organization fed information to Matvey, if my own people orchestrated my near-death, then the rot goes deeper than a few opportunistic captains switching sides.
"I want names." My voice drops to the tone that makes grown men flinch. "Everyone who had access to my schedule, everyone who knew about the yacht party, and everyone who's had contact with Matvey's people in the last six months. I want surveillance, financial records, phone logs. Everything."
"Already in progress." Cyril's lips curve into something that might be approval. "I'll have preliminary results within forty-eight hours."
I drain the rest of my vodka, the alcohol doing nothing to ease the tension coiling through my muscles. The burn down my throat seems more intense after the absence of it while on the island.
My mind catalogs strategies with the efficiency of long practice. The traitors need to be dealt with publicly, brutally, in a way that reminds everyone what happens when you betray the Pakhan. Matvey needs to be taught that stealing from me comes with consequences that extend beyond business losses. The wavering captains need to see strength, certainty, the absolute control that made them fear and respect me in the first place.
