“And you wouldn’t have protection withoutme,” Arkady snaps.
A hard metallic sound cuts through the quiet. I don’t see the weapon, but I know the sound of a situation turning dangerous.
“Know your place,” Arkady warns.
There’s a tight pause that lingers too long.
“You’re confusing alliance with ownership,” Ivan challenges.
“You mistake my tolerance for dependence.”
Another voice cuts in closer to the wall. “Sir?—”
The gunshot detonates before the warning completes. It explodes beyond the wall, forceful enough to rattle the vent above us and send a tremor through the floor. Lila’s breath breaks into a sharp inhale, and her hand clamps around the edge of the desk hard enough that the blood drains from her fingers.
A body hits the floor outside with a heavy impact, the sound echoing once through the structure before dissolving into silence.
Arkady speaks again, his tone level and composed.
“Let that clarify the hierarchy.”
Boots cross the warehouse floor without breaking stride, then fade into the distance.
The silence afterward isn’t empty so much as charged, a low hum filling the room while neither of us speaks. The seconds drag before the office door handle turns, the deadbolt retracting with a metallic scrape that sounds too loud in the confined space.
The smell of gunpowder reaches us first, cutting through the dust in the room before Ivan fully crosses the threshold. There’s blood on the cuff of his shirt. Not a lot, but enough. A darker streak marks his wrist, and the placement tells me it isn’t his. He looks the same as he always does, but something’s off, a tightness in the way he carries himself, and a restraint in his movements that wasn’t there before.
He shuts the door behind him and turns the lock, closing us back in like the gunshot was just another step in the plan.
Lila moves toward him immediately.
“What’s happening?” she demands, the question breaking out of her before she can temper it. “Who got shot?”
Her voice comes out firm, but it doesn’t stay that way.
“One of my men,” he says flatly.
“Why?” she questions, her hands open at her sides in disbelief. “Why would Arkady shoot him?”
Ivan exhales once through his nose, the sound brief and clipped, doing nothing to ease the tension in the room.
“He didn’t shoot him because of what he did,” Ivan answers. “He shot him because of what I did.”
Lila’s brow furrows. “What does that mean?”
“It means Arkady wanted to remind me who’s in charge.”
Lila’s shoulders drop a fraction. “He killed your man to show you he can,” she says slowly, as if testing the logic.
“Yes.”
“And you just stood there?”
“I didn’t have the luxury of escalating it,” Ivan answers, his jaw clenching as he drags a hand down the front of his coat, smoothing fabric that doesn’t need smoothing.
“You had a weapon,” she fires back.
“And he had more,” Ivan snaps. “And men whose loyalty isn’t divided.”
