Arkady gives a harsh laugh. It sounds like disbelief and insult braided together.
“Predictable?” Arkady repeats. “What made us predictable was you letting money freeze in the open, you incompetent bastard. Baltic routes stall for twelve minutes and you act like it’s nothing.”
My stomach tightens.
Someone is reaching into Arkady’s world, disturbing whatever he relies on to keep control. The tension in the building didn’t appear out of nowhere, and the way the guards have been talking makes it clear that something outside these walls has changed.
Kiren.
The certainty of it rests quietly in my chest. He’s coming. I’ve known that since the moment I was taken. The only question is whether he’ll reach me in time.
Lila exhales slowly beside me and lifts her eyes toward the ceiling, like she’s trying to picture the invisible threads connecting everything beyond these walls. Like she’s trying to understand how someone like Kiren could reach a man like Arkady from a distance.
“You were supposed to keep the route clean,” Arkady continues. “You were supposed to keep his attention off my accounts, my shipments, and my people. Now one of my transfers has stalled, and my men are questioning things.”
I imagine Arkady striding back and forth, his hands cutting through the air, his eyes burning with suspicion, while Ivan stands still and watches him burn through his own control.
“You think this started yesterday?” Ivan asks. “You think one restriction is the beginning?”
“Careful,” Arkady replies coldly. “You’re forgetting who you’re speaking to.”
Ivan pauses for a moment before answering, his voice calm. “No,” he says. “I know exactly who I’m speaking to.”
Lila’s hand flies to her mouth. She covers it hard, pressing her knuckles against her lips as if she can physically stop herself from making a sound.
My breath catches, too, not because I’m surprised Ivan challenges him, but because I feel the moment tipping, like standing too close to the edge of a drop you didn’t see until you’re already there.
Arkady goes quiet. Not calm quiet. The kind that means something bad is about to happen.
“You forget where you stand,” he murmurs, low enough that I have to lean toward the door to hear him. “You forget who put you in the position you’re in.”
Ivan doesn’t respond right away, and the delay stretches long enough that my skin prickles. The building feels enormous and hollow around us, every corridor carrying the possibility of violence.
When Ivan answers, his voice is still calm, but something colder has slipped into it. “I know exactly where I stand,” he answers. “That’s why I’ve been moving.”
Arkady’s footsteps scrape across concrete again, quick and uneven with irritation, and then he’s closer to our door, close enough that I can hear the change in his breathing, and the slight roughness in it.
“And the girls,” Arkady snaps, the words turning sharp as his attention shifts. “You remember who they belong to, yes?”
Lila’s shoulders tense beside me. Her eyes flick toward mine, panic bright and sudden.
I don’t move. I keep my face composed, my hands loose at my sides, even though every instinct in me wants to cover my abdomen and curl inward.
Ivan answers without raising his voice.
“I remember,” he says calmly.
Arkady lets out a short, humorless breath. “Good. Because you seem to be forgetting a great many things tonight.”
A pause follows, brief but charged with tension.
When Arkady speaks again, his voice has changed. It drops lower, harder somehow, with a quiet threat in it that makes the air in the room feel colder.
“You seem very interested in how they’re handled,” he remarks.
Lila’s breath hitches beside me, and I see her glance toward the door before her eyes return to mine, as if she wants to move but doesn’t know how without drawing attention through the walls.
“I’m making sure they remain usable,” Ivan answers.
