The cold night air greets us the moment the front doors open, snow crunching beneath our shoes as we step out onto the wide stone steps overlooking the drive.
Below, the SUV rolls to a stop beneath the floodlights, its engine idling while my men close in around it from every direction. No one inside moves.
Beside me, Mikel glances over. “Driver refused to explain himself,” he murmurs.
I walk down the steps slowly. The driver’s door opens before I reach the vehicle. A man I don’t recognize steps out with his hands slightly raised, his posture cautious but not panicked.
“I was instructed to deliver something,” he explains.
“By who?” I press, stopping a few feet away.
“Ivan.”
The name slices through the quiet night.
“Open the back,” I instruct.
He hesitates before walking to the rear of the SUV and lifting the hatch. The smell of blood reaches us immediately. Mikel inhales sharply behind me.
Arkady’s body lies inside the vehicle, his coat soaked dark with blood where the bullet tore through his chest. His head rests awkwardly against the metal frame of the cargo area, his eyes open but empty beneath the harsh spill of the estate lights.
A note has been pinned to his chest. Mikel reaches in and removes it carefully before handing it to me, the paper folded once, clean and deliberate in a way that tells me this wasn’t an afterthought.
I unfold the note slowly while my men hold their distance nearby. The handwriting is precise and controlled, exactly the kind of detail I would expect from Ivan.
Arkady misunderstood leverage.
Rowan and the child she carries are alive. For now.
If you want them to remain that way, you will come alone.
No men. No surveillance. No delay.
Warehouse 17
Old Stowe Yard
Midnight
For a moment, the words remain perfectly clear. Then the meaning reaches the part of my mind that hadn’t yet considered the possibility.
The child she carries.
My hand tightens around the paper.
Behind me, Ethan’s voice breaks the silence.
“What does it say?”
I don’t answer right away. The sentence repeats itself in my head.
Rowan and the child she carries.
Shock arrives first. It’s brief, slipping through my thoughts like cold water before vanishing almost immediately. What follows replaces it completely.
Rage.
Not the kind that explodes outward. The kind that builds slowly, gathering heat beneath the surface until every thought sharpens into something dangerous.
