The pain will find us soon enough.
Tonight, I choose this instead.
Chapter Twenty
Nikolai
Something pulls me out of sleep at three in the morning.
Not a sound. Not movement. Just the sudden, absolute awareness that my eyes need to be open—the same instinct that kept me alive through decades in the Bratva and four years of living like a ghost.
I’ve learned not to question it.
Lauren is asleep, her breathing slow and even. I ease back the covers without waking her and take my gun from the nightstand drawer.
The penthouse is dark.
I move through it the way I was trained to—low, quiet, checking angles before I clear them. Living room first. The city glows through the floor-to-ceiling windows, painting everything in a low amber wash. I cross to the glass and run two fingers along the frame. No pressure variation. No tampering. The front door locks are intact. The balcony doors, the same.
I hold my breath outside Hannah’s room and listen. Through the wood, I can just make out her breathing—soft, steady, deep under. My chest loosens by a fraction.
I finish the sweep. Every room, every lock, every point of entry. Nothing out of place. No sign of anything.
That’s the problem.
I end up in the kitchen, gun set on the counter beside me, and stand in the dark. The city hums faintly through the glass. I don’t turn on the light.
A perfect way to lure you out.
Elias had buried it in the middle of the call like a casual observation, the way he always buries the live wire. I’ve beenturning it over since—running the variables, trying to put a shape to it.
Aslanov doesn’t want money. He wants to pull the trigger himself. Which means the lure isn’t a location.
It’s a person.
I press my palms flat against the counter and breathe through it.
Lauren.
Hannah.
The two people in this penthouse who have no idea what they represent to a man like Ronan Aslanov—not as people, but as leverage. As the perfect way to make me come out of hiding and walk straight into whatever he’s prepared for me.
I stay in the kitchen a long time, thinking it through in the dark.
He’s already set things in motion. I can feel the shape of it pressing closer—the same way you feel a storm before the sky gives anything away.
I push off the counter, pick up the gun, and start moving again.
I move into the hallway, gun raised, and hold still. Nothing jumps. The corridor runs clean to the far wall, every shadow where it should be.
I’m about to turn back toward the office when something stops me. The closet door—third on the left—sitting an inch open. I know that door. It’s always shut. Claire keeps it that way.
I cross to it in three steps, cock the gun, and go in hard.
A face stares back at me.
Wide eyes, fixed smile.
