Popov’s gaze holds mine, level and unhurried. “I have more reason than most to want Aslanov finished. Your daughter will come home.” A pause. “But only if you let us work.”
I look at him—the composure, the cold certainty behind his eyes—and feel that warning move through me again, quieter this time, easier to dismiss.
I’m exhausted and running on nothing. I don’t trust my own instincts right now.
I don’t trust his either.
But I have nowhere else to put my faith this morning, so I hold my tongue, stay where I am, and watch the men gather.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Nikolai
9:47 PM.
Pullman Yard sits on the outskirts of Atlanta—a relic of the early industrial age, all raw brick and iron, the kind of place that has absorbed enough history to feel heavy with it. On some nights, there’d be music here, crowds moving through the old freight buildings.
Tonight there’s nothing.
Just darkness, and silence, and the specific quality of a location that has been cleared deliberately.
He owns this ground tonight.
He’s had time to prepare it, and I haven’t.
I stand at the edge of the concrete wasteland that separates me from the main building and let my eyes adjust. Somewhere behind me, beyond the tree line, Popov and his men are watching. Timur is positioned at the northeast entrance, waiting on my signal. I can’t see either of them, which means Aslanov’s men can’t either. I hope.
I think of Hannah and let the thought do what it needs to do—sharpen everything, quiet everything else.
Then I step over the fence and walk.
A light snaps on ahead, a hundred meters out. A single beam, trained on the entrance. Signaling, or warning, or both.
I check the gun in my pocket—a formality, since they’ll take it at the door and we both know it—and keep moving through the dark, picking my way across a landscape of old tires and debris, the building growing in front of me as I close the distance.
Two guards at the entrance.
They have the posture of men who have done this before and found it boring. They grab me the moment I’m in reach, hands moving over me with professional efficiency.
One of them finds the gun and pockets it without a word.
“Expected,” I say.
Neither of them responds. They push me toward the door and I go without resistance, storing everything I’m observing—entry points, spacing, sightlines—in the part of my mind that is already planning what comes after this conversation.
Inside, another guarded door. Beyond it, a large room kept deliberately dim, spotlights cutting down from the ceiling just enough to see by. The darkness at the edges is intentional—it’s where his men are standing, how many I can’t yet confirm.
At the center of the room is a desk.
Behind the desk is Ronan Aslanov.
Four years since I last looked at this man directly. He hasn’t changed in any way that matters—the same deliberate stillness, the same quality of having all the time in the world, the same expression that gives away nothing because there’s nothing he’s afraid to show you. He built an empire on that face.
I walk toward him and stop at the edge of the desk.
He looks at me the way he always looked at me—like the outcome of this meeting was decided before I walked in, and everything that follows is merely confirmation.
“Look what crawled out of the grave.” The smile is unhurried. Satisfied. “You should have stayed dead,pridurok. Would have saved us all the inconvenience.”
