His eyes go to Ayla first, then to my hand on her arm, then back to my face.
I hold his gaze for one beat.
Then I nod once and say, “The Pakhan decides.”
***
By the time I get her through the front door, the townhouse is already moving.
Men crossing rooms with boxes in their arms. Garment bags slung over shoulders. Weapons cases stacked near the entry. One of the guards carrying files out of my office like the whole place is shedding skin around us.
Ayla steps slow for half a second, and I feel her eyes cut to me without her saying a word.
I don’t have the patience for questions right now. Especially not the wrong ones.
I know what she’s probably thinking. That this is about her.
That I’m tightening the leash. That I’m moving her somewhere she can’t run.
It’s not that.
If I wanted her caged, I’d leave her here. Guards at every entrance. Cameras in every room. Her world narrowed down to walls and watches and permission, like the Amatos with their wives—every breath tracked, every step seen, all that obsession dressed up as protection.
The compound is different. The compound is where the Pakhan is supposed to be.
At the center. At the helm.Visible.
Nobody questions me leading from there. Nobody starts sniffing around the woman at my side when I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly what I’m supposed to do. At the compound, Ayla doesn’t look like a secret.
She looks like a decision.
And decisions made by the Pakhan stop being questions very quickly.
Smart.
Clean.
Too much likeNikolai.
That thought hits like something sour crawling up the back of my throat.
Because I know exactly what this is.
Power.
The kind my father wore so easily it looked like breathing. The kind I told myself I’d never use the way he did. Deciding what truth lived. Deciding what got buried. Deciding what the men did and did not deserve to know.
And now here I am, moving a woman under my roof because I understand exactly how men like mine think. What they’ll ask. What they’ll tear apart if I let uncertainty breathe too long.
So I don’t.
I cut uncertainty off at the throat.
Ayla is still looking at the movement around us when I close my hand around hers and steer her toward the hall.
“We’re moving to the compound,” I say.
She looks up at me.
