The whole room changed. Everyone felt it.
Ivan left the room, the softness vanished out of him in one clean motion.
The flat suddenly felt smaller, even with all the new space. The new velvet sofa. The widened doorway. The polished wood. The fresh paint. The absurdly large bed in the next room. All of it had appeared because three Russian alphas had looked around my tiny flat and decided absolutely not.
Now their world had come calling.
I knew it as I watched Artem’s face. It had gone controlled. And then the control cracked.
His jaw tightened so hard a muscle jumped. His free hand curled into a fist. The smell of champagne in his scent turned harsh and metallic, all the warmth stripped out of it. Something in me curled around my baby on instinct.
“When?” he asked.
Nothing in his voice. No grief. No shock. No panic. Just icy words.
A bus sighed at the curb on the main street. Somewhere nearby a door slammed. Edinburgh went right on being wet and gray and deeply inconsiderate while the center of the room seemed to move under my feet.
“And the council?”
A pause.
Ivan came back into the room and stood watching his brother.
Gregor looked at me.
“Understood,” Artem said. “Forty-eight hours.”
Then he ended the call.
He didn’t put the phone away. He tossed it onto the sofa, then he looked at Ivan.
“Father is dead.”
The words landed hard and flat.
Ivan shut his eyes for less than a second. His hand flexed once at his side. “How?”
“The Turkish shipment,” Artem said. “He went himself. Three men with him. The Turks were waiting.”
I stood there trying to fit that into anything that made emotional sense.
Their father was dead. Such poor timing.
It meant the three men in my flat had just stopped being men in my flat and become something else. Something more dangerous.
I pressed a hand over my stomach.
The baby rolled under my palm, slow and heavy, like he objected to the sudden tone of the room.
Same, little man. Same.
“Uncle Mikhail is calling the council,” Artem said. His voice changed and was pure strategy now. Whatever grief had hit him had already been folded away and locked somewhere I could not reach. “Moscow. Forty-eight hours. Every family head will be there.”
Gregor’s gaze flicked to the window, the camera, the door, the angles of the room. Already calculating.
“And we have a complication,” Artem said.
“What kind of complication?” Gregor asked.
