“I need you in the study,” I say, ready to hang up before a soft, feminine sigh resonates from the background. “You have ten minutes,” I add before hanging up, not waiting for a reply.
Five minutes later, there’s a shuffle of heavy boots in the hallway and a hard knock on the door.
“Come in.”
I rise from my chair at the same time the door opens and Artem enters with a wry smile on his lips. He shuts the door behind him, but doesn’t move away from it.
He runs one hand over his hair and sticks the other into his pocket with the annoying smirk he wears when he’s about to do something that will definitely piss me off.
“I was having the night of my life,” he announces. “You know, she’s been the best one since Sasha.”
“Good for you.” I raise a hand. “And I’d appreciate it if you kept the details of your night to yourself. That’s not why I sent for you.”
“Obviously not.” He scans the items littered across my desk and raises a brow. “And yeah, that reminds me, I don’t think I’ve personally wished you a hearty congratulations on your marriage.”
“You have, but thank you,” I reply gruffly.
But he pushes. “Swift wedding, almost a bittooswift. But I’m not going to lie, Leonid, you’ve always had an eye for verygoodthings. Isn’t this, what do they call it, the honeymoon phase? Shouldn’t you be having the best nights of your life, too?”
The only reason Artem has gotten so far into this conversation is because of privilege—the privilege that devout loyalty and fierce faithfulness throughout the years have earned him.
He’s fought by me, stood by me, even taken a bullet or two for me. In terms of brotherhood, besides Mikhail and my blood family, no one comes close to Artem.
Most of the men, especially the new recruits, have mistaken us for brothers. I consider him practically family.
But that’s not enough to allow him to make a careless and suggestive remark about Elena.
We’ve talked about the women we’ve fucked. We’ve shared women, recommended them even. But there’s a possessive surge that spikes hard inside me, that makes me want to keep her name out of his mouth by any means possible.
An immediate, primal rage explodes behind my ribs, and the air around me turns to ice. My face stays as a mask of absolute stone, but it takes every ounce of my restraint not to reach across the desk, wrap my fingers around his throat, and squeeze until his windpipe snaps.
My hands stay perfectly flat against the desk, but the wood groans under the sudden, white-knuckled pressure of my grip.
I lean forward, and the tension in the room stretches tight enough for a knife to cut through.
“I’ll fucking put a bullet between your eyes if you mention her again, Art, I swear to God. Focus. We’re not on vacation. We have serious work to do.” I frown, narrowing my eyes at him. “What the hell’s gotten into you this morning?”
Artem’s smirk vanishes instantly, the color draining from his face as he realizes the exact line he’s crossed. He takes a step forward, his posture stiffening as he finally marches away from the door and toward my desk.
“My apologies. What do you need me to do?”
I point to a shelf of history books and begin walking toward it. “We’ll talk in there.”
Artem follows me without uttering a single word. I punch in the passcode to the security panel beside the shelf, and there’s a mechanical whir before the shelf slowly slides to the right, revealing the dark entrance into the war room.
It's a long walk through the tunnel that buzzes and lights up after the motion sensors are triggered, but after a few minutes, we step into the secure office.
The walls around us blink with the blue light of dozens of monitors displaying live feeds of the ports, while topographical maps of the shipping lanes take up the center table.
Artem stands a few meters behind me while I dish out precise orders. I point at one of the large monitors showing the map of our port territories.
“What I want you to do is simple. Track Vasili’s known contacts within the harbor union.” I tap a finger against the map. “Ensure you trace every recent port disruption back to the specific shift workers on duty, and intercept the suspicious shipments scheduled to arrive on the midnight freighter. I want nothing slipping through.”
He nods, and when I turn around, I find his sharp blue eyes absorbing the data.
Together, we lean over the monitors, dissecting the logistics. It doesn’t take long to identify the weak points in Vasili’s network, the vulnerabilities he doesn’t even know he has.
We quietly map out a brutal attack, a high-risk-proof strategy that has the potential to cut the legs out from under his operation completely while keeping my own shipping lanes insulated and undetected.
