Page 108 of Cruel Submission

The twins’ eyes turn to me in unison.

“Round-the-clock perimeter sweeps. Four-hour rotations, staggered so there’s always overlap. Countersurveillance on every vehicle that parks within a quarter mile of the property. I want to know if someone’s watching us before they decide what they’re watching us for.”

“And the road cameras?” Aleksei asks. Or Andrei. After a decade, I still can’t tell their voices apart.

“Mikhail will loop you into the new thermal feeds once they’re live. Cross-reference anything that flags with the plates database. Gavriil’s men aren’t creative—they’ll use the same vehicles, same routes. Find the pattern.”

The twins exchange a look, two minds operating as one processor. They’ve never let me down. Not once.

“What about backup?” one of the twins asks. “If he comes with more than he brought today, we’re stretched.”

Stefan answers before I can. “I’ve got contacts who owe me favors. Reliable men—ex-military, vetted. I can have twenty here within an hour of a call. Forty if I make it two hours.”

“Set it up,” I tell him. “Phone tree, rally points, the works. And pay the retainer in advance. I don’t want anyone hesitating because they’re worried about the invoice.”

Stefan nods, already reaching for his phone.

I look around the table one more time. Seven men. Each one capable of extreme violence and absolute discipline. Each one here not because I pay them—though I do, well—but because we have history.

“One more thing,” I add. “Yuri… medical supplies. I want a full trauma kit in every wing of this house. Field-grade. Tourniquets, chest seals, hemostatic agents, whatever else is needed. And I want Mirabel’s prenatal emergency bag packed and in the armored vehicle at all times. If something goes wrong and we need to move her fast, I will not have us scrambling for equipment.”

Yuri’s expression doesn’t change—it never does—but he writes it down.

“Anything else?” I ask the room.

Silence. The right kind this time. The kind that means understood.

“Then go. Mikhail, start tonight. Everyone else, zero-six-hundred tomorrow. Stefan, stay.”

Chairs scrape. Boots on hardwood. The door opens, and bodies file out in the order they arrived. Yanis pauses at the threshold and gives me a look that says a dozen things: be careful, don’t push yourself, call me if you need to talk, you’re my brother, but you’re a stubborn prick. And then he’s gone too.

The door shuts. Stefan and I look at each other across the table.

“The message,” he says. Not asking. Confirming that we both know what’s coming.

“Not tonight.” I pull the phone from my pocket, stare at the screen for a second, then set it face-down on the table. “Tomorrow. After I’ve spoken to Mirabel.”

Stefan watches me for a beat longer than comfortable. Then nods. Stands. Puts his hand on my shoulder—brief, firm, the only kind of physical affection Stefan has ever been capable of—and walks out.

With the room empty, the quiet returns. I pour myself two fingers of vodka from the bottle in the sideboard. Don’t bother with ice. Drink it standing, staring at the blueprint of my own house spread across the table like an autopsy report.

I should go upstairs. Mirabel is there, probably sleeping on her side now that the bump makes it uncomfortable lying on her back. I want to be there. Want to press myself against the curve of her spine and feel our daughter shift beneath my hand. Want to breathe her in and let the simple miracle of her existence make this night more bearable.

But I can’t go to her like this. Not with the smell of gunpowder still in my clothes and the memory of the gunsight trained on my father’s head still burned onto the backs of my eyelids. Mirabel deserves to sleep in absolute safety. So does her sister. And the babies.

So I stay.

I never want to see Gavriil Laurov again.

The thought is crystal clear. Not I want to defeat him, or I want to stop him, or I want to bring him to justice. I don’t want to see his face. Don’t want to hear that voice. Don’t want anything about him to touch my world.

Next time, I might not stop myself.

The crosshairs on his skull today. The slow, measured breathing. The trigger waiting for a command my finger refused to give. I had the shot—clean, certain—and I let it go. Watched the Mercedes disappear with my father still alive inside it.

If I’d made that shot, there would be no next time. No escalation. No need for thermal cameras and panic buttons and armored vehicles and twenty men on standby. One shot and the threat would be gone. One shot and Mirabel sleeps without fear, and Debra never hears that voice again, and my children grow up without the shadow of a grandfather who trades in human misery.

One shot. And I couldn’t take it.