Page 46 of Bound in Possession

"Have you ever used one?" I ask, my voice flat, testing her.

"No." The truth slips out, stark and honest.

I look into her dark eyes and see the flickering fire there. The realization settles in my gut: she has the courage to use it—the raw, ruthless defiance guarantees that—but she doesn't have the skill. Not yet.

"A blade is better than nothing," Camilla argues, her jaw tightening as she senses my judgment. She steps closer, refusing to let me intimidate her. "If someone gets too close, I want to be able to gut them."

"In our world, hesitation gets people killed," I counter, my voice dropping into a harsh, realistic grate. "A knife requires you to be within arm's reach of a monster. If you don't cut deep enough, if you flinch for even a fraction of a second, they will take that blade from your hands and slit your throat with it."

She scoffs, crossing her arms, but I don't let her speak.

"A gun would be more useful," I continue, my gaze raking over her stubborn expression. "But only if you learn how to handle it properly. At least with a firearm, you keep the threat at a distance."

Camilla raises an eyebrow, a mocking challenge flashing across her beautiful face. "Are you offering to teach me, Pakhan? Or are you just trying to scare me into staying locked in your bedroom?"

A dark, dangerous grin tugs at the corner of my lips. She wants to play with fire, and I am more than willing to let her burn.

"I’m not scaring you, princess. I’m educating you," I say, reaching down to unwrap the cloth from my knuckles with a slow, deliberate motion. "I’m going to teach you how to shoot myself, so you can learn something that might actually save your life."

"When?" she asks, her dark eyes flashing with a mix of impatience and curiosity.

"Soon," I reply, tossing the unwrapped cloth wraps onto the bench next to her water bottle. "For now, let’s take you through basic workouts to build your form. If you can't balance your weight or hold a stance under pressure, a firearm will only knock you off your feet."

She scoffs, but there’s no real heat in it this time. She nods, stepping out into the center of the rubber mats, ready to see what I have in store.

For the next hour, the tension between us shifts into a different kind of intensity. I don't give her an easy, gentle routine. I put her through a grueling circuit of core and stability work—planks, squats, and agility drills designed to test her balance and endurance.

Every time her form slips, I am right there. I don't just shout orders; I step in close, my large hands placing firmly on her waist to correct her alignment or pressing down on her shoulders to force her lower. The contrast between my sweat-dampened skin and hers is electric in the quiet gym. She gasps for air, her muscles trembling under the strain, but she refuses to quit. Every time I think she's about to complain, she just grits her teeth, her stubborn pride pushing her through the burn.

By the time we finish, Camilla is flushed, breathing heavily, with tendrils of dark hair damp against her neck. She leans against the weight rack, wiping her brow with the back of her hand, looking utterly exhausted but completely unbroken.

I stand in front of her, barely breathing hard, watching the fierce rise and fall of her chest with a quiet, lethal satisfaction. She wanted to learn our world, and today, she proved she has the stomach for the grind.

The sharp click of heavy boots against the concrete stairs shatters the quiet of the gym.

Dmitri steps into the room, his face a grim, unreadable mask. He looks at Camilla, then at me, his eyes carrying the heavy weight of the underworld business that never sleeps.

"Maksim," Dmitri says, his voice tight, cutting right through the lingering tension of our workout. "We have the preliminary tracking data back from the northern docks. We need to talk."

I pick up a towel, wiping the sweat from my neck while keeping my eyes on him. "Speak. She stays."

Camilla doesn't flinch. She straightens up, crossing her arms over her chest, her dark eyes instantly sharpening as she shifts from Dmitri ’s face to mine.

Dmitri nods once, accepting the order, and steps closer, pulling out his secure satellite phone. "The attack on Warehouse Seven wasn't just calculated, Maksim. It was meticulously sourced. Our tech guys pulled the telemetry from the arsonists' breach points. They bypassed three separate blind nodes that were rotated just forty-eight hours ago."

My jaw tightens. "That route wasn't on the main servers."

"It wasn't," Dmitri says, his voice dropping into a dark, dangerous register. "The transport schedule and the specific vault routing used for that international package were known only to a very small, exclusive number of people. A select few within our own council, and the inner circle of the Caruso family."

A cold, lethal silence drapes over the gym. I feel Camilla's posture stiffen beside me, but I don't look at her. My mind is already mapping out the pieces of the puzzle, the picture coming together in a bloody, vivid display. Viktor didn't just get lucky. He didn't just stumble upon our vulnerability.

"A rat," I growl, the word tasting like poison on my tongue. "Viktor bought someone inside the organization. He has a mole deep enough to pull active manifests."

"It's the only way they could have pulled it off without tripping the silent alarms," Dmitri agrees, tapping the screen of his device. "The timing is too perfect. They wanted the hit to land exactly when our focus was distracted by the wedding."

"Show me the routes again," I command, stepping up to him. "Every node, every checkpoint from the moment the freighter docked."

Dmitri extends his arm, turning the glowing screen of the phone toward me. "Right here. Look at the timeline."