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“Stop talking,” I muttered, rolling my eyes at him.

He moved upward, but I stopped him with a hand over his chest. “You’re injured. How many times do I have to remind you?”

I bent forward to kiss him instead, and he pulled me even closer as he deepened the kiss. Then he ended the kiss and whispered, “Make love to me, baby.”

His words making me even bolder, I sat back up and grabbed his hard length, directing it to my core. I lowered myself onto his cock slowly, our eyes not leaving each other.

“Fuck!” he practically groaned when I took him to the root.

I started moving vertically over him, the ecstasy that shot through me making me move even faster. I moaned loudly as he grabbed my hips and ground me against him.

“Damn, baby! You’re going to make me come too quickly,” he rushed as I rolled my hips again.

My fingers dug into his shoulders and chest as I continued moving up and down. There was something about him leaving all the control to me that made every nerve in me vibrate with pleasure.

“I’m going to…” I started between shaky breaths and moans.

“I’m right there with you.”

Then he started thrusting into me from beneath, his movements fast and almost erratic.

“Oh… Nikolai… oh… damn, don’t stop… ”

I came, and he reached his own climax almost immediately. I practically fell on him afterward, and he held me to his chest, our breath still rapid.

A few minutes passed in silence before Nikolai spoke.

“You don’t have to thank me for searching for your brother. It’s a choice I made. For you,” he said, his fingers threading my scalp slowly.

I kissed his chest. “You mean a lot to me. More than you think,” I confessed.

I felt him swallow and then sigh slowly, as if I’d just said something too meaningful for him to process.

“I want to sleep with my arms wrapped around you now. Everything else can wait until tomorrow.”

“Okay,” I breathed. “Can I at least turn the lights off here?” I asked, already shifting towards the nightstand.

He moved up on the bed, and I joined him in the low light. His hands came around me as he enveloped me from behind, his legs intertwining with mine.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Nikolai

The leaks started Tuesday morning and hadn’t stopped since. Federal files connected to Graham’s trafficking operations surfaced across three separate outlets within hours of each other, each one detailed enough to suggest a coordinated release rather than a genuine breach. By Wednesday, two councilmen had resigned. By Thursday, a state senator’s office had gone silent entirely, no comment offered to any reporter who called. My own phone rang constantly with panicked business partners wanting reassurance I couldn’t fully give them, each one asking some version of the same question—how much further this would spread, and whose name would surface next.

I read through the coverage at my desk with growing certainty about exactly what I was watching. This wasn’t panic from a man losing control of his own secrets. This was calculated chaos, deliberately released to destabilize everyone around him while he prepared for something considerably larger. Graham wanted the city distracted, federal resources scattered thin, every criminal organization in Vegas too busy managing its own exposure to notice him consolidating power in the confusion. Each new leak targeted a different faction, spreading suspicion evenly enough that no one could easily unite against him.

He wanted war. He’d simply decided to soften the ground before starting one.

“He’s escalating, boss,” Yuri said, reading the same headlines. “This isn’t containment leaking out. This is deliberate.”

“I know.” I closed the laptop. “It’s high time I spoke with him directly.”

Camila found me in the study an hour later, already dressed for the meeting.

“Yuri said you’re going to see him yourself.”

“Yes.”