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Yuri emerged from the hallway a moment later, wiping blood from his knuckles, the man behind him now slumped and silent against the wall. “Got a location, boss. Warehouse district, industrial side of the city. Not confirmed yet, but it’s the best lead we have.”

“Then that’s where we start.” I turned to Hayes.

Somewhere out there, in a warehouse we hadn’t yet confirmed, Camila sat frightened and alone, carrying a child that had already become the most important thing in my entire life. Every second I spent standing here rather than moving felt like a second stolen from her.

So whatever alliance I’d just struck with a federal agent I’d spent months distrusting, whatever pride I’d swallowed to secure resources I needed, none of it mattered.

Graham would die for this. I intended to make certain of that personally, with my own hands if it came to it.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Camila

I woke to the chill of the concrete beneath me seeping through the thin fabric of my dress and into my skin. My head throbbed with a dull ache, which told me they must have sedated me. My wrists ached where they’d bound them, red marks already forming.

Metal cages lined one wall, unmistakable in their purpose even though they were empty. Small faded handprints marked the concrete near one of them, and I looked away before the implication could fully form in my head. The air carried the smell of old blood and bleach applied too many times to fully erase it. There was a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, buzzing faintly.

Beyond the walls, muffled through concrete, I heard what might have been another person.

I pressed a hand instinctively to my stomach, checking even though there was no way to know anything from the outside aside from the fact that I was still breathing.

When a well-dressed man stepped in, I knew it was Graham. A guard had opened the heavy door for him and stepped back out immediately, closing it again and leaving the two of us.

“Camila.” He said my name warmly, the same unsettling warmth from our phone calls now attached to an actual face. And it was worse in person than it had ever been through a speaker. “I do apologize for the accommodations. I wasn’t expecting company quite so soon.”

“Where am I?”

“Somewhere quiet.” He pulled a folding chair from against the wall and sat across from me with ease. “Somewhere private enough that we can finally have the conversation your husband keeps interrupting.”

“You want Nikolai,” I said, the pieces of this whole nightmare finally clicking into a shape that made a horrible kind of sense. “This was never really about me.”

“Clever girl.” He smiled, the expression somehow more disturbing for how genuine it looked. “Your husband has cost me considerably more than I’m willing to absorb quietly. Millions in seized assets. Years of carefully built networks dismantled piece by piece. Your reporting accelerated all of it, I’ll admit, though the credit ultimately belongs to Nikolai’s stubborn insistence on treating my business as a personal crusade. Four facilities. Fighters recovered. Federal investigators crawling through operations I spent a decade insulating. All because a waitress fell in love with a Golovin brother and decided to make it everyone’s problem.”

“Good. He should have destroyed you years ago.”

“Perhaps.” He tilted his head slightly like he was examining a specimen rather than a person. “You have his temperament, you know. Fascinating, considering how differently you two began. I do wonder sometimes whether that’s precisely why he fell for you. Recognizing something familiar in an unlikely mirror.”

I refused to give him the satisfaction of flinching, so I asked instead, “Where is Mateo?”

He settled back into his chair, entirely at ease. “Your brother made a genuine nuisance of himself before he died. Refused to cooperate with his handlers. Tried helping two other fighters escape a facility we ran outside Reno. Admirable, in a way, though considerably inconvenient for business.” He said it with the same casual cruelty he’d shown discussing everything else, as if he was describing an unremarkable business setback rather than a human life. “He died trying to save people who weren’t his responsibility. A waste, honestly. He could have simply survived and stayed quiet like the rest of them.”

“He died trying to help people because that’s who he was. Something you clearly can’t understand, because you’ve never once cared about anyone beyond what they’re worth to you.”

“Careful,” Graham said. “You’re in a considerably weaker position than you seem to appreciate.”

“I don’t care.” I pushed myself upright despite the ache still throbbing through my skull, meeting his eyes directly. My legs shook beneath me, but I stayed standing anyway. “Nikolai is going to destroy every single thing you’ve built. Every casino, every trafficking route, every dollar you’ve ever laundered through this city. He already promised me that, and he’s never once broken a promise to me since the day I married him.”

“Bold words for a woman locked in a cage,” he said, his tone mocking.

“I’m not the one who should be afraid.”

Something flickered across his face, irritation breaking through the practiced calm for just a moment before he smoothed it back into composure. He stood slowly, straightening his jacket.

“We’ll see how brave you feel in a few days,” he said. “And you’d be wise to remember exactly whose hospitality you’re currently enjoying.”

He left without another word, the heavy door sealing behind him with a sound that echoed through the concrete room.

I sat alone in the silence, my whole body shaking with adrenaline and fear I refused to show him. Every instinct told me to break down, to let the terror finally claim me the way it had been threatening to since I first opened my eyes in this room.