Page 218
“Only for you.”
***
One week out of the hospital, and the city hasn’t burned to the ground.
That fact alone is nothing short of a miracle, considering Alya Solovyov had spent six months laying down the scorched-earth insurance policy meant to trigger an all-out syndicate war the second she was put under ground.
She had rigged dead-man switches across private servers from Vladivostok to Shinjuku: forged transaction trails implicating rival Bratva syndicates, scheduled wire transfers masking Anton’s assassination as a Kazuma execution, and automated hit orders queued to dispatch strike teams to half a dozen family compounds before sunrise.
If the Morozov lieutenants had taken the bait before Dimitri reached them, blood would have run waist-deep through the docks.
They didn’t, because my prince dismantled her entire machine in seventy-two hours once he took me home.
Watching Ilya work behind a terminal is terrifying, and very hot at the same time. He didn’t sleep for three days straight. He sat at my desk, surrounded by three monitors, tearing through Alya’s encrypted subnets.
He gathered every voice recording of Alya’s negotiations with Adrian and dumped the decrypted files directly onto the personal consoles of every high-ranking captain in the council.
While Ilya worked the digital wire, I used the Kazuma name and every shred of authority I possessed to enforce absolute silence on the ground. I put armed squads on the perimeter of the Morozov warehouses, locked down the transport hubs, and personally stood across the table from three twitchy lieutenants with my hand resting on a loaded Kimber, making it unequivocally clear that anyone who mobilized before Ilya finished his broadcast would be buried under the asphalt.
I gave him the perimeter, and Ilya took the empire.
I loved every second of watching him take control, but I know one thing.
He’s drowning.
I sit back in the armchair near the window. Across the room, Ilya is leaning against the kitchen counter, scrolling through his tablet.
“Prince,” I call out softly.
“Hold on. Alexei forwarded the manifests from the Yokohama dry docks. Alya had three shell companies laundering transport fees through—”
“Ilya.”
He blinks, pausing. His green eyes lift to mine. “What? Is your shoulder hurting? Did the stitches pull?”
“My shoulder is fine,” I say, keeping my tone low. “Put the tablet down and come here.”
A faint crease appears between his brows. “I’m in the middle of—”
“Down,” I repeat gently.
He scoffs, muttering something in Russian that sounds distinctly profane, but he locks the screen and sets the device on the marble counter. He walks over, crossing his arms over his chest as he stops beside my chair.
“What?” he asks, lifting his chin. “If you’re going to complain about th—”
I reach out with my right arm, hook my fingers into the belt loop of his jeans, and tug.
“Whoa—hey!”
I pull him down onto my lap before he can plant his feet. Ilya squirms, his knees knocking against the armrest as he tries to find purchase. “Kento! Watch your fucking incision—stop, you’re going to tear something, you idiot—”
“I’m not going to tear anything,” I murmur, wrapping my arm around his waist and pulling him flush against my chest. “Sit still.”
“I have legs. I can sit on the sofa like a normal human being,” he huffs, but even as the words leave his mouth, his body betrays him because within five seconds, he is letting his forehead drop against the curve of my neck.
He fits against me like he was carved to be there. “I want to talk to you about something.”
“If this is about me threatening Dima with the fire extinguisher yesterday, he deserved it.” He did deserve it. He came over and tried to give me a lesson that if I ever hurt Ilya he would kill me. I provoked him a little, and he ended up hitting me, which resulted in Ilya almost setting him on fire. I enjoyed the show.
