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I glance back once and give them a two-finger salute. “Try not to overthrow the empire before I get home.”

Yuma laughs. Akira rolls his eyes, but I catch the smile this time before he kills it.

I arrive on the sidewalk just off the service road and kill the engine without turning on the interior light.

The area is dead quiet.

Ahead of me, the forest stretches dark, black trees pressing close around a narrow break in the land where an old warehouse squats deeper in.

The Vetrov boy is in there.

Not really a boy, of course. Men like him stop being boys early, usually right around the time someone hands them a gun and tells them their surname matters more than everyone else’s life. Still, in my head I call him that because it annoys me how predictable he is.

I read the file on my way here. First when he started testing Kazuma shipping routes, then again when two men loyal to us disappeared after being seen with his people. He was told to step back, but he escalated instead, hijacked another run, laid claim to territory that wasn’t his, and, most importantly, got one of ours killed in the process.

I step out of the car and close the door softly. I adjust my sleeves, check the weight of the gun under my jacket, then start walking.

I’m stepping forward when something slices the air beside my head.

A knife.

It flashes past my ear so fast the wind of it kisses my skin, and I turn just in time to see it bury itself in the trunk of a tree behind me instead of my skull.

I stop.

Then pivot.

And my, oh my.

It’s my little prince.

Standing a few yards away in the dark like the forest coughed him up personally to test my self-control.

He’s spinning a second knife between his fingers, which is deeply offensive to my concentration, because whenever he does that, my dick gets hard. Well, to be fair, he can do anything and my dick will get hard. His existence makes me very horny in general.

Moonlight catches along the blade, then along his face, and there he is, green eyes bright with temper, mouth already set in that shape that usually means I’m about three seconds from either getting stabbed or obsessing over something he says for the next week. Because yes, I’m not ashamed to say I am obsessed with him. The correct modern term would be a simp.

I grin. “Hello there, prince.”

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

Ilya doesn’t lower the knife. He stands there looking like an erotic painting pulled out of my dreams.

I slide one hand into my pocket and smile at him. “Did you follow me, prince? Do you perhaps miss me?”

He exhales through his nose. “Keep flirting like that and I’ll bury this one somewhere inconvenient.”

He’s so beautiful when he’s annoyed that sometimes I wonder if rage was handcrafted for his face specifically.

I tip my head toward the warehouse. “Who are you here for, if not me?”

He doesn’t hesitate. “Maksim Vetrov.”

I hum once. “I will handle him.”

Ilya’s expression hardens instantly. “No. The Vetrov boy is mine.”

His.