The tip of the knife presses harder, denting the skin. "And leave him with nothing to lose.”
Blackness.
Chapter eight
Mikhail
The penthouse is empty. Not quiet. Empty. My gut tells me what it takes seconds to discover. She's not here.
I stand in the mouth of the bedroom and feel it in my bones before my brain catches up. The closet door is ajar. The empty hook where her thrift-store peacoat used to hide behind my suits. The nightstand drawer, open by a fraction, the cheap burner phone she had is gone, along with all of her old clothes.
She took nothing that was mine.
That realization sucks the air from my lungs. She left the silk. The cashmere. The softness I built around her to keep her close. She took only what she came with—the rags of a girl who survived foster care, shelters, and men like me.
That makes no fucking sense. Riley's smarter than that. Only fear makes smart people do dumb things. But that still is no fucking excuse.
My hands shake with a rage so clean it feels almost holy. "Dmitri." My voice is inhuman. Scraped to its raw edges. He materializes from the hall, still in his coat, still armed. He takes one look at my face and reaches for his phone.
"Find her."
It takes eleven minutes to pull the lobby footage. Eighteen to access the South Station security feeds. Nineteen to see the three men in black puffers closing around her on the platform bench. Twenty to watch them drag her through a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY while her body goes limp, her tote bag crashing to the ground.
Twenty-one minutes, and I put a target on Boston.
I do not think or plan. The Pakhan vanishes, and what remains is something older. A beast who has found its mate in another predator's jaws. My vision narrows until all I see is Briggs.
Jayshaun Briggs.
He has been in the wind for weeks, but he is not a ghost. He is a rat, and rats need holes. Viktor traces the cell tower pings from South Station. The data narrows to one place. Underground. An old engine room from the 1920s, sealed during the Big Dig, forgotten by maps, perfect for torture and disposal.
We go in hard.
Four of my men take the surface—sewer access, utility tunnels, any exit Big Jay might run to. Dmitri and Viktor flank me. We descend through a rusted access hatch behind a derelict storage shed, boots finding purchase on rungs slick with century-old grease.
The dark closes around us. Good. It knows me.
The first guard dies before he knows we are there. My knife across his throat, hand clamped over his mouth, lowering him to the stone without a sound. The second gets a look at my face and freezes. I break his neck. The third raises a weapon—a cheap .38—and Viktor puts two through his chest before the hammer can fall.
We move without hesitation. Jayshaun Briggs should have known this was coming.
I hear them before I see them. Voices echoing off brick. Water dripping somewhere in the black. And beneath it, faint but unmistakable, a woman's moan.
My Riley.
The engine room opens beneath the city, a maze. Brick walls are sweating condensation. A single yellow bulb swinging from a frayed cord, casting long, jerking shadows across the floor. And there—center stage, sitting on a folding chair like it's a throne—Jayshaun Briggs.
He has a knife. A switchblade, rolling between his fingers, catching the weak light.
At his feet, wrists zip-tied behind her, head lolling from whatever they gave her—
Riley.
There is a thin line of blood at her throat where the blade has already sliced her. Red washes over my vision. Jayshaun looks up and smiles.
"Speak of the devil," he drawls, rising.
I shoot him before he finishes his sentence. I have no time for his words. The sound is deafening in the confined space. He collapses, the folding chair skittering away, the switchblade clattering across stone. I cross the distance in four strides. My boot finds his throat. I press down until his eyes bulge and his hands claw at my ankle.
