I flicked the cigarette out the window, the engine rumbling beneath me.
Tonight, I’d come back to her.
But first—I had some ghosts to haunt.
Pakhan’s a goddamn idiot. Years of unchallenged power turned him into a lazy prick. He’d owned this city for more than a decade, no serious pushback, so he quit looking close. All his ghosts were external—rival bosses, foreign syndicates, anyone not in his inner circle. He forgot the oldest rule. The snake that bites you isn’t always slithering in from the street. Sometimes it’s coiled in your own pocket.
He thought he was sending me to flex. Smooth things over with Moscow. Threaten a few sons of bitches. Show strength. Reassert control.
But I wasn’t going to fix anything.
I was going to make it worse.
Vadym was fucking good at what he did—patient, meticulous, the kind of investigator who dug until his hands bled. I’d wiped the hotel clean and I knew the cameras were dead, but withsomeone like him, that wasn’t enough. I couldn’t risk it. I needed the city on fire before any thread led back to me or Kira.
By the time I pulled up to the warehouse by the river—the one they used for their “import business”—I already knew exactly what I’d do. It was concrete and rusted steel, security lights humming over stacks of illegal cargo they pretended didn’t exist.
They knew me. They knew who I worked for. That was the point.
All I needed was for a few of them to see my face.
I didn’t bother hiding the car. I let the headlights wash over the loading bay while a couple of their men stepped out, confused at first, then rigid when they recognized me.
Pakhan told me to “remind” them who held power.
And in my own way, that’s exactly what I did.
I reached into the duffel on the passenger seat, pulled the pins with steady fingers, and tossed two grenades through the open bay doors before they even processed what was happening. The first explosion tore through the crates. The second followed half a heartbeat later, metal screaming, flames licking up into the night.
I was already pulling away when the warehouse bloomed behind me in orange light.
They’d be frothing by morning.
Good.
Let them come. Let the whole rotten empire turn its gaze on Kyiv. Let it try to swallow us.
I wanted war.
And Pakhan just handed me the match.
It was late by the time I returned. The house was quiet, guards rotating like shadows in the courtyard, with lights still burning on the upper floor. I didn’t knock. I picked the lock silently—a flick of the wrist, a breath held—and I was inside. No one saw me. I locked the door behind me.
Kira sat on the bed with a sketchbook balanced on her knees, a single lamp casting honeyed light over her shoulders. Charcoal dust smudged her fingers. When she saw me, she dropped the sketchbook as if it had burned her and stood up in an instant.
She ran at me.
I caught her as she jumped, her legs locking around my waist, silk sliding over skin. The robe she wore wasn’t tied—barely clinging to her shoulders—and beneath it, she was dressed for sin. Black lace. A matching set meant to be destroyed.
“Hello, Mr. Reaper,” she teased breathlessly, her mouth already finding mine. “Did you come to ruin me?”
I smiled into the kiss, hands sliding under her ass as I spun us once, twice. “I came to finish what you started,” I said, filthy and honest, before tossing her back onto the bed.
She laughed—soft and reckless—and pulled me down with her.
For a moment there was nothing but the heat of her mouth and the soft rustle of sheets as we shifted across the bed. My hand slid into her hair, holding her there, and that was when I noticed the pages scattered beside us.
Charcoal sketches.
