Oh, did he? So he made a deal with his daughter, and yet he was after the children.
I reached for the cigarette in Roman’s hand without asking and took a drag, the burn settling in my chest, grounding what started to spiral.
Roman leaned back against the railing. “When I found Grace’s mother, she was pregnant. I don’t touch pregnant women and kids.” He paused. “I didn’t tell Iker she wasn’t dead first. I got close to Grace’s family until I was close enough to tell her mother about Iker.”
So that was how he knew Inna. Motherfucker. No wonder Inna said he was an old friend.
“Grace’s mother asked for time. She wanted to give birth first and return to her father. She didn’t want Iker to know about her family, and she begged me not to disclose the information. I agreed.” A faint smirk touched his lips. “She disappeared from the hospital after giving birth. That was the only way to protect them.”
Fucked up shit! Akim dug into Inna’s past and found nothing. Now it made sense. Roman erased them.
“Iker never knew about the family when we closed our deal,” Roman added.
I let out a scoff, the cigarette resting between my fingers. “Well, he knows now. And he wants the boy. Congratulations.”
Smoke lingered between us. Roman’s eyes sharpened. “If he takes the boy, he will kill Grace and her mother.” That caught my attention, and he continued. “He doesn’t have an heir. Just the daughter. And now that there’s a son…” He let the sentence hang, but I didn’t need him to finish it.
I already knew the answer.
“He hates women,” Roman added, almost as an afterthought. “He killed two wives for not giving birth. The third gave him a daughter. That’s all he has.” His gaze shifted to me. “And if he gets the boy, he will eliminate the mother and Grace and make the boy believe he is the father and shape him into what he wants.”
This wasn’t just a mess anymore. It was leverage. It was war dressed as family. I opened my mouth to speak when a voice cut through the tension.
“Gentlemen,” Iker said smoothly as he climbed the last steps, “I thought you left.”
Roman and I turned.
Iker approached without hurry. The dim light from the rooftop caught the lines of his face. I studied him differently now, not just as a man running a small empire but as a man who would burn blood to secure a legacy.
My original plan was simple: use him to get Zachary and walk away when the deal was done. But simple plans had a way of dying fast.
I studied him, measuring. This required a smart move. I wasn’t some amateur scrambling for control. I was Dmitri. If he were a step ahead while I worked on plan A, I would shift to plan B and take what I came for, anyway. Power wasn’t luck. It was construction. Men like me built their own worlds, shaped every outcome, and controlled every variable that mattered. This world was mine. And I would run it so clean Iker wouldn’t see it closing in on him until it was already done.
I dropped the cigarette to the ground and crushed it under my shoe. My gaze locked onto Iker.
“I thought we could talk,” Iker said as he stepped closer.
He didn’t resemble my wife. She looked nothing like him. That worked in my favor.
“Make it quick,” I declared, and he nodded.
His eyes shifted to Roman and back to me. “Do we have a problem that I don’t know about? I have done a clean business with Konstantinovs, but it seems you crossed a line and stepped into mine.”
I held his gaze, aware of what he meant, but I didn’t show it. “Meaning”
“Your wife,” he said. “Did you know who she was before marrying her?”
I let that sit just enough to make it believable. I didn’t know enough before, not like now. At first, she was a convenient lie that fitted perfectly into a plan. Now she was someone else. Someone I wasn’t letting go of yet.
“Inna Grace Anderson,” I said. “Twenty-five years old. Isn’t that enough information?” I paused, letting my tone harden. “But that doesn’t matter. I don’t care who she is, I care about who she knows. Someone I want.”
Iker’s eyes narrowed, weighing the answer. “Someone she knows?” he asked.
Here was the thing: I wasn’t as old as he was, and my mind functioned a hundred times faster than his. I already had a new plan.
“You must know Konstantinovs will do anything to get what they want, even if it means faking a marriage.”
The words tasted wrong, but I didn’t show. Right now, this wasn’t about the truth. It was about control.
