Fadir’s supply lines are falling apart faster than even I anticipated, with suppliers pulling back, routes rerouted or abandoned, and even his own people starting to whisper about incompetence. The USB Anja provided has been worth its weight in gold.
She sits across from me, her hair falling loosely over one shoulder as she leans forward to study the latest report. The reading lamp above the island casts a warm pool of light that catches the sharp focus in her gaze. She looks tired but alive with purpose. The kind of fire that has only grown since the night she arrived here.
We have been reviewing the fractured supply chains for hours, cross-referencing dates and patterns, when she suddenly looks up from the screen.
“Your scars,” she says quietly, no preamble, no hesitation. Her gaze settles on the raised line along my jaw, then drifts briefly to the faint one visible at the collar of my shirt, where the fabric has shifted. “You never talk about them. Not really. I know they’re part of this life, but… what happened?”
The question lands heavier than I expected. Most people who notice my scars get the polished enforcer version. The clean one, detached stories that reveal nothing important. Tonight, with the penthouse wrapped in late-night silence and Anja watching me with that quiet, unrelenting curiosity, the usual deflection feels wrong.
For the first time in years, I don’t reach for the armor.
I lean back slightly, rolling my shoulders once before answering.
“The one on my jaw came from a night we almost lost my brother,” I say, voice low and even but stripped of its usual polish. “Tikhon was younger then, hot-headed, convinced brute force was the only answer. He walked into an ambush that should have killed him. I got there late… too late to stop the blade that caught me here when I pulled him out. He survived. Barely. I still remember the blood on the concrete, the way his breathing sounded wrong. That night taught me the cost of rushing in with rage. I became the patient after that. The one who waits for the perfect strike instead of charging forward and bleeding for it.”
I pause, fingers tracing the edge of a printout without really seeing it. The memory is old but still vivid. I can still sense the metallic smell of blood, the weight of Tikhon’s body as I dragged him to safety, and the long months of recovery that followed. The quiet burden of being the brother who plans instead of the one who burns.
“There are others,” I continue, surprising even myself with how much I’m willing to give her. “This one…” I touch the faint scar just below my collarbone through the fabric, “came from a rival crew years ago. They thought they could push into our territory by hitting us where it hurt most. Family. We lost good men that night. I learned then that every scar carries a story of something we nearly lost. The life we lead… it extracts a price. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just steady. You carry the weight so the people you protect don’t have to.” I let her see the quiet cost of the life I lead with the patience that sometimes feels like chains, the calculated distance I maintain because rushing in hasalready cost too much. The words come without flourish, raw in their simplicity.
Anja listens without interrupting, her eyes steady on my face. When I finish, the silence stretches between us, thick and charged. She reaches out slowly, as if giving me time to pull away. Her fingertips brush the raised scar along my jaw, feather-light, tracing the old line with unexpected gentleness. They linger a second longer than necessary, warm against my skin.
The air shifts.
Heavy with something I can’t name. The fire that has been burning in her eyes for weeks suddenly feels closer, more dangerous. A sharp, sudden urge rises in my chest—to pull her closer, to taste the fire and the quiet steel she carries, to let the careful distance between us dissolve in this single late-night moment.
I resist.
Instead, I gently cover her hand with mine, my palm large and steady against her smaller one. I hold it there for a single beat, feeling the warmth of her skin, the faint tremble that might be hers or mine. Then I release it, guiding her hand back to the table with careful, deliberate control.
The invisible wall between us stays firmly in place.
But for the first time, I feel it crack, a hairline fracture under the pressure of her quiet curiosity and unexpected gentleness. She is no longer just the terrified girl I hauled out of Fadir’s warehouse. She is the woman who sits across from me at midnight, decoding supply lines, who laughs at Arina’s teasing at Sunday dinner, who reaches out to touch old scars without fear.
I remind myself that this is still purely strategic. Her trust is nothing more than a temporary implementation. Any warmthI feel is a liability. The pretend relationship exists for one reason only: to make Fadir watch everything he thought he owned slip away while we grow closer in public. Nothing beyond that is allowed.
Anja pulls her hand back, a faint flush coloring her cheeks, but she doesn’t look away. “Thank you,” she says softly. “For telling me the real version.”
I nod once, already shutting the moment down inside my chest. “We should finish this. The next supplier pullout needs to be timed perfectly.”
We return to the reports, the late-night quiet settling around us again. But the crack in the wall remains. I feel it every time her hair falls over her shoulder as she leans closer to the screen, every time her eyes flick up to meet mine with that new, tentative trust.
Fadir’s empire continues to fracture under our combined pressure. The slow dismantling is working exactly as planned.
Yet as the hours slip toward dawn and the city lights begin to pale, I sit across from the twenty-one-year-old woman who has somehow worked her way deeper into these strategy sessions than I ever intended, and I wonder, quietly and carefully, whether the patient enforcer has finally met a variable he cannot fully control.
The invisible wall holds.
For now.
Chapter 13 - Anja
Living with Alexey Sokolov feels more surreal with every passing day. It's as if I’ve stepped into someone else’s carefully constructed life, and I can’t find the exit.
The penthouse has started to feel less like a temporary safe house and more like a strange kind of home. The morning light pours through the floor-to-ceiling windows, turning the island and kitchen countertops into bright slabs where we eat breakfast and prepare other meals in near silence most days.
Alexey moves around the kitchen with quiet efficiency, sleeves rolled up, brown hair still slightly damp from his shower. He doesn’t ask if I’m hungry. He simply cooks something simple. Nourishing meals that settle my stomach when stress turns it into knots.
Scrambled eggs with fresh herbs one morning. Grilled chicken and rice with ginger when the nausea from anxiety hits hardest. He never makes a show of it, never waits for thanks. He just slides the plate across the island like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
