"Is there a guard rotation?" I ask Aris, my voice sounding like a rusted gate.
Aris jumps, his gaze snapping to me. "Yeah. Four men. Private security, not Petrov soldiers. They think they’re guarding a wealthy heir who’s home-schooled. The house is under a shell company called 'Verona Holdings.' That’s all I could find before Boris’s people started locking down the servers."
"You did well, Aris," Irina says, her voice shaking as she takes the plastic bag from his hand. "Now get out of New York. Go to Boston. Or Chicago. If my father finds out you gave me this, he won't use a court to settle it."
"I’m already gone," Aris says. He looks at me one last time, a pathetic note of plea in his eyes. "Mikhail... don't let him find me."
"Lev," I bark, not looking back. "Give him fifty grand from the safe. And make sure he gets to the train station."
"Copy that, Boss," Lev says from the shadows.
Aris doesn't wait. He turns and scurries away into the gray mist, his figure disappearing behind the rusted cranes within seconds.
I turn Irina toward me, my hands coming up to grip her shoulders. She’s staring at the plastic bag in her hand, her fingers trembling so hard she nearly drops it.
"Irina," I say, my voice softer than I ever use with anyone else.
"He was right there, Mikhail," she sobs, her forehead coming down to rest against my chest. "He was right there the whole time. My father... he looked me in the eye and told me he had no idea where they took him. He told me the records were burned. He watched me cry for weeks and he didn't say a word."
"He’s going to bleed for it, Irina," I growl, my arms wrapping around her waist, pulling her tight against my chest. The scent of her—roses and wet silk—is the only clean thing on this pier. "I promise you."
"We have to go to Jersey," she says, her face burying in my shirt. "We have to go right now."
"No," I say, my grip tightening, keeping her anchored. "We go when we have to be sure of the exact address. If we show up at a gated estate with our guns out without knowing which door to kick down, Boris’s security will have the boy out the back door before we hit the driveway. We do this right. We do it once."
She lets out a shaky, broken breath, her fingers clutching the back of my suit jacket. "Fine. You’re right. We do it your way."
"Let’s go home," I say.
As I start driving I look at Irina is sitting in the passenger seat. Her hair is still damp from the rain, her face pale and quiet, but the frantic panic from the pier has settled into a cold, hard resolve.
"I just spoke to Konstantin. He is narrowing down the addresses," I say. "There seem to be three private properties in Alpine registered under 'Verona Holdings.' One of them has an active trust account tied to a local private tutor. We’ll have the exact house number by tomorrow morning."
"And my father? He expects the weapon warehouse locations by tomorrow night."
"We’re going to give them to him," I say.
She looks up, her blue eyes wide and startled. "Mikhail, you can't. If he gets those weapons?—"
"We’re not giving him our weapons,dorogaya," I say, a small, cold smile touching my mouth. "We’re giving him a ghost. There’s an old transit warehouse in Newark that we abandoned two years ago. It’s empty, but the security grid is still connected to our main system. We’ll have Konstantin leak the active codes to Boris's tech guy tonight. We'll make it look like you stole them from my private desk."
"He’ll send his enforcers to clear it out."
"Exactly," I say, placing my hand on her thigh. "The second his trucks pull into the lot, Konstantin’s tactical team will lock down the perimeter. We won't just protect our inventory; we’ll take out forty of Boris’s best soldiers in one sweep. It will leave him blind and deaf in the city while we’re in Jersey taking your son back."
She looks at me, her gaze lingering on my face for a long beat. There’s a softness in her eyes that I haven't seen before, a quiet, deep-seated warmth that makes my chest tighten.
"You're good at this," she says quietly.
"I told you I’ll be here for you. But the plan only works if Boris believes the leak. If he thinks you're actually betraying me because you're terrified."
"He will believe me," she says, her voice turning hard. "He’s spent years believing I’m weak because of Oleg. He won't suspect a thing."
She leans into me.
Boris thinks he’s the one holding the leash. He thinks he can use her deepest wound to bring me to my knees. But as I look at my wife, her blue eyes dark with a quiet, lethal resolve, I realize that he’s just made the biggest mistake of his life.
He didn't just start a war with us.
