Page 18 of His Contract Queen

I force myself to meet his eyes again. His mouth curves upward, though not quite into a smile. It’s an expression that’s much darker.

“Next time, don’t lie to me,” he says, voice sinking into a low growl that practically vibrates through the narrow hallway.

I stay pressed against the wall as the door swings shut behind him, the latch clicking infinitely louder than any scream I’d heard moments ago. I stand there for a long moment afterward alone in the shadowed corridor, listening to the silence ringing in my ears.

What the hell was that?

They ruleover the city in secret with an iron-fist approach that makes even the most ruthless families bow their heads in fear. They don’t just control territory or rackets or smuggling routes. They control everything. They decide who rises, who falls, and who disappears without a trace.

They are the final court for those who operate in the shadows. A tribunal that answers to no law but its own. A place where mercy is weakness, where loyalty is currency, where betrayal is paid in blood and silence.

When disputes cannot be settled with bullets or bribes, when the usual rules of the underworld reach an impasse that threatens to ignite open war, the matter is brought before the Pact. Not voluntarily,nevervoluntarily. They summon you. A message arrives without sender, without explanation, a date, a time, a place that changes every time. You go because refusing means you have already signed your own death warrant.

The tribunal answers to no law but its own.

There is no judge, no jury, no appeal. There is only the council with faces hidden in shadow, identities known only to each other.

The Pact has no room for softness. A man who begs is a man who has already lost. A man who bargains is a man who will betray later. The only acceptable currency is absolute obedience, proven again and again until it becomes instinct.

How many make up their ruling faction? Some say seven. Some say nine. Some whisper that the number changes every month, that the council replaces its own members when they become too visible, too compromised.

The underworld competes for their favor. They are the unseen hand that turns the wheel while everyone else fights over the spokes.

And now I know with sickening certainty that I have somehow wound up in the crosshairs of one of them.

I don’t need tangible proof to know Aleksandr Volkov is telling the truth. I don’t need a document stamped with some secret seal, or a photograph of him sitting at the same shadowed table where the Iron Pact’s council supposedly convenes. The proof is standing right in front of me wearing a tailored black shirtwith the sleeves rolled to his forearms, watching me collapse internally without so much as a flicker of surprise.

It’s in the way he moves that tells me all I need to know. Not with a predator’s prowl I expected when I first arrived, always ready to strike. No. What I see now is something far more terrifying. Ease.

Aleksandr walks around this house, this city, this entire world with a carefree and almost lazy confidence that borders on arrogance. That slow half-smile that never quite reaches his eyes but somehow manages to mock everyone it’s turned toward. I used to think it was bravado, unearned swagger from a man who had simply killed enough people to stop caring who came for him next.

Now I know I was wrong.

It isn’t bravado at all. It is the absolute, unshakable certainty of a man who knows nothing and no one can touch him.

There is no bravado in the way he leans against a doorframe while his men report to him, or the way he pours vodka with his back turned to the room. That kind of calm isn’t learned. It isn’t practiced. It is earned through something far more permanent.

It is the calm of a man who sits at the table where the rules are written.

The Iron Pact doesn’t need to advertise to extend their reach. Their power is in the silence they create around themselves. Aleksandr doesn’t need to threaten anyone with their name. He simply carries it in the set of his shoulders and in the way his gaze never wavers, in the way people who should fear nothing still flinch when he smiles.

He wears that confidence not as a shield, but as a taunt, bragging to every man who wants him dead, every rival who has whispered his name in dark rooms, every enemy who has tried and failed to find the crack in his armor—Go ahead. Try. You will fail. And when you do, I will still be standing here exactly like this while you are spread dead at my feet.

He isn’t afraid of consequences because he is one of the men who decides what consequences are.

My stomach twists so violently, I press the heel of my hand against it, trying to hold myself together. I think of every time I’ve pushed him, every time I thought I was fighting a man I could outmaneuver, outlast, outsmart.

I wasn’t fighting a Bratva Pakhan at all. I was testing the patience of someone who answers to no one.

6

KATERINA

Days later, I’m hauled into Aleksandr’s office without warning.

There’s no explanation as to why they’re there, just the sudden appearance of two guards outside my door early in the morning, their expressions polite but unyielding. It doesn’t escape me that this is clearly not any kind of polite invitation but a request with only one outcome.

They flank me as we walk, one on each side of me. Their hands settle on my arms in a hold that, while not tight enough to bruise, is unmistakably firm. A subtle reminder that I am being escorted, not accompanied.