Page 74 of Bound in Possession

I lean back against my chair, watching the women I love most in the world filling this once-silent, intimidating house with genuine laughter, noise, and warmth. I press my palm against my cheek, trying and completely failing to stop the silly, giddy smile from tearing my face in half.

I'm happy. I really, truly am.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

MAKSIM

The heavy black SUV cuts through the mid-morning fog, tires humming loudly against the asphalt as my convoy speeds down the highway toward a secured Sokolov holding facility near the docks.

Dmitri sits in the passenger seat, tapping away at a secure tablet, reviewing the inventory logs for the shipment. We are heading to personally inspect the replacement package I arranged following Viktor's recent attack on our supply lines—a critical delivery designed to send a loud, unambiguous message to the rest of the syndicates that my operation hasn't missed a single beat. It’s business. Brutal, necessary business.

Yet my mind isn't on the docks. It isn't on Viktor, or the weapons, or the millions of euros wrapped up in this cargo.

My mind is trapped back at the estate. With Camilla.

I can still see the radiant, breathless joy on her face when she realized her sisters were sitting in our dining room. I can still hear the sound of her laughter echoing through the halls. It unsettled me—how astonishingly little it actually took to make her truly happy, and how easily I could have given her that simple joy long before now.

The realization settles deep in my chest: I want to do more for her. I want to be the reason she smiles like that every single day.

Arranging her sisters' surprise visit this morning had been anything but simple. Getting four guarded women out of their routines, coordinating secure transport, clearing high-level security, and lining up armed escorts without leaking their movements to Viktor’s watchers had taken dozens of urgent, late-night phone calls and direct personal intervention.

I was genuinely relieved she had slept so deeply into the morning—it gave me the cushion of time I desperately needed to pull the strings together and have them waiting in the dining room before she woke.

It was a logistical headache, a massive security headache, and a breach of my usual paranoid protocol.

But after the way she had looked at me in the piano room last night—after she gently brought a strange, long-forgotten peace back into my dark, chaotic world—bringing her sisters to her was the smallest thing I could possibly do to repay her.

"We’re here," Dmitri says, breaking through my thoughts as the heavy SUV grinds to a halt inside the dimly lit, cavernous warehouse near the docks.

I pull myself out of my head, adjusting the cuffs of my coat as I step out onto the cold concrete floor. I need to focus. The soft warmth of my morning back at the estate vanishes.

Armed men stand guard around the massive shipping container sitting in the center of the bay. We move directly inside, stepping past rows of sealed wooden crates stamped with our mark. At first glance, the shipment looks intact—a heavy, million-dollar statement that Viktor’s interference didn't break us.

"Check the manifest," I order, my voice flat, eager to get this done and over with so I can return home.

Home.

Dmitri steps forward, scanning the physical seals on the row of crates, his tablet chiming with automated serial matches. But as he reaches the back stack, his movements stop. He frowns, running a glove over the empty wooden pallet where two crates should be sitting.

"The main package is intact," Dmitri says quietly, looking up from his tablet. "But two cases are missing. The side routing for those two specific crates was altered."

My jaw tightens. "Altered how?"

"Using a forged Sokolov authorization code," Dmitri explains, his fingers flying across the screen as he tracks the digital breadcrumb trail. "Someone tried to delay and redirect two sealed cases off the main manifest. They wanted it to look like a failure in your own internal logistics—like a system glitch on your end."

A cold, deadly quiet settles over the warehouse. A breach from the outside is an act of war; an internal breach using my own private authorization codes is treason.

"However," Dmitri continues quickly, looking at me, "we anticipated this exact type of tampering after Viktor’s last move. We put passive tracking redundancies on every primary crate. The signal was diverted, but it wasn't erased. I’m pulling the direct coordinates now."

I take a single step toward him, the air in the room dropping several degrees as my patience evaporates. The peace I felt hours ago is completely gone, replaced by a dark, familiar rage curling in my gut.

"I don't need an explanation, Dmitri," I growl, my voice dangerously low. "I need a location. You have ten minutes at most."

Dmitri doesn't even look up from his screen. "I don't need ten minutes. Found it."

I offer a single, tight nod.

While Dmitri coordinates with our tactical team, I begin to pace the damp concrete of the docks, my heavy boots echoing off the iron beams. I force myself to breathe, desperately trying to hold on to the strange, lingering peace Camilla had set loose in me yesterday. But the violence in my blood is stubborn, clawing its way back to the surface with every passing second.