The ghost of my wife haunts every corner of this fucking compound.
It’s been three days since she took Sofiya and vanished. For every second of those three days, I’ve been sick with a disease that doesn’t have a name.
It’s fitting that I’m discovering the limits of power when it matters most. I can strangle a city with my bare hands, make men with guns tremble at the sound of my voice.
But I can’t conjure my daughter’s laughter or my wife’s skin beneath my fingers.
I canceled the hit on Grigor Petrov the moment I realized Rowan had found the plans. Not because I suddenly developed a conscience, but because her absence is a more effective torture than anything my enemies could devise. I would burn every bridge, betray every alliance, dismantle my entire empire if it meant feeling Sofiya’s weight in my arms again.
But here’s the ugly truth no one tells you about love: It makes you pathetic. It makes you weak. It makes you stare at a tracking necklace discarded on a nightstand and wonder how your happiness ever became so fucking fragile.
The security system announces a car at the front gate just as I’m pouring my third whiskey of the morning. Cameras show a sleek black Suburban with government plates, which means either the FBI has finally decided to end this charade, or—
“Agent Carver to see you, sir,” my security chief announces through the intercom.
—or something much worse is coming.
“Send him to my study.” My voice betrays nothing of the storm brewing beneath my skin. “And remind our men: no recordings, no surveillance. This meeting never happened.”
The study feels emptier than usual and somehow fuller at the same time. Rowan’s absence lingers, embedded in the walls like a bloodstain that won’t wash out. I don’t sit behind the desk. That position telegraphs defensiveness. Instead, I stand by the window, back to the door, whiskey in hand.
Let the fed come to me.
“Mr. Akopov.” Carver’s voice announces his arrival. “Thank you for seeing me without an appointment.”
I turn slowly, assessing. He’s alone, no backup visible. Interesting. His suit is higher quality than normal government issue. Someone must be angling for a promotion.
“Cut the pleasantries, Carver,” I say. “We both know this isn’t a social call.”
He smirks and takes a seat, uninvited, in the leather chair across from my desk. “You’re right. This is business. The kind that could end your entire operation—or save it.”
I remain standing, jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth. “I’m listening.”
“The Bureau has built a RICO case against the Akopov organization.” He opens his briefcase, removing a thick file and waving it around like the tease that it is. “Not the Solovyovs this time. You.”
“My wife’s cooperation bought us immunity,” I remind him.
“Her limited cooperation bought you time.” He spreads photographs across my desk. “Time we’ve used well.”
I don’t approach the desk. I’ll never give him the fucking satisfaction of seeing me react to whatever evidence he’s amassed.
“We have shipping manifests tying Akopov Industries to weapons trafficking across three continents. We have bank records linking your shell companies to money laundering operations in six countries. We have witness testimony—” He smiles here, the gleeful joy of a man getting one up on someone far more powerful than him. “—from one Mr. Nikolai Barkov, who’s been quite forthcoming since we offered him a deal.”
Barkov. The snake I should have decapitated instead of merely defanging. Mercy never gets rewarded in this fucking world, does it?
“Barkov’s credibility is nonexistent,” I spit. “He has a personal vendetta against me. And that’s in addition to being a rat-faced fuck.”
“Perhaps.” Carver shrugs. “But his testimony, combined with our other evidence, is enough for an indictment. Judges don’t look down kindly on men like you, Vince. My prosecutors are licking their fucking chops at the thought of dragging you into a courtroom. And they wrote the book just so they could throw it at your smug fucking face. We’re talking thirty years minimum. Seizure of all assets—including those trust funds you so carefully, so thoughtfully, so lovingly established for your wife and daughter.”
My blood turns to ice. Those trusts were buried under layers of legal protection, invisible even to the most determined investigation. Unless…
“I see I have your attention now.” Carver’s smile widens. “Yes, we know about those, too. You’ve been very thorough in protecting your family’s future. Pity it won’t matter when you’re behind bars.”
Every instinct in my body screams for violence. The whiskey glass in my hand would make an effective weapon—shattered against his temple, driven into his jugular, boom, lights out. I could end this threat in seconds.
But that would only make a bad thing worse.
“What do you want?” I ask.
He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “We want you to work with us.”
“You want me to be a rat.” Even saying that aloud makes me want to vomit.
“A confidential informant, yes. Against not only the Solovyovs, but your father’s remaining operations.” He pauses, watching me carefully. “And Grigor Petrov’s entire network.”
The enormity of what he’s asking crashes through me. He wants me to betray not just my world, but my wife’s father. The grandfather of my child. The man who shares blood with the woman I worship.
I just spared Grigor, and now, I’ve got a loaded gun to my head demanding that I damn him in a far worse way than I ever planned.
“You’re asking me to commit suicide,” I snarl. “If the Bratva discovers I’m wearing a wire—”
“Oh, I’ve seen those crime scene photos. Very ugly. I suggest you don’t get caught.” Carver stands, crossing to me. “This is the deal, Akopov. The only deal you will ever get. You work with us while we progressively dismantle the criminal elements. In return, we allow your legitimate businesses to continue. If you refuse…” He shrugs. “… Well, then that would mean thirty-plus years in federal prison while your daughter grows up calling another man ‘Daddy.’”
The glass shatters in my grasp. Whiskey and blood mingle as they drip onto the hardwood floor. I don’t feel the pain. I don’t feel anything except the overwhelming urge to tear this man apart with my bare hands.
“There’s one more thing you should see.” Carver returns to his briefcase and extracts another envelope. “These were taken last night.”
He hands me photographs. My wife. My Rowan. Meeting with Grigor Petrov at a beach house I don’t recognize. They’re sitting close, talking intimately. In one image, Rowan is holding Sofiya while Grigor looks on, his expression unbearably tender.
“We’ve had Petrov under surveillance for months,” Carver explains. “Your wife’s actions unintentionally exposed her location to our team.”
Every word he’s saying is chosen precisely. And I’m no fool—I understand the implications. If I accept Carver’s offer, I betray Grigor—which means betraying Rowan. If she ever discovers I’ve used her father to save myself…
But if I refuse, I lose everything anyway. My freedom. My empire. Any chance of watching my daughter grow up without cell bars between us.
“I need time,” I croak hoarsely.
“Twenty-four hours,” Carver agrees as he carefully pries the photos back out of my hands. They disappear back into his briefcase, though his smile stays plastered in place. “Then I need an answer. Or we move forward with the indictment.”
He pauses at the door. “For what it’s worth, Akopov, I do actually believe you’re different from the others. You’ve been working to legitimize your operations. This arrangement could accelerate that transition.”
“Get out,” I whisper, blood still dripping from my clenched fist.
He shrugs one last time. “As you wish.”
When the door closes behind him, I breathe until his footsteps fade away. Only then do I allow myself ten seconds of pure, unfiltered rage.
The remaining whiskey decanter crashes against the wall.
A chair splinters under my boot.
My fist drives through drywall with a satisfying crunch.
Then, just as quickly, the storm passes.
I need to find Rowan. I have to tell her about Carver’s ultimatum before she hears it from someone else. Then I have to see my daughter’s face one more time before I make a decision that could destroy us all.
My phone sits heavy in my hand as I dial the number for my most discreet pilot.
“Prepare the jet,” I order. “Newport, Rhode Island.”
I hang up the phone and stare at the blood dripping from my mangled knuckles. It’s fitting that I’m bleeding all over this fucking house. This place has always fed on pain—first my father’s, then mine. Will Sofiya inherit that birthright?
Twenty-four hours. That’s all Carver’s giving me before he either gets me on my knees as his personal rat or buries me under a RICO case so thick that my daughter will be graduating college before I taste freedom again.
“Arkady,” I call out, knowing he’s never far. He materializes in the doorway. “Have the car brought around.”
“Vin, you’re bleeding.” His eyes flick to my hand, to the shattered glass, to the hole in the wall. “What happened with Carver?”
“What happened is that I’m fucked no matter what I do,” I spit, wrapping a handkerchief around my bleeding hand. “The feds have a RICO case ready to drop on my head. They want me to wear a wire against Grigor and my father.”
Arkady’s face pales. “Jesus Christ—”
“Exactly. So now, I get to choose between prison or a bullet to the back of the skull when the Bratva discovers I’m a fucking snitch.”
“What are you going to do?”
I laugh miserably. “Find my wife. Tell her that the man who just spared her father’s life is now being blackmailed into destroying him. See if she’ll let me hold my daughter one more time before everything goes to shit.”
“And if she doesn’t want to see you?”
I close my eyes, swallowing the bile that rises in my throat. “Then I die knowing I tried.”
I grab my coat, ignoring the blood soaking through the makeshift bandage. Pain is good. Pain keeps me focused at a time when every other thought is a waking nightmare.
“You need a hospital for that hand,” Arkady says.
“I need my fucking family back,” I snap. “Everything else is irrelevant.”
I storm down the hallway, my mind racing through contingency plans. Maybe I could get them all out of the country. Rowan, Sofiya—even fucking Grigor, if that’s what it takes. We could disappear before Carver’s twenty-four-hour deadline expires. Start over somewhere without extradition.
But I know better. There is no outrunning this. No clever escape. Just impossible choices, each stacked one inside the other like matryoshka dolls.
As I reach the front door, I pause for a moment. What will I say to her when I find her? How do I explain that the FBI used her against me? That her act of protection—taking Sofiya to Rhode Island—has only tightened the noose around all our necks?
I throw open the door, already rehearsing the speech I’ll never get right—
And there she is.
Rowan stands on the threshold, my daughter clutched to her chest. Her green eyes go wide with shock at finding me here, at finding me like this—blood-drenched, wild-eyed, halfway out the door.
We freeze, caught in this surreal standoff. I drink in the sight of them. I’m desperate after days of emptiness. I could swear Sofiya’s dark curls have grown longer in just these few days. Rowan looks thinner, shadows bruising the skin beneath her eyes. She’s wearing a simple sweater and jeans, nowhere near warm enough for the autumn chill.
“Papa!” Sofiya squeals, reaching for me with her tiny hands, oblivious to the fucking nuclear wasteland between her parents.
“You’re bleeding.” Rowan’s voice is flat, emotionless.
I don’t move toward them, though every molecule in my body screams to close the distance. To grab them both and never let go.
“You came back,” I reply.
“As you were leaving, apparently.”
“I was coming to find you.”
Her gaze hardens. “How did you know where I was?”
I cringe. If I tell her about Carver’s photos, I have to tell her everything. The RICO case. The ultimatum. The impossible choice I’m facing.
But if I lie, if I say I tracked her through other means, I’m just proving I’m still the secretive, manipulative bastard she fled from in the first place.
Sofiya whimpers, sensing the tension. She stretches her arms toward me more insistently, her little face scrunching in frustration when neither of us moves to bridge the gap.
“We need to talk,” Rowan says, moving our daughter higher on her hip. “Something’s happened—”
“Yes,” I cut her off. “Something has.”
She studies my face, and I can’t tell what she sees there. Desperation? Defeat? The pathetic shell of a man who used to rule this city with an iron fist, now brought to his knees by the thought of losing her?
“You first,” she says.
And there we stand, my wife holding my child on the threshold of our home—so close I could touch them with one step forward, yet separated by a chasm of secrets and betrayals that seems impossible to cross.
“The FBI has a RICO case against me,” I say, voice ragged. “I’ve got twenty-four hours to decide what to do next.”
