Nikolai
My phone pinged the second I stepped into the elevator.
It wasn’t an alert most people would notice. Just a soft vibration in my coat pocket, followed by a barely perceptible flash across the lock screen. But it wasn’t from my security system.
It was from Ivan.
I swiped to open the encrypted message, eyes scanning the feed as the elevator rose in smooth silence toward the penthouse.
Data Event: External Communication Triggered. User: Sloane Kingsley
Device: Primary Terminal—Office
Time: 17:37
Program Accessed: Encrypted Comms (Custom build)
Connection: Ghost—VPN route masked through Prague, rerouted to Toronto node
Transcript attached (partial):
I opened the file, and there it was.
Sloane: I need out. Full ghost. One shot. No trace. Disappear for six months minimum.
I stared at the screen, jaw tight, pulse thrumming steady behind my temples as I read the rest of the conversation. The cursor blinked. Her words echoed in my mind like they were whispered straight into my ear.
Sloane: I was born sure. He thinks he owns me. Let’s show him what I do to kings.
She thought this was like a game of chess, but she hadn’t realized the queen she was trying to protect was already in my pocket, and I’d been playing with knives, not pawns.
The elevator doors opened, and I stepped into the silence of the penthouse. Her scent hit me first—lavender, clean skin, something faintly floral clinging to the air. It wrapped around the space like she already belonged here. I could hear her moving in the other room. Light footsteps. Soft shuffling.
I crossed the living room, footsteps soundless over polished stone, tension simmering low in my gut. My hands balled into fists, jaw set hard. All I could see was the way she had curled up in my lap yesterday morning, moaning, begging, soaking my thigh like the sweetest fucking thing I’d ever touched.
And now she wanted to run?
No.
Not without consequences.
My belt was still looped through my trousers. Thick, dark leather. I could already imagine what she’d look like draped over the bed, face buried in the sheets, her bare ass red and trembling, every inch of her aching from the lesson she’d asked for the second she typed that message.
She needed to learn what it meant to belong to me.
She wanted to act like she wasn’t mine? Then maybe I needed to remind her with something she’d feel every time she sat for the next few days. Maybe I needed to make her say thank you for every single strike until her throat was raw and the blankets beneath her were soaked with her tears.
My phone rang before I could reach for my belt. A call, loud and intrusive. I glanced at the screen and swore under my breath.
Charles Kingsley.
I answered on the third ring, stepping into my office and shutting the door behind me.
“Nikolai.”
“Mayor.” My voice was smooth, but the dangerous edge was still there.
I didn’t have patience for this right now. His voice was tight, measured, but I could hear the strain under the polish. Something had shaken him.
“I’m hearing things.”
“People talk, Kingsley.”
“I’m hearing my daughter’s name,” he snapped, sharper this time. “From people I shouldn’t be hearing it from.”
That got my full attention.
“She’s been here,” I said flatly. “Fed. Safe. Under my watch. Anything she did before I took her in is your problem, not mine.”
He exhaled, hard. I could hear the tension unraveling through the line.
“One of my senior donors—Dalton—lost a small fortune betting on the Moretti fight. He swears the odds shifted right before the match, and he’s not the only one. Word is someone manipulated the perception. Someone with access. Someone tied to you.”
Of course. Gregory Dalton: slimy, smug bastard with more secrets than tax returns. The kind of man who drank too much at country clubs and tried to buy the city behind closed doors. And he just happened to be wrapped around the campaign of Jack Stillwell.
Stillwell. The one man that Kingsley actually feared.
“You think your daughter’s little hustle just handed Stillwell ammunition, don’t you?” I said.
“I don’t think it,” he snapped. “I know it. He’s already sniffing around. Already calling me soft. Saying I let criminals run my home. My own daughter, fixing underground fights for Russian money. Do you know what that does to a re-election campaign?”
I gritted my teeth.
“Don’t play games with me, Nikolai,” Kingsley growled. “You said you’d handle her.”
“I am handling her.”
“She’s my daughter, not your soldier. If this gets out, it’s not just her that burns, it’s both of us.”
There was a long pause. And then, quieter:
“I love her, but she’s reckless. Self-destructive. You said she needed someone who could keep her in line. So do it.”
I stared down at the desk, blood humming, anger building slow and steady beneath my ribs. I nodded once, already ending the call in my head.
“I’ll take care of it.”
“You’d better,” Kingsley said. “Because if this goes any further, I won’t be the only one who falls.”
The line went dead. I set the phone down slowly.
And took a deep breath.
Things had just gotten a whole lot more complicated.
Not because Sloane was going to try to run. I’d expected that. Hell, I would’ve been disappointed if she hadn’t. She was intelligent, cunning, hungry for control. She was never going to go quietly and just slip into the role of wife like it was a silk-lined cradle. She fought because she needed to. That was who she was.
But now her name was in mouths it didn’t belong in.
That was the problem.
When I took her, it had been personal. When I claimed her, it had been calculated. But now? Now it was public. Now men with too much money and too little spine were whispering her name behind closed doors.
That made this war.
The second her name left their mouths, it had stopped being just hers. It had become mine. Sloane Kingsley was no longer a girl with a smart mouth and a bad habit of getting into trouble. She was the future wife of a Morozov, and the city needed to understand what that meant.
It meant she was protected. It meant she was off limits. It meant you didn’t touch her. You didn’t speak her name unless it was with admiration or regret.
I paced slowly across my office, the screens dim behind me, her message to Ghost still burned into the back of my mind.
He thinks he owns me.
No, Sloane.
I knew I did.
And that was exactly why I was going to protect her from herself. From the wolves in this city who smelled weakness and blood and legacy. From her father’s rivals. From every man who saw her fire and thought they could bottle it because they didn’t know what she was. They didn’t know her like I did.
If they came for her—if they dared to make her collateral in some backroom campaign—then they weren’t just insulting her. They were insulting me and threatening what I’d already made mine.
They didn’t realize that I would burn the entire city to the ground before I let anyone use her against me. If they wanted a reminder of who they were playing with, fine. I’d give them one. The Morozovs hadn’t survived Moscow just to be pushed around in Boston.
We’d lost everything once. My parents had died in a car bombing that ripped apart half a street and all of our lives. My mother’s body had been found in pieces. My father’s had been barely recognizable. We were exiled by blood. Marked. Hunted. But we rebuilt. We bled. We earned our place, brick by brick, brother by brother.
I would not lose again. Not this city. Not this power. And sure as hell not her. So let her try to run. Let her think she had control. The truth was, when she walked down that aisle wrapped in white silk as she took my name, the whole damn city was going to see her and know she wasn’t a pawn. She wasn’t a scandal. She was a Morozov.
And you didn’t fucking touch a Morozov’s wife.
