Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 63165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 316(@200wpm)___ 253(@250wpm)___ 211(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 316(@200wpm)___ 253(@250wpm)___ 211(@300wpm)
“You want to run,” I say. “Who’s waiting on the other end?”
“No one.”
“Who told you to buy a suitcase?”
“No one.”
“Why’s your color gone?”
“I’m tired,” she says. “You’re a lot of work.”
“Why are you scared?”
“I’m not.”
I stop a step short of crowding her.
“You want to know what I don’t tolerate?” I ask quietly. “Betrayal. You can hate me, yell at me, throw a couch into my office, make my men miserable. Apply to twenty jobs and move across town if that keeps you breathing. But if you ever work against me, if you think you can trade what you know for safety, you’ll be wrong. It won’t save you and it won’t save whoever thinks they’re helping you.”
“So this is the part where you threaten me,” she says.
“No,” I say. “This is the part where I spell out the rules so you don’t mistake patience for weakness. You don’t talk to the Feds. You don’t talk to a rival. You don’t leave the building without my men. You don’t do anything that looks like an exit without telling me first. You break any of that, I respond like the man I am.”
“The mobster,” she says flatly.
“The pakhan,” I correct. “I’m not gentle about a line that simple. You step over it, I cut you off at the knees.”
“I have done everything you want,” she snaps. “I’ve accepted my role as a prisoner of your stupid rules. I’ve stopped arguing, I’ve stopped being a menace to your men. You have no reason to treat me like this.”
“You’ve gone quiet,” I say. “That’s worse.”
“Nothing I say matters,” she fires back. “You made the rules and pretended I agreed. If I scream, your guard blinks. If I run, your men chase. If I breathe wrong, I’m told to be grateful I’m alive because of you.”
“You are alive,” I say.
“I am,” she says. “And I want to choose what I do with being alive.”
“Choose it inside the lines.”
She laughs once. “Inside the lines you drew.”
“Tell me if you’re planning to run,” I say.
“I’m not,” she says. Smooth. Practiced. Useless.
“Then return the suitcase.”
“No.”
“You won’t get away.”
“You think you can control everything,” she says.
“I protect what’s mine,” I say, holding her gaze. “That includes you.”
“There you go, acting like you own me again,” she spits.
“If that’s how you look at it,” I say quietly. “I won’t debate it.”
We stare each other down. Fear and fury look the same until you learn to listen to breathing patterns. Hers is shallow. She’s scared. I know I did that. I should care. I don’t. Fear makes people honest.
“My men will keep following you,” I say, lifting my phone. “Every purchase you make, every route you have them drive, every person you talk to, I will know about it. If that makes you angry, good. If it keeps you safe, better.”
“Safe from what?” she asks bitterly. “For all I know, you took that picture yourself to trap me. I’m tired of it, Lev.”
“That’s fine with me.” I shrug. “It makes no difference what you think because I’m running this show. I know what’s best and that’s why I call the shots.”
She shakes her head like she’s trying to throw the moment off. “Are we done?”
“For now,” I say. “Go back to work.”
She turns.
“Mari,” I add.
She stops.
“If there’s something you need to tell me, say it now,” I say. “It’ll go easier if you do.”
“There’s nothing,” she says, and walks out.
Back in my office, I call my team leads. Yuri gets exterior routes. Pavel loses her detail for a week, he’s too easy to read. Thom takes building access. Elyan keeps cameras. Marcus runs everything else and sends summaries at ten. They’re to stay off her nerves unless they see exit behavior. Then they have my permission to intervene at the highest level of force.
I map worst-case timelines. Thirty minutes to pack, ten to reach a car if she times an elevator and calls a ride early, twenty to vanish into a tunnel with traffic as a shield. I close each gap in my head and then in the system. I have Yuri install lock codes that change twice a day. He puts a hold on her SIM so it pings me if it leaves Manhattan.
If she’s working with the Feds, she has a handler who’ll want proof and times and files. If she’s gathering evidence, she’ll probably be clumsy about it because she doesn’t know what she’s doing.
I open the drawer and look at the card again. Agent Graham Cole. Manhattan Field. Dead eagle. Wrong hyphens. No microline. We should’ve caught the fake sooner. Someone wanted her rattled and it worked. Someone wants me rattled, and that worked, too.
I get home at eight. She’s there before me, curled in the corner of the couch she brought over, laptop open, earbuds in. She looks up when the door clicks and goes back to the screen, ignoring me again.