Chapter One
Mikhail Dragunov
London felt like a graveyard, except it had better landscaping.
Tourists didn’t notice it, of course. They saw the old architecture, the fog drifting along the Thames, the polished facades of money and power, but underneath all that shine, the bones were the same as any other empire.
Brittle, buried, and bought at the cost of blood and the freedom of others.
The Shard rose above it all like a dagger aimed at the sky. A fitting headquarters for ARCHEON, an organization that built kingdoms out of shadows and kept score in corpses and contracts.
My car slowed to a stop at the private entrance. Two ARCHEON security officers approached immediately, each one cut from the same cloth: immaculate suits, empty expressions, movements synchronized like they’d been programmed instead of trained.
“Mr. Dragunov,” one said. “You’ll follow us.”
No welcome. No please.
Like they just expected me to do as they commanded.
I swallowed my annoyance, at least for the time being.
With a quiet huff, I stepped out into the cool morning wind, adjusting my coat. It was drearier here than in Moscow somehow. Colder too, though not in temperature. This city had a way of leaching warmth from a man, leaving only calculation behind.
The sliding doors opened with a soft whisper as I entered the tower. Inside, the lobby was all marble and glass, high ceilings and art pieces designed to distract rather than inspire. Every reflective surface made the space feel endless and inescapable.
An architectural prison.
Fitting, actually.
The elevator ride felt longer than it was. A straight ascent into the sky, the city shrinking beneath us. My escorts flanked me on either side, silent and stiff. Their eyes never left the doors, but I could feel their unease, could see it in every bit of their body language. They recognized danger, even if they didn’t say it out loud.
Good. They should be wary.
Men like me didn’t climb towers to bow to anyone.
I had come to get some answers, and I wasn’t going to leave until I got them.
The elevator chimed softly as we reached the upper floors. The doors slid open onto a private foyer, a bit different from the one downstairs. This one was designed to intimidate. Black stone tiles. Low lighting. The scent of chilled air and gun oil.
Death smelled like this.
Two more ARCHEON agents waited near a pair of heavy doors with enough security hardware to impress even me. I observed silently as my escorts presented their credentials for the first door: badge swipe, voice authentication, retinal scan.
The second door required another set of credentials.
The third required a dual biometric confirmation, handprints pressed into two different scanners simultaneously. Red lights washed over us, then turned green.
As the final lock disengaged with a heavy thunk, my hand twitched toward my jacket where my gun was hidden out of habit and instinct. I suppressed it.
I wasn’t here to kill anyone. At least, not yet.
The corridor beyond was lined with glass, revealing the city in its morning haze. Traffic shimmered in the distance. The Thames glistened like a sword cutting through stone. Morning sunlight cast fractured reflections across every surface.
“Straight ahead,” one agent said.
I didn’t bother acknowledging him. I had already guessed the way. People in power always placed themselves at the highest vantage point. It was a universal weakness, mistaking height for safety.
At the end of the hall sat a pair of double doors—sleek, matte, the kind of black that swallowed the light. The agent pressed his palm to the scanner, then stepped back.
“She’s expecting you.”
She.
Not he.
Interesting…
I stepped inside.
The office was a cathedral of glass and steel. Two entire walls looked out over London, making the rest of the world feel small. The décor was minimal: a glossy black desk, a rack of digital displays showing lines of encrypted data, and a single abstract painting in the corner with violent strokes of crimson knifing through a field of white.
The room was silent except for the soft hum of the climate control system. A high-backed chair faced the windows, occupied by a slender silhouette. As I entered, the chair rotated slowly.
And then, there she was, ARCHEON’s director.
My eyes searched hers, and neither of us backed down from the other.
Where most sought to project menace, she exuded power. Her dark hair was pulled back into a severe twist. She wore a tailored charcoal suit that suggested a blade sheathed in silk. Her eyes were a cold, stormy gray that made even the glass behind her seem too soft.
She smiled. A small, elegant curve of her lips, polite yet dangerous.
“Mr. Mikhail Dragunov,” she said, her British accent crisp and controlled. “We appreciate your promptness. Do sit.”
I didn’t sit.
She cleared her throat expectantly and still, I stood, looking down at her, holding the disparity of power between us by sheer positioning alone.
“How can I help you today, Mr. Dragunov?”
I inhaled slowly, letting London’s frigid cold seep into me. “You know why I’m here.”
My words turned the air between us to ice.
The director leaned back in her chair, studying me like a puzzle she intended to dismantle piece by piece.
“You’ve come a long way,” she murmured.
I kept my tone flat. “Someone interfered with my operation and tried to kill two people who are very important to me. I want to know whether it was your people or Revenant.”
She studied me a long moment, fingers tapping once against the glass table. “If ARCHEON wished you dead, Mikhail Dragunov, you would not be standing in my office right now.”
“Are you confirming that it was Revenant then?” I pressed, ignoring her inflection.
She rose from her chair and moved to the window, her silhouette framed by the city sprawling far below.
“Tell me, Mr. Dragunov,” she said without turning. “Exactly how far are you prepared to go to get your answer?”
My answer was immediate.
“As far as I must.”
[divider]Chapter Two
Present day
Viktor Dragunov
Fuck.
What I wouldn’t give for a smoke right now.
The cell smelled like fresh bleach, like somebody scrubbed it clean after a mess and forgot the part where a man still had to breathe in here. There were four concrete walls, a bed bolted to the floor with four steel anchors, a stainless toilet that reflected my face back in a funhouse bend, and a camera bubble tucked up in the corner like a smug little eye.
I sat on the edge of the bed and mapped the room for the fifth time, then the sixth, inventorying everything because that’s how you live when you’re me. When I was a kid, I used to lie in bed and count the screws in the radiator, then the cracks in the plaster, then the distance between the door and my father’s voice. You grow up like that, and your brain learns to measure escape even before the trap springs.
Left wall: hairline fracture at shoulder height, as if someone swung against it and lost the fight. Good to know.
Floor: slightly sloped toward the drain under the toilet—subtle, but I could feel it in my ankles when I stood and closed my eyes.
Door: matte black, solid core, no visible hinges on my side. Slot built into waist height for food trays. Magnetic lock.
The camera’s lens had a scratch across it, almost like someone before me had tried to blind it and failed. If I climbed up on the bed and leaned just so, I could almost get above its field of view. It wasn’t perfect. Not by a long shot. But it would be enough for a sleight of hand or two.
I counted my pockets again out of habit even though they’d stripped me bare and put me in a gray t-shirt and pants that smelled like cheap detergent. No belt, no laces, no watch. They left me a small plastic water cup because they wanted me hydrated enough to answer questions and awake enough to suffer.
They were thoughtful that way. Good planners.
Thanks, Revenant.
Last clear snapshot before this box? Concrete hallway, Revenant escort on our heels, Katya at my side muttering that she didn’t like the feel of the setup. We’d left Kara and the Markovs back in that ridiculous penthouse suite with strict orders to stay put, and I’d actually let myself believe—for a second—that meant they’d be safe while we handled the politics. Then the flashbang went off, someone yelled, and my world turned into white noise and needles. When I woke up, Katya was gone and I was here.
Without any of them.
Which, honestly, was pretty shitty of them.
I heard some footsteps not far down the hall, but they weren’t coming my way yet. From my observations, the building had a rhythm that was starting to make sense: the hum of air conditioning, the soft hiss of negative air pressure outside the sealed door, the timely patrols. I’d figured out that there were two guards to a hallway, and that they rotated at thirty-minute intervals. The last swap clicked six minutes ago, which meant the commander had, if my math was right, nine to twelve minutes before he decided to grace me with his pretty face.
Couldn’t wait…
I rolled my neck slowly, keeping my breathing even. The urge to imagine his nose under my fist or my boot connecting with his dick was becoming more and more tempting.
Focus.
The bolt heads on the bed anchors were tamper-proof Torx screw heads. No problem, if you had a screwdriver designed for them. I didn’t. But the panel under the bed’s steel frame—the maintenance access—had softer screws. It even looked like they were scratched up a little bit. Maybe someone before me tried to work at them with a coin. I didn’t have a coin, but I did have teeth and time and the kind of patience that only comes when you know pain is inevitable.
The cup was plastic. The rim, though, was thin enough to break and wedge into a screw head if I worked my weight right. File it down against concrete, narrow it, use it like a screwdriver. Maybe. I needed to watch for the camera though.
The fluorescent light overhead flickered when the HVAC kicked on. The casing was sealed with a quarter-turn cap. If I could get it off, the aluminum shield inside might give me a shard capable of scratching the camera lens, but they’d notice that for sure. And the second I messed with the lens, I’d have fifteen seconds before they sent someone to knock my teeth out for my trouble.
I stood up and made the rounds, counting the steps around the perimeter of my cell and then sat down again. Closed my eyes. Breathed. Pictured the route here: the hand on my shoulder, rough but not exactly cruel, the zip tie around my wrists biting deep enough to numb my fingers, the way the corridor smelled like chilled water and detergent.
And then, I thought of Katya.
I should have kept my mind off her. I didn’t. All I could picture was her delicious curves, the way she blushed every time I looked at her, and the way she moaned my name when I slid into her.
Thinking about her made my dick hard.
Now was not the time for that.
I pictured cold showers. Siberian winter. The smell inside a fish market. The texture of tapioca. Mikhail lecturing about logistics and saying my name with that disappointed big brother tone he’d perfected by twelve. Andrei rolling his eyes and saying some sarcastic comment that would inevitably make Mikhail and me both laugh.
The camera blinked red, patient.
All right. Enough romance. Back to work.
I took the plastic cup, snapped the rim with my teeth, and spat out a sliver. I ran it along the concrete under the bed, shaving it down to a narrow wedge. The noise wasn’t much, a soft whisper the air should swallow if done correctly. I timed it with the patrol steps—shave when they moved, still when they paused on their turn. Little by little, a usable edge emerged.
It took five minutes. Maybe six.
I crouched at the maintenance panel on the wall under the camera and counted the screw heads. Four. I slid the plastic in and turned it slowly. The screw was stubborn the way stupid men are, resisting in all the wrong ways. I leaned my weight just so, felt the give, turned it again. Once it moved, the rest grew easier. Once I worked the other three free, the panel dropped with a soft kiss onto my thigh.
Inside: nothing that would save a life, but enough to make a man like me happy. There was a wiring harness, a thin aluminum cover plate, two L-brackets, and the sweetest thing I’d seen all morning—a coil spring pressed into a clip to absorb frame vibration. I worked the spring free with my fingers.
I heard footsteps again. Closer this time. Not the patrol. A different cadence. Someone wearing heels. The commander wouldn’t wear heels. He’d wear shoes that didn’t make a sound.
I slid the panel back into place, left one screw in to hold it, let the other three lie on the concrete under the bed, buried in shadow. I tucked the spring into the waistband of my pants.
Keys. A card swipe. The buzz of the magnetic lock releasing. The door opened about twelve inches. A woman in a slate suit peered in. She wore her hair in a severe twist and her eyes glared at me in a look that said she liked to catalogue pain.
“Mr. Dragunov,” she said.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone to visit me.” I kept my tone easy, the one that made bouncers relax and gamblers confess.
“Well, I’m here now.” She took in the room with a glance. “The commander will see you shortly.”
“Define shortly.”
From the look on her face, she was considering whether truth would cost her anything. “Eight minutes.”
He was predictable. I could have set my watch by him.
“Wonderful,” I said. “Finally. I’ve been dying for the chance to discuss his customer service policies.”
“We don’t discuss policies with detainees.”
“You should start. Morale can’t be stellar in an organization that kidnaps its own partners.”
Her mouth didn’t twitch. That told me more than if she had smiled. Revenant didn’t consider us partners. We were assets. Assets break and then you can replace them.
“Kneel at the back wall when the guard arrives,” she said, as if talking about weather. “Hands on your head. Mouth closed. It will make the next hour go faster.”
“I prefer to make my hours go slower.”
“I’ve read your file.”
“You must get a long lunch break.”
That made her pause just long enough to satisfy me. She closed the door without slamming it. The lock hummed and thumped home.
Seven minutes.
I went back to the bed, slid the panel free again, and took the second L-bracket. It wasn’t much, but it had a hard edge. The spring I wound tight and slipped into my palm. I left the panel cover leaning against the wall.
I stood under the light, eyes up, shoulders easy, just like a man waiting his turn at the dentist. My heart beat like it had something to prove, but my breathing stayed slow and even. I pictured Katya’s face, the spark in her eyes that smug men would confuse with surrender. She would be somewhere in this building. It had been too much to hope for to keep us together. They weren’t a romantic lot, Revenant, but I’d bet my life that she’d still be alive. They liked leverage more than corpses.
Or so I hoped.
I closed my eyes and took a breath.
Don’t think about Katya. Don’t think about her mouth, or the way she wraps those pretty lips around your cock. Don’t think about how that hot little pussy milks your cock every time you’re inside her.
Cold showers, Viktor. Siberia. Shards of ice in an empty glass. Your gym teacher back from high school taking a shower.
Footsteps again. Three sets. Two heavy, one that could possibly float. A key. A swipe. The lock buzzed. The door opened wider this time, the width of a man’s shoulders. The first guard that entered was the kind that lifted his own body weight at the gym for kicks. The second had the build of a runner. The third didn’t come inside. He stayed at the threshold.
The lifter barked, “Kneel.”
“Sure,” I said, perfectly agreeable.
He came in close. His pistol hung at his thigh, safety on because they get lazy with safeties when they think the room is theirs. The runner hung back a step, watching my hands instead of my eyes. Good training. The third man said nothing.
The lifter reached for my shoulder. I angled my neck down. I could have given in to the urge to aim for his groin, fold him like a bad suit, and watch the color leave his face. My right knee trembled with the promise of it.
Don’t. Be smarter than that.
His hand touched my shoulder. I moved then. My left elbow flared into his wrist, displacing the grip, my right palm slid up with the spring and hit his carotid, and my knee went not to his center, but to his thigh, a deaden-not-destroy strike that made his leg forget how to stand. He dropped, stunned, and I rolled with him, turning my back to the runner to wrap the spring once around his neck and squeeze just enough to send a message.
The runner lunged; I pivoted. The third man at the door drew his weapon but couldn’t fire without shooting his friend, and in that beautiful half-second of hesitation, I shoved the lifter sideways, kicked the aluminum plate up with a swipe of my foot, and winged it toward the camera lens. It struck with a hiss of static and shattered the lens into pieces.
It wasn’t freedom. Not yet. But it was a crack. And you give me a crack, I’ll carve myself a door.
“Enough,” a voice said from the hall.
Calm. Bored. A bit too posh.
The commander had arrived early after all.
I looked up as he stepped into the frame of the doorway, immaculate in a suit that probably cost more than a small house, eyes cold as the inside of a morgue. He scanned the scene and didn’t bother to hide his contempt or his satisfaction at my current situation.
“Mr. Dragunov,” he said lightly, like we’d just met for drinks. “We need to have a conversation about your family’s understanding of the word agreement.”
I smiled the way a wolf smiles when it’s tired of playing the dog. “We need to have a conversation about your understanding of the word guest.”
His mouth made a shape that wasn’t a smile. “Stand.”
“Make me,” I grinned.
“Oh,” he said softly. “I intend to.”
I stood anyway, not because he told me to, but because I do my best work on my feet.
“Start talking, Mr. Dragunov,” the suit said again, softer now, savoring his position of power.
I tilted my head, let my gaze drift past him as if I were bored with his face and interested in the paint on the far wall. “Maybe we don’t need to talk,” I mumbled, more to myself than to him. “Maybe you didn’t get all of us.” I let the words trail off, like I’d meant him not to hear. “But I’m sure you got Katya too, didn’t you?”
He didn’t blink, but his shoulders shifted half a centimeter. It was a tiny tell that had big meaning. A smirk played at the edges of my lips, but I quelled it almost immediately.
The suit’s smile didn’t move. “We have what we need,” he replied in a bored tone.
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“I don’t answer questions, Mr. Dragunov; I ask them.”
“You should try it. Builds character.”
His eyes cooled. “What it builds is leverage, Mr. Dragunov. Which you lack.” He let the sentence hang, studied me like a surgeon studies a chart before deciding where to start cutting.
I lowered my gaze to the floor and made a small show of it—chin down, breath through the nose, shoulders loose—like I was practicing surrender.
“Your elder brother,” he said casually, as if tired of humoring a child, “is unreachable.”
I wasn’t surprised. It was simply confirmation of what I already knew.
He went on, because men like him always do when they think they’ve won. “According to our intel, he went out of the country, so if you were hoping for a rescue from him, you’ll be waiting a long while.”
I smoothed my expression before it could betray me. Mikhail was off somewhere in London, meeting with ARCHEON’s director. I hadn’t expected him back yet. He probably didn’t even know Revenant was holding me prisoner at this point.
“And Andrei?” I asked lightly, the tone in my voice put there intentionally to make my enemy underestimate how carefully I was listening. “He likes to fix things. He’s probably charming the whole logistics wing into handing him an access badge as we speak.”
If Andrei was still free, he’d likely try to get me released through diplomacy first, then do something noble and catastrophically dumb if that didn’t work.
I hoped he wouldn’t.
The commander came closer still, just out of arm’s length. He wanted me to lunge so he could punish me for it. I wanted to crush my knee into his dick so badly that it took everything in me not to. I unclenched my hand from the coil and let my fingers hang open.
“Congratulations. You’ve got your hostage then,” I said, testing him.
“Hostages,” he corrected pleasantly. “Plural.”
Heat licked the back of my neck. He wanted me to demand names. I didn’t. If he had all of us, he’d be angrier; if he had no one but me, he wouldn’t be here. He was here because he had just enough to preen. Which meant Katya, almost certainly, and that meant he probably had the Markovs and Kara Lennox too.
But he didn’t have my brothers.
“I’m touched,” I said. “I must be pretty special for you to schedule a visit with little ol’ me then.”
“You matter,” he said, smile widening, “because you are the easiest one to catch. You will talk when we threaten those you love.”
“I talk when I’m bored.”
“We’ll try to entertain.”
“Fine,” I retorted. “Let’s start with the terms.”
“Terms?”
“You said it yourself,” I shrugged. “You claim we broke our agreement. So, let’s draft a new one. I tell you something that interests you; you tell me something I can use. Mutual entertainment. You seem like a man who hates wasting time.”
He looked amused and annoyed, a combination that always ended in men telling me more than they intended. “What could you possibly tell me that I don’t already know?”
I nodded at the camera. “That depends. How much time do you have?”
He took the bait. “Answer my questions,” he teased, “then I’ll tell you where we’re keeping the little traitor.”
I smiled.
So they did have our Katya after all.
I shouldn’t have felt a thrill. Should have felt fear, maybe. Or desperation. But no—Viktor Dragunov didn’t do noble. I did survival. And survival meant keeping my mind sharp, my pulse steady, and my dick out of decisions where it didn’t belong.
Mostly.
The commander stared at me with that smug little smirk, the kind of face I’d grown up punching off of rich boys who thought the world lived to serve them. He didn’t blink as he waited for me to dance for him, to beg. Men like him always waited for a man like me to crack.
I was made of cracks. Old ones, healed over with scar tissue and vodka and spite. None of them were for him. He should know that metal is strongest at the weld.
“Terms,” I repeated, rolling the word over my tongue. “You like rules. Structure. That whole organizational chart fantasy where everyone salutes your genius. So let’s negotiate.”
“You seem to think you’re in a position to demand anything.”
“I’m not demanding,” I said. “I’m offering entertainment. You seem bored. And trust me—if we keep staring at each other like this, I’ll start imagining more creative uses for that tie clip. I don’t think you want that.”
His jaw flexed. Ah, so there was a human under all that starch.
Good.
Bravely, he moved a fraction closer.
“How long do you think this will last?” he asked, voice soft, deadly. “How long before you realize you have no cards left to play?”
I smiled slowly. “That’s the thing about us Dragunovs. We carry the whole deck.”
He opened his mouth, probably to say something self-important, but I cut in smoothly, “You want information? Ask your questions. Not that you’ll like my answers.”
Not that I cared.
He clasped his hands behind his back, pacing a short arc like he owned the space. “Your younger brother, Andrei—where is he going next?”
I snorted. “Who knows. Kid’s a wildcard and a menace. A pretty one, but a menace.”
The commander leaned in, letting his shadow cut across the floor like a blade. “You think your brothers will come for you?”
“I know they’ll come, but not for me.”
His brow rose. “Oh?”
“They’ll come for her.”
He didn’t react, but the air in the room shifted. Thickened.
“Katerina Volkov,” I said. Her name felt like trouble and fire on my tongue. “Revenant’s least obedient asset. My—” I stopped. Rephrased. “Partner.”
His gaze sharpened. “Partner?”
“Not in the HR sense,” I said lightly. “More in the ‘if you harm one more hair on her head, I’ll turn this whole building into a pile of modern art’ sense.”
His stare flicked to the camera. He knew it was destroyed. He knew I’d done it on purpose. And then it flicked back to me.
“Your concern for Ms. Volkov is noted,” he said dryly.
I shrugged. “Concern’s a strong word. She’s a headache. A gorgeous, infuriating, brilliantly dangerous headache. Thinking about her is a hazard to my blood pressure.”
And my cock, but no need to confess that to Captain Repressed right now.
The commander’s nostrils flared. “You’re amusing yourself. Stop.”
“I would,” I returned, “but you’re standing uncomfortably close. And when I’m stressed, I say stupid things. When I’m annoyed, I say dangerous things. And when I’m angry…” I leaned in, matching his quiet threat with one of my own, “I don’t say anything.”
He stiffened. He didn’t step back. Men like him never step back.
But his little eye-flick down the hall betrayed him. He didn’t want this moment escalating.
Because someone else might hear.
Maybe someone he didn’t want to know I’d rattled him.
I filed that away. A pressure point for later.
He cleared his throat. “Whether Ms. Volkov survives depends on your cooperation.”
I swallowed the urge to lunge at him.
Katya, my Katya—Katerina Volkov—alone in some med-wing torture lab downstairs. Drugged. Restrained. Questioned. Bleeding. Smirking at her interrogators because she knew she’d cut their throats if they got too close.
My stomach twisted.
Thinking about her made my hands shake in ways no gun battle ever could.
Thinking about her mouth made my dick stir again—damn her—but thinking about someone else touching her made my vision go red at the edges.
“You want Andrei,” I said. “You want Mikhail. You’ve probably got the Markov triad, and Kara Lennox too. And you want Katya because she knows too much about your little Revenant group, don’t you.”
The commander’s jaw flexed.
Bullseye.
He exhaled once, clipped and irritated. “We have enough.”
“But not the ones who matter.”
His silence was answer enough.
I chuckled under my breath.
He frowned.
“What is so funny?”
I looked up, a grin plastered all over my face. “I’m just imagining how much chaos Andrei’s going to cause while you idiots are chasing your own tails. He’s probably already in your server room. Or your armory. Or your goddamn cafeteria, charming a chef into smuggling him into this place on a soup cart.”
By the look on his face, he did not like that image.
I lifted my gaze again, honing it on him until the commander finally looked away first.
That mattered.
That told me something I’d suspected from the moment he walked in. He wasn’t here to break me. He was here because someone above him was nervous.
“Tell me where she is,” I said softly.
He stiffened. “No.”
“Then I’ll find her without your help.”
“How would you—”
“You talk too much when you’re annoyed,” I interrupted. “You think about what you’re not allowed to say. And the best part?” I bared my teeth. “You think you have time.”
“And you don’t?” he countered.
“No,” I said. “But my brothers don’t need time.”
Quiet concern flickered behind his eyes.
“Enjoy your confidence while you can,” he murmured. “Your elder brother is far away somewhere. He’s not coming for you. And as for your younger brother…” His lips curved. “We have measures for men like him. He will not get far.”
Wrong.
I leaned in, bringing my mouth a hairsbreadth from his ear. “You should worry less about Andrei getting far,” I whispered. “And more about him getting close.”
His breath stuttered.
Another tell.
Delicious.
He stepped back sharply. “We’re done.”
“Not even close.”
He signaled the guards. The door hissed open.
The moment he walked out, leaving the room colder than before, I let my smile fade.
Pieces were falling into place. Who they had, who they didn’t, who was coming for me, and who was already moving against them.
But Katya was the variable I couldn’t get out of my head.
Katerina Volkov wasn’t built to be anyone’s captive. I knew that she’d be fighting, even now, even if she happened to be injured. She was probably making some interrogator regret waking up this morning. And if they pushed her too far… no, I wasn’t letting it get that far.
I wasn’t giving Mikhail time to bargain or Andrei time to charge in blind.
She needed me thinking clearly and acting fast.
Time to break out.
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