Page 37 of Deadly Offer

Andrey’s face drained of what little color remained. His lips moved silently, forming words that wouldn’t come. His eyes darted toward the elevator—his failed escape route—with an animal desperation that made Reuben’s stomach twist.

“You will be monitored.” Grigorii’s voice had returned to its customary granite hardness. “You will be watched. You will live knowing that every step you take happens only because we allow it.” The eldest brother delivered each sentence like the closing of a door. Or the sealing of a tomb.

Nikon stepped forward, his posture shifting from protective to predatory. His hand finally left Reuben’s back as he circled his younger brother. “And all the operational details you knew will be changed.” His voice was colder than Reuben had ever heard it, even in his most ruthless business negotiations. “All contacts and routes altered. Your passwords, access codes, safe houses—all will vanish.” Nikon’s tactical mind methodically stripped away every layer of Andrey’s future. “Your knowledge expires at this moment.”

“Every account will be emptied,” Alexei added softly, “including those you thought were safely hidden behind shell corporations in the Caymans and Singapore.” His fingers traced patterns in the air, as if manipulating invisible strings of data. “I’ve already set in motion the liquidation of all your assets. Your lines of credit are being severed as we speak.”

“Do it!” Andrey suddenly screamed, his voice shattering into something feral and wounded. Spittle and blood sprayed from his lips as he convulsed forward. “Just kill me! Finish it!” He lunged toward Grigorii despite his wound, reaching with bloody fingers that left crimson streaks on the polished leather of his brother’s shoes. “They’ll all come for me now. Without protection, I’m just a walking target!”

His desperation transformed him from the cocky, defiant Andrey who had held a gun to Reuben’s head into something broken and pitiful. Reuben found himself both repulsed and transfixed by the deterioration. The gun had never made Andrey as dangerous as this raw, exposed nerve of a man now thrashing on the floor.

Grigorii stepped back, avoiding contact with Andrey. “You chose this, Andrey. Now you live with the consequences.”

Grigorii signaled to his two men already posted in the conference room with a subtle twitch of his fingers. The guards responded immediately, one of them the same man Andrey had disarmed earlier. The men moved quickly, lifting Andrey from the floor, one on each side. Blood from his wound left a smear on the wall behind him.

“Take him downstairs. Have Dr. Rayner treat the wound.” Grigorii’s instructions emerged, clipped and precise. No emotion colored the words, as if he were talking about removing office furniture rather than his youngest brother. “Then release him.”

“Release him where?” One of the men asked, confusion momentarily disrupting his professional mask.

Grigorii’s expression remained impassive, but something terrible moved behind his eyes. “Anywhere. Nowhere.” A dismissive flick of his wrist. “I don’t give a fuck. He no longer matters.”

Andrey’s face contorted in a mixture of rage and despair as he was dragged toward the door. His eyes found Reuben’s for one fractional moment. It was a look that promised this wasn’t over. “You think this is mercy?” His voice cracked. “This is worse than death! This is—” His words cut off as the door closed behind them, the hydraulic mechanism sealing with a soft hiss.

The silence that followed pressed against Reuben’s ears. Four men left standing in a room stained with blood and vodka—symbols more powerful than any words that had been spoken.

Nikon moved to Reuben’s side, his hand finding the small of Reuben’s back. The touch grounded him, pulled him back from the analytical distance his mind had created as a shield.

“Are you hurt?” Nikon’s voice was low, private.

Reuben shook his head. His body felt strangely disconnected, operating on some separate circuit from his racing mind. He leaned into Nikon’s solid body, drawing strength from the contact as the adrenaline began to ebb.

Grigorii turned to face them, his expression inscrutable as his gaze settled on Nikon’s hand against Reuben’s back. For the first time, Reuben witnessed something like acceptance in the eldest Matvei’s eyes.

Grigorii addressed Reuben directly. “You created the opening we needed to get in the shot.” It wasn’t a thank you—the Matvei brothers rarely trafficked in gratitude—but it was an acknowledgment.

All Reuben could manage—with adrenalin still coursing through his veins—was a curt nod of acknowledgment in return.

Alexei moved to the intercom panel on the wall, pressing a button. “Send a cleaning crew to the conference room. Discretion protocols.” He turned back to his brothers. “I’m starting the financial takedown now. I’ll be up all night making sure he’s left with nothing.”

Grigorii nodded once, then pulled out his phone, stepping away to issue orders in rapid-fire Russian. The machinery of the Matvei empire was already shifting to adapt to the removal of one of its limbs.

Nikon’s arm slid around Reuben’s waist, pulling him closer. “I need to take you home.” Nikon’s words were simple, but the weight behind them was not.

Reuben leaned deeper into the contact, allowing himself to feel everything once again. The emotional wall he’d built had protected him during the crisis, but now he let it crumble.

He had been a hostage. He had almost died.

The elevator doors opened, revealing the cleaning crew; efficient, anonymous figures who would erase all physical evidence of what had happened here. But some stains couldn’t be wiped away.

As Nikon guided him into the elevator, Reuben cast one last glance at the conference room. The spilled vodka. The blood. The broken glass. Symbols of tradition shattered and remade into something else; something he was now irrevocably part of.

The doors closed with a soft chime, isolating them from the scene. Nikon pulled Reuben against his chest, his arms encircling him completely now. As he cupped Reuben’s face with trembling hands, their foreheads touched for one breath before their lips met.

A beat later, Nikon was kissing him with a desperate hunger, his fingers threading into Reuben’s hair. And Reuben tasted salt—his own tears or Nikon’s, he couldn’t tell—as they clung to eachother, the tight knot of adrenaline and fear finally unraveling between them.

Chapter 14

At 1:17 AM, the penthouse bathroom clock glowed against the marble walls while Reuben stood motionless before the mirror. Behind him, the shower ran hot enough to fill the room with clouds of steam that swirled around the Italian fixtures, but he hadn’t stepped in yet. Instead, his bathrobe hung loosely from his shoulders as he leaned forward, palms pressed against the cool marble counter, studying his own face.

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