Page 25 of Crimson Curse
“With Charlotte.” I push a stray strand of hair behind my ear. “I told her some of it.”
His brow lifts slightly. “Some?”
“I didn't tell her everything,” I reassure him quickly. “She knows Viktor took me, and that you got me back. And…that you know about the baby.”
His posture changes, subtle but there, a tension I hadn’t noticed before easing from his shoulders. There's a brief moment where emotion moves across his face, too quick for me to interpret fully before it's locked away again behind his usual mask of control.
“And?” he prompts.
“She's worried,” I admit, meeting his gaze steadily. “But she wants me to be happy. And I am.”
He crosses the room slowly, his presence filling the space between us. “Good. Because you're not leaving this house without me knowing exactly where you are.”
There's no threat in his tone, no anger or possessiveness that feels controlling. Only certainty. A statement of fact delivered with the calm confidence of a man who has never had his will challenged and doesn't expect to start now.
“I wasn't planning to,” I respond, tilting my chin up to meet his gaze directly.
His eyes drop briefly to my stomach, then back to mine, and I see his face soften for just an instant. “Then we understand each other.”
I nod, the faintest smile tugging at my lips. “We do.”
His hand lifts, his fingers brushing lightly over my cheek in a gesture so at odds with the man everyone else sees that it steals my breath completely.
“Get some rest,” he murmurs, his voice softer than I've heard it all day. “Tomorrow, we talk about what comes next.”
10
DANIIL
The call comes just after three in the morning. Lex's voice is clipped, stripped of anything unnecessary. “One of ours is gone.”
I’m already on my feet before the words finish leaving his mouth. “Which one?”
“South River hub.”
I stop for a fraction of a second. That hub isn't just another warehouse. It's one of the primary arteries in the network. Legal shipments occur during daylight hours, while Bratva-controlled consignments take place after midnight. Thousands of pounds of cargo move through it every week, under customs noses that have been paid to stay shut.
“How bad?” I question.
“Gone,” Lex repeats, his voice like flint grinding against stone. “Explosion. Military-grade.”
I pull on my clothes, hands moving on instinct, then check the gun at my hip and chamber a round. “How many?”
“Two confirmed dead. Others injured.” Lex pauses, then, “We're still digging.”
The words ignite a fire inside me that burns cold instead of hot. Two men gone. Men I knew by name, who had stood before me and sworn loyalty, now reduced to blood and fragments in the dirt.
When I step out into the hallway, Maksim is already there, pacing like a panther on the edge of a leap. His eyes are bright with adrenaline. Timur looms beside him, silent but ready.
“The trucks are waiting,” Maksim reports.
We pile into the convoy without another word. The city streets are mostly empty, the darkness stretching wide between the streetlamps. Every red light is a target to be ignored, every empty intersection a brief flash of tires screaming against asphalt. No one utters a single word until the smell hits us, thick and acrid, even through the closed windows. Smoke, burning chemicals, and scorched metal.
When we round the final corner, the scene unfolds in chaotic fragments under the glare of floodlights. The south wall of the warehouse is gone, blown outward in jagged teeth of steel and concrete. Flames lick at the collapsed roof beams, stubborn even under the spray of the fire hoses. Emergency vehicles cluster along the perimeter, lights spinning against the night like warnings in blood. My men are everywhere hauling debris, dragging hoses, and shouting orders, but their faces are tight with strain. I get out before the truck fully stops.
“Pakhan,” Roman tries to intercept me, but I push past him.
The heat is immediate, baking the skin along my face. The smell of cooked metal is so strong I can taste it. I move towardwhat's left of the entry bay, my boots crunching over glass and blackened fragments of shipping crates. Somewhere to my left, a man groans. Another curses in Russian, sharp with grief. Two bodies lie under tarps near the far corner. I don't need to see their faces to know who they are. The shape of the shoulders, the boots still on their feet. They're my men.
