I pace, hands balled into fists. “You’re right. He is delusionally confident. Not even his father had the balls to think like that.Heat least knew things could come crashing down at a moment’s notice.”
He exhales. The signal grows static for a minute, warping his appearance on the screen, before finally stabilizing again. “He’ll burn it all before you ever reach him, that much is clear. He’s done so in Russia already. That’s the failsafe. He knows you, knows how you think. If he erases every record, every last thread that ties their family to this network, then what’s left for you to dismantle? If you do kill him, it’s just blood for blood. Nothing else.
I fall silent, my jaw locked tight. Of course he would plan for both outcomes.
In all my years of knowing Anton—and by extension, his bastard son—it tracks. Anton was a tactician down to his bones, a man who could create entire matrixes out of thin air if it meant preserving his influence. A spider spinning webs, weaving a history that served him and only him.
And his son? Clearly, he’s inherited that same sickness. But where Anton was patient, meticulous, and deliberate in his moves, his son is wild beneath the surface. Reckless with conviction.
Anton built an empire out of the shadows of paranoia left from the old ways, manipulating perception within our Bratva until our shared allies couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. It seems his son has taken that same philosophy and sharpened it into something crueler. Less about control, more about revenge. It was never just about power for him. It was about rewriting the story—stripping my name from every page and replacing it with his own.
“He wants to make it meaningless,” I say aloud, the truth finally hitting me. “All of it. Even if I kill him, he wants to make sure I get nothing out of it. No satisfaction. No victory. No proof of what he and his father did to dismantle our Bratva from the inside.”
Lev gives a slow nod. “That’s his real win, to deny you the final blow that changes anything.”
“Shit,” Andrey mutters from across the room.
My eyes close for a beat, but it does nothing to stop the heat flooding my chest. The fury coils tight in my ribs, sharp and surgical. He thinks this ends with the erasure of his name. That if he wipes out the ledger, the history, the roots of his father’s regime, he’ll vanish cleanly. But people like himdon’t get clean endings. Not when they drag children into their madness. Not when they touch what’s mine.
I open my eyes and look at my second, finding him already staring back at me with the same intensity that churns in my own chest. There’s a flicker in his eyes—hunger, barely leashed violence. He’s waiting for me to say it. For the green light, the full send he’s been craving since the moment I left Russia. Since the first whisper of betrayal happened years ago. Since Mikhail crossed a line that can’t be undone.
I give him the smallest of nods because it’s all he needs. “Let’s show him how wrong he is, then.”
A slow, dangerous grin starts to pull at the corners of Lev’s mouth.
“And how are we going to do that?” Katya asks. Her head tilts slightly to one side, a single brow rising with that unyielding eagerness of hers. She’s the fire to Roman’s calm. The serrated knife to Lev’s scalpel. Analytical and always three steps ahead like Matvey. There’s heat beneath her cool exterior, a challenge she’s been waiting to take on.
She wants to hear it from me, and I’m ready to say it.
When my attention slides to her, the plan has already begun stitching itself together in the back of my mind, loose threads tightening while pieces fall into place with every gear that shifts and turns. It’s not fully formed yet, not quite, but it’s more than I’ve had in weeks.
It’s what I’ve been missing since Ivy and Leo were taken. That cold, merciless precision that once made me a king in a country built on blood and loyalty. It’s back, certainty replacing the helpless rage I’ve been drowning in.
Finally, after almost two weeks of fog, of being one step behind, of letting fear and fury rot my logic, something shifts. My mind starts clicking back into place like a weapon being reassembled. That sick, hollow ache in my chest is still there, but it’s no longer a weakness.
It’s fuel.
My voice is low when I speak again, but the intensity in it cuts through the room like a fuse being lit. “We destroy the fantasy he’s built.”
Katya doesn’t interrupt, neither does Roman. They wait and listen.
I go on, each word more punctuated than the last. “If Mikhail thinks I’ll give him a clean death when we find him, he’s wrong. He wants a legacy to steal. To inherit what he never earned and twist it into something else. He thinks by taking what’s mine, he can manipulate the story, rewrite it to put himself on the throne. But he’s forgotten one thing. He’s a footnote at best. A poorly written epilogue. So we’ll remind him. We’ll dismantle every piece of the fantasy he built along with his name, his resources, the people he turned. And we’ll do it publicly.”
Andrey tilts his head, intrigued now. “You want to expose him?”
I nod. “I don’t just want to kill him. I want to make him visible. Embarrass him for ever thinking he could get away with trying this like his father did. Anton got off easy with a clean death. His son will pay for both of their sins. He’ll be dragged out of the shadows and made to face the world for what he is. A coward with stolen power. A traitor hidingbehind a false legacy. A fraud clinging to someone else’s throne.”
Roman exhales. He shifts in his seat, eager. “How are we going to do any of that?”
I lean forward, every word deliberate. “We unearth every traitorous act he and his father ever committed against the Bratva. Every secret deal, every betrayal, every body they buried and tried to erase, and bring it to light. He thinks he can leave this world without a trace, without consequence. So, we’ll show him otherwise.”
Katya’s lips curl in a rare smirk. “You always did have a flair for theater.”
“He wants to vanish like a myth,” I say. “So we make sure his ending is messy. Undeniable. We make sure his name is cursed in the streets, whispered with disgust in the same breath as cowards. We don’t stop with him. We’ll tear down everything that ever carried the Sidorov name, every last tie he has to the world his father left behind.”
Roman rises from his seat, the fire in him unmistakable now. “Just say the word.”
I nod. “Go.”