Page 5 of Bride of Vengeance
The hunt isn't over.
It's just getting started.
The problem is, I don't know who the target is anymore. And I'm not sure I'm the only hunter in the game.
But next time - because there will be a next time, I can feel it in my bones - I'm going to be ready.
Chapter two
The Little Wolf
Mikhail
From the forty-second floor of my penthouse, Manhattan spreads out like a chess board I've been studying for years. Every light represents a life, a choice, a move in the endless game between order and chaos.
And somewhere down there, Special Agent Mariana Castillo is probably cursing my name.
The thought makes me smile as I pour two fingers of Beluga Gold Line vodka into a crystal tumbler. The news coverage of the warehouse fire plays on my wall-mounted screen, but I keep the sound muted. I already know what they're saying: industrial accident, possible arson, FBI investigation ongoing.
What they don't know is that their lead investigator just spent one perfect minute in my arms.
Little wolf.
The nickname fits her better than I expected when I first started watching her. Two years ago, to be precise, when her name crossed my desk as the federal point person for Alexei's legitimacy project. I make it my business to know everyone involved in my family's affairs, even the reformed branches.
Alexei Morozov—former Bratva king who ran Chicago's most powerful criminal organization for over twenty years. Started when he was just sixteen after his parents died, built an empire on fear and violence. But something changed when he married my niece, Mila. Love, perhaps. Or just the realization that legitimate power lasts longer than that forged on the basis of a criminal record. Now he's transforming everything—taking his entire organization legal, working with the FBI to reform other criminal networks.
Mila. My niece, raised believing her uncle died in the Chernobyl disaster twenty-three years ago. She married Alexei three years ago—a complicated story involving an underground auction and her brother Viktor's death at Roman Volkov's hands. But what started as Alexei's guilt-driven protection became real love. Now she's a mother of three, using her gifted computer science skills for her husband's legitimacy efforts instead of the cybersecurity firm where she used to work for. In many ways, Mikhail Kozlov did die that day at Chernobyl—consumed by radiation, government cover-ups and the kind of black operations thatdon't officially exist. What emerged from that nuclear wasteland was something harder, colder, more efficiently deadly.
Ghost.
But family remains family, even when it's safer for everyone involved that I stay dead. I've watched Mila from the shadows for years, ensuring her safety, eliminating threats before they could reach her. When she married Alexei, I made sure their wedding went off without a hitch. When the Volkov family escalated their war against the Morozovs, I was the one who provided the intelligence that helped them survive.
She doesn't know any of this, of course. Better for her to grieve a dead uncle than to know her protector is the most wanted man in the criminal underworld.
But Mariana Castillo proved to be more than just another federal bureaucrat managing paperwork and politics. She's a real hunter. The kind who doesn't give up, doesn't get distracted, doesn't let personal comfort override professional duty.
And she’s been tracking Ghost for exactly twenty-three months and sixteen days.
I take a slow sip of vodka, letting it burn away the taste of smoke and ash that still lingers in my mouth. The irony would be amusing if it wasn't so personally dangerous. The woman who's been hunting me with a single-minded obsession just discovered she's been chasing a real ghost.
Because one thing Special Agent Castillo is absolutely right about is that someone has been using my reputation like a weapon, killing in my name, leaving my signature on crimes I never committed.
The question is who. And why now?
My secure phone buzzes against the mahogany desk. Boris, my lieutenant, with news I've been dreading since I heard about Viktor Orlov's death.
"The federal witness," his gravelly voice says without preamble. "Shot execution-style in his safe house. Single bullet to the head, professional entry, no evidence left behind."
"Witnesses?"
"None alive."
"And the FBI thinks?"
"That Ghost finally decided to clean the house. Agent Castillo's been pulled from active duty pending internal review. Word is they think she leaked Orlov's location."
Svoloch.Son of a bitch.
