Chapter 6: The Unraveling

The first indication that nothing would ever be the same came at 3:47 in the morning. Dimitri Kozlov’s phone rang with the sort of call that meant someone was about to die.

He answered on the second ring, his voice rough and sleep-addled with dread. “Da?”

“Your shipment never arrived.” The voice on the other end was icy, the smooth clipped tone of serious money and serious consequences. “The truck was discovered abandoned on Highway 95. My merchandise is missing, and someone is going to pay for it.”

Dimitri sat up in bed, his mind running through scenarios. The shipment had been due at the warehouse district at midnight, business as usual for one of the standard smuggling operations that they had been running successfully for years.

Alexei’s crew had provided security, as they always did. It had been provided, past tense, because that arrangement had been terminated twelve hours ago in the ballroom of a fancy hotel, with dozens of witnesses.

“Viktor Sergeyevich, there must be some mistake—”

“No mistake, Dimitri Mikhailovich. Only consequences.” The line went dead, and Dimitri stared at the phone in the darkness of his bedroom.

Beside him, Katarina shifted in bed. “Who was that?”

“Viktor Petrov’s people.” Dimitri’s voice sounded hollow. “Three million in merchandise, all gone. The Georgians are going to want reparations.”

Katarina sat up, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Her former enforcer’s instincts flared, the scent of serious trouble in the air. “How is that possible? Alexei’s crew was supposed to—” She stopped.

The implication of those few words came crashing into her brain and she shuddered. “Alexei’s crew doesn’t protect us anymore.”

“No,” Dimitri said softly. “They don’t.”

The next forty-eight hours brought a landslide of catastrophes that proved how tenuous the Kozlov family’s position had been. Without Alexei’s protection, they were suddenly exposed, vulnerable, bleeding from a dozen different wounds that their rivals had been waiting for years to inflict.

The warehouse where they stored legitimate merchandise burned to the ground, the fire marshal suspicious but unable to prove the cause had been arson. The three restaurants that they used to launder money were suddenly hit with raids from the health department that shut them down indefinitely. Two of their most reliable smuggling routes had been compromised, with cargo containers being seized by customs officials who had previously been receiving regular “gifts” to look the other way.

But the worst by far was Pavel Kozlov, Dimitri’s younger brother, who had run their protection racket, had gone missing.

“He was supposed to meet with the Tran family to discuss their monthly tribute,” said Sergei, one of the few soldiers still loyal to the Kozlov name. His face was grim, and he stood in Dimitri’s study with his hat in his hand like some messenger come to announce the death of a family patriarch. “That was yesterday morning. No one’s seen him since.”

Dimitri poured himself three fingers of vodka and his hands were steady, but Katarina could see the shaking of his shoulders. Pavel was more than his brother—he was the muscle of their operation, the man who collected debts and enforced loyalty with fear and pain. Without him, they were nothing more than another mid-level crime family, trying to maintain territory that they could no longer defend.

“Any word?” Dimitri asked. “Ransom calls? Messages?”

“Nothing. He just… disappeared.”

In the silence that followed, they all knew what that meant. Pavel was either dead or wished he was. In either case, the message was clear: the Kozlov family was no longer untouchable. They were prey now and the predators were circling.

“This is Anya’s fault,” Elena said from the doorway, her voice still raw from three days of crying. She looked terrible: her perfect hair unwashed and stringy, her designer clothes wrinkled, her face puffy and red. Her goddess-like perfection was gone, stripped away by the harsh reality of consequences. “She ruined us. She ruined everything.”

“Anya didn’t make you fuck her fiancé,” Katarina snapped, her patience finally frayed by the weight of their catastrophes. “Anya didn’t make you betray your marriage, your family, your sister. You did that yourself.”

“I made a mistake!” Elena’s voice was cracking with hysteria. “One mistake, and she burned down our entire world for it!”

“Seven months isn’t a mistake,” Dimitri said quietly, not looking at his older daughter. “Seven months is a choice. A choice you made every day, every time you met him, every time you lied to us about where you were going.”

Elena stared at her father in shock. Throughout this entire catastrophe, she had expected his protection, his understanding, his willingness to sacrifice anything and anyone to preserve her position. Instead, she was getting the same cold assessment that he would give any soldier who had failed the family.

“You’re taking her side?” Elena’s voice was barely above a whisper. “After everything I’ve given this family, everything I’ve sacrificed, you’re taking the side of that ungrateful little bitch who destroyed us?”

The slap came so fast that Elena didn’t see it coming. Katarina’s hand connected with her daughter’s cheek with a sound like a gunshot and Elena staggered backward, her hand flying to her face in shock.

“Don’t you dare,” Katarina said, her voice deadly quiet. “Don’t you dare blame your sister for the consequences of your own choices. You made your bed with that lawyer—literally and figuratively. Now you get to lie in it.”

Elena’s perfect composure finally shattered completely. She collapsed into one of the leather chairs and sobbed with the kind of desperate, ugly crying that only came from someone whose entire world had been stripped away in the space of one evening.