Page 79 of Ruthless Bond

Everything in its time.

Two days later I’m watching flakes drifting through the city lights from the penthouse windows, catching the glow of streetlamps and headlights before disappearing into the dark streets below. Chicago in December. The city changes when the cold comes, the energy contracting, the streets emptying earlier, the lake turning from blue to gray to a flat metallic surface that reflects the sky like a mirror.

Sophia is asleep in our bed. The bond hums. I think about all that’s happened since that first meeting. Our timeline is short by any measure, especially the measure of a man who has lived for a hundred and thirty-two years. But the bond doesn’t operate on calendar time. The bond operates on the only metric that matters: she’s here. She stayed. She chose.

The federal investigation continues. Lex monitors it daily, tracking the analyst’s progress through property records and corporate filings, watching the family tree she’s building grow branches that reach further back with every passing week. Sophia is helping on the defensive strategy from the legitimate side, ensuring our corporate records are clean and current, building the kind of transparent business presence that makes federal scrutiny less productive. It’s a race, and we’re running it with the best financial mind I’ve ever encountered on our side.

We’ll survive. We always have. The pack has endured for centuries by adapting, by shedding identities and building new ones, by staying one step ahead of the world’s ability to see us clearly. The modern era makes that harder. Cameras and databases and digital permanence. But we have something we didn’t have before: a partner who looks at existential threats the way she looks at subcontractor invoices, with the calm, methodical certainty that every problem has a solution if you bring enough data to bear on it.

Roman flew to Montana yesterday. The jet left Midway at ten with my brother and the paralegal from Whitfield’s office on board. A one night trip. Up to the property, get Viktor’s signature on the trust amendments, fly back the next evening. Simple. Routine.

The snow is falling harder now. I check the time. Ten-thirty. Roman should have landed an hour ago. I pick up my phone to text him and find nothing. No message saying they’d landed. No confirmation from the pilot. No read receipt on the text I sent at eight asking him to let me know when they were wheels down.

I call him. Straight to voicemail.

I call the pilot. Straight to voicemail.

I call Lex.

He answers on the first ring. Which tells me he’s already aware that something isn’t right.

“I’ve been trying to reach Roman for the past hour,” he says before I can speak. “The jet’s transponder went dark over Montana two hours ago.”

“Went dark.”

“Lost signal. No communication from the pilot. No emergency beacon. The weather turned severe this afternoon. Early winter storm. Heavy snow, high winds.”

I stand at the window of my penthouse. The snow falls on Chicago, gentle and quiet. In Montana, a thousand miles away, a different kind of snow is falling, the kind that buries roads and closes passes and turns mountain wilderness into something that swallows small aircraft without leaving a trace.

“Lex,” I say.

“I know. I’m already on it. I’ll let you know as soon as I have an update.”

Roman. Our brother.

I hang up and stand at the window. The snow falls. The city sleeps. The doubled heartbeat in my chest is steady, Sophia’s rhythm and mine, but in the space where I usually feel the pack bond’s connection to my brother, there is static. Distance. Silence.

In the bedroom, Sophia stirs. The bond registers my distress, transmitting the spike of fear through the connection. She appears in the doorway, my shirt falling to mid-thigh, her hair messed, her eyes sleepy and alert at the same time.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

I look at the woman I love. The woman who taught me what it costs to lie and what it’s worth to tell the truth. The woman who demanded no more secrets.

“Roman should be back by now.”

Her hand goes to the silver scar on her neck. The bond pulses between us, fear meeting concern, the doubled heartbeat accelerating.

“He’ll be okay,” she says. A statement. From a woman who has learned that the Voronov family survives everything, and who intends to help them keep surviving.

She crosses the room and takes my hand. We stand at the window together, watching the snow fall on our city, and I hold on to her and I wait for the phone to ring.

It rings at eleven-fourteen.

Lex.

“We have a situation,” he says.

“Tell me.”

“Roman’s plane went down.”