Page 79 of Mafia King's Broken Vow

NOT REFORMED, NOT CONTAINED

YAKOV

Iprowl the limits of my cage—twenty-seven steps to the window, nineteen across, twelve down the hall. Numbers that used to mean control now feel like a countdown to madness.

My escort is eighteen minutes late.

I know she’s here. She sent me a message the moment she passed through the gates.

I check the window. The guards march in perfect formation, blind to the storm tearing me apart from the inside out.

This isn’t supposed to happen. Not to me. I buried this kind of weakness with Ana.

Caring makes you weak. Makes you stupid.

When the door finally opens, relief slams into me—sharp, brutal—before it curdles into something colder.

Aleksander Sokolov steps inside, all lethal grace and unreadable ice. The Bratva’s cleaner. They don’t send him for small matters.

I lock my spine, masking the punch to my gut with indifference I don’t feel.

“Aleksander.” His name is a warning.

“Gagarin.” He shuts the door, calm as a man delivering a death sentence.

“Where is she?” No pleasantries. No patience.

A flicker of awareness passes through his gaze.

“She’s here,” he says. “But your session’s been canceled.”

My jaw tightens. “Why?”

“She’s resting. Debriefing.” He moves closer, watching me like I’m a puzzle he’s already solved. “Montoya paid her a visit. At her office.”

“I know.” The words slice out, raw and dangerous. “She called me.”

His brow lifts, just enough to make my pulse hammer. “Yes. We know. Igor…didn’t appreciate her choice of lifeline.”

I don’t flinch, but the weight of that implication settles deep. Igor’s ‘disappointment’ is the kind that usually ends with bodies.

“She called the person who could actually save her,” I snap. “That’s not a betrayal. That’s survival.”

Aleksander nods slowly, like I’ve confirmed exactly what he wanted to hear.

“And yet,” he murmurs, “Igor wonders why Dr. Agapova trusts a man like you more than his protocols.”

The silence between us thickens, laced with unspoken accusations.

“I need to see her.” Not a request. A statement of fact. “Your men can watch perimeters. I can think like the enemy hunting her.”

Aleksander tilts his head, those glacier-blue eyes stripping me bare.

“You care,” he says.

I could lie. Should lie.

But her face flashes behind my eyes, the way she sounded when she gasped my name, falling apart around me.