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“I need one.” I understood their need to eradicate and eliminate. But I had questions. “Where are the others?”

“Coming this way.” Lev pointed. “Infrared puts them within steps of the wine junction.”

Good. The corridor narrowed before splitting around the old wine storage, which gave the attackers two choices if they wanted to reach the main house. I knew the property better than they did. I damn well hoped I did, considering they’d already made it through a tunnel they shouldn’t know existed.

I pointed two guards toward the secondary staircase and sent another to cover the service entrance. “Lev, take the left passage. Don’t push them. Make them think it’s open and force them toward me.”

He nodded and disappeared, not needing extra clarification. Another reason these men were still alive after years of working for us. They understood that an order wasn’t an opening for a discussion.

Gunfire cracked through the corridor seconds later. My heart leaped in response. The damned thing remained cold and uncaring except for two situations. Fighting…and Anika. The second had come as a surprise, one I’d discovered during the masquerade and been trying to overcome ever since.

I flattened my back against the wall, gun already in hand. A round struck the corner and sent fragments spraying across my jacket. One of our guards returned fire before I caught his shoulder and shoved the barrel down. “I need them to come this way.”

“Yes, Pakhan.” His eyes flashed with that feral glee I always looked for first when choosing my men.

Footsteps pounded against stone, heading exactly where I wanted them. The first man raced around the junction, saw us, and tried to reverse direction.

“Mine.” I put a round through his thigh before he made it two steps or my men could take the shot themselves. He dropped hard, his weapon skidding across the floor.

A second attacker behind him fired over his body and forced me back against the wall. It most likely said something about me that I hadn’t stopped smiling this entire time.

Lev’s team closed in from the opposite passage. Bullets sprayed. Men yelled. And I joined the fray with a kind of glee that had been missing for ages. A bullet whizzed past me, catching the sleeve of my jacket and tearing a gash longer than my hand. I returned fire, mowing down several operatives with rapid but accurate bursts.

“Excellent shooting, Pakhan.” Lev returned my manic smile. “All those hours at the range have not gone to waste.”

“Nothing like the real thing.” I dropped the empty mag and reloaded while pushing forward. The man I’d dropped with the thigh shot had been brought closer by my men and protected as they laid waste to the remaining soldiers.

Lev shoved the man onto his stomach and planted a knee between his shoulders.

“Search him.” I rolled my neck and shoulders, the prickling sensation intensifying. I gauged it, making sure no one was trying to loop around and sneak up on me.

Lev rolled the attacker onto his side while another guard kept a weapon trained on his head. The man was somewhere in his thirties, dressed entirely in black without a single identifying mark. Professional enough to remove his wallet and tags before coming. Not professional enough to get shot and pass out when he hit the ground.

He groaned at all the manhandling, his eyes fluttering open and closed.

“Pakhan.” The guard performing the search pulled a small black security fob from the man’s inner pocket.

My stomach dropped, a single shudder of ice slithering along my veins. I held out my hand, and he dropped the fob into it. Our internal credentials were encrypted, assigned individually, and rotated often enough that stealing one and sitting on it meant information went cold. This one carried the narrow silver band identifying lieutenant-level access issued to a Volkov man–one of Maksim’s men.

How? How had he gotten it? I slipped the credentials into my pocket. “No one leaves the property. I want every lieutenant accounted for in person. No one touches the access system. Not so much as one keystroke.”

The answer came from men around me and through the radio. “Understood, Pakhan.”

Lev’s expression hardened. “You think one of ours gave it to him?”

“It didn’t fucking grow in his pocket.” I crouched in front of my prisoner. “Who gave it to you?” When he laughed in my face, I backhanded him, splitting his lip. “Who told you about the tunnel?”

“Fuck you.” He tried to spit, but Lev slapped a hand over his mouth, his fingers digging in until the man’s face purpled.

Lev yanked his face up, his grip tightening. “Respect the Pakhan.” He waited for the garbled response and nod before he let go.

It wasn’t necessary, but I appreciated his loyalty, now more than ever.

Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out my phone and opened it to the screenshot I’d taken of Alina standing at the front gate. She had something to do with this. There were no such things as coincidences. I held the phone up to his face. “Who is this woman?”

He swallowed hard, his gaze glancing off the screen, then to my face. His eye twitched, recognition flashing when he couldn’t help but look at the phone again.

I turned the screen off and pocketed the phone. “You know Alina. I’m not sure that works in your favor, especially if you continue to refuse to answer me.” Torture was next on the agenda. This man would not be easy to break, but that had never bothered me before. “Who sent you?” I studied his face while the alarm pulsed overhead. Whatever Alina had intended by appearing at the gate, I wasn’t going to assume she’d knowingly put armed men inside a compound full of families. Not yet. I’d spent five years making assumptions based on bad information. I wasn’t interested in repeating the experience.