All Chapters of Scamming the Devil : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

20 Chapters

Chapter Eleven

IRINA VOLKOVThe elevator opened onto a different floor and Roman stepped out still talking, gesturing broadly, clearly proud of everything his brother had built. He loved Nikolai — that much was obvious. Not blindly, not without awareness of what Nikolai was, but with the particular loyalty of someone who had seen the worst of a person and chosen to stay anyway.I filed that away and said nothing.Roman cracked jokes to lighten me up—he’s funny no doubt. He took me through the compound properly — the war room where Nikolai's men sat around a long table, all suits and stillness and eyes that tracked movement like they'd been trained to. A security hub with monitors covering every angle of every entrance. A second gym with a sparring ring at the center, chalk dust on the floor, the smell of effort and discipline.The men nodded at Roman with easy familiarity. They looked at me with careful, neutral assessment. I stayed close to Roman's shoulder and smiled at no one. And guess what?Al

Chapter Twelve

IRINA VOLKOVEscape. Escape. Escape. Was all I could think of even when Nikolai’s steps became dangerously nearby. The hallway was empty. No guards in sight — the rotation gap I'd clocked on the tour, exactly where I'd calculated it would be. I moved fast, eyes forward, heart hammering against my ribs.A door at the end of the corridor. I had desperately hoped it would lead me outside the house. I reached for the handle—A hand closed around my arm and pulled me back in one smooth motion.I didn't need to turn around."Where are you going, malyshka?"Don't fucking Malyshka me!I turned anyway, because I wanted him to see my face when I answered."Away from you."Nikolai looked down at me with those ice-blue eyes, one brow slightly raised, utterly unbothered. Like I was a minor inconvenience. Like I hadn't just mapped his entire compound and timed his enforcers' rotations and made it further than anyone apparently expected."That would be a mistake," he said.His lips curled into a sm

Chapter Thirteen

IRINA VOLKOV (cont'd) The elevator opened into the penthouse. He carried me down the hall, pushed open my bedroom door with one hand, and set me down — not roughly, which somehow made it worse — on the edge of the bed. He straightened. Looked at me. The blood had tracked a thin line from his temple to his chin. He didn't touch it. "Stay," he said. "You're not my owner." "No." He held my gaze for a long moment. "But I'm the only thing standing between you and a city that will kill you. Remember that." He left. I heard him stop just outside it. Heard him say something quiet to whoever was stationed down the hall. I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>. NIKOLAI DRAGUNOV The first bottle shattered. Then the second. Third. Fourth. I worked through all six without stopping, the shots clean and precise even through the anger, because anger had never once affected my aim and I wasn't about to let it start now.

Chapter Fourteen

NIKOLAI DRAGUNOVI should have told her about Viktor tonight.I'd decided against it by the time I reached my study, poured two fingers of whiskey, and sat down with Roman's weekly territory reports spread across the desk. The decision had nothing to do with softness. It had to do with timing. She'd watched a man bleed in my dungeon, tried to run, hit me with a vase, and been carried back to her room in the span of a single afternoon. One more piece of devastating information tonight and she'd either shut down completely or do something reckless.Neither outcome served me.I pulled up the security feed on my secondary monitor — something I hadn't done before, which I noted without examining — and found her in her room. She was curled in the armchair by the window, a philosophy book open in her lap. Not performing calm. Actually calm, or close enough that the difference didn't matter. She turned a page and the corner of her mouth moved — not quite a smile, but adjacent to one.My baby

Chapter Fifteen

IRINA VOLKOVThree days after I made the proposal, Nikolai said yes.Not warmly. Not with any ceremony. He slid a single sheet of paper across his desk — formal, typed, outlining terms — and watched me read it with that particular stillness of his, like he was storing everything he observed for later use.The terms were reasonable. Surprisingly reasonable. Bratva intelligence work — hacking, social engineering, identity construction. A salary. Freedom of movement within the compound. No uniform, no oath, no pretense that I was anything other than what I was.Okay, good enough.I read to the bottom and looked up. "What happens when I want to leave? Permanently.""That's a conversation for later."I held his gaze for three seconds. Then I signed.Ughh! Wicked man.I told myself it was strategy. A longer leash was still movement. Movement meant opportunity. And working inside the operation meant access — to information, to systems, to the shape of things I hadn't been able to see from a

Chapter Seventeen

IRINA VOLKOVSomething had changed in the compound while I was in my room being bored.I noticed it the moment I stepped into the hallway — the density of it, the way the enforcers were positioned differently, more of them, closer together, the particular alertness of men who'd been given new instructions. Two of them flanked my door specifically. One tried not to look at me and failed.I looked at his gun. Then at him. Then kept walking.Viktor had made his move and Nikolai had responded by wrapping the building in an extra layer of controlled violence. Which meant the threat was real enough to take seriously, which meant my stepfather had found something useful to offer Alexei Morozov, which meant I was now a variable in a war between two Bratva organizations and my own survival instincts were telling me things my brain hadn't fully processed yet.Think. Don't panic. Think.I moved through the compound looking for Nikolai, which I noted without examining — that he had become the per

Chapter Eighteen

IRINA VOLKOVThe enforcer was gone by morning.I didn't ask what happened to him. I didn't want to know the specifics. Whether Nikolai had simply reassigned him or whether the man had been taken to that cold corridor in the basement and introduced to the cheese grater. Oops!Either way, the east hallway felt different when I walked through it after breakfast. Cleaner, somehow. Like a window had been opened.I noticed, and hated that I noticed, that Nikolai had acted on one sentence from me. No questions. No demanding I explain myself or prove what I'd seen. Just — gone.I filed it under things I am not going to think about and went to work.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Dmitri was already in the intelligence room when I arrived, two monitors running, a coffee going cold at his elbow in the way of someone who had forgotten it existed. He looked up when I came in, assessed me the way he always did. Quickly, thoroughly, without expression and looked ba

Chapter Nineteen

IRINA VOLKOVThe car was black, long, and moved through Moscow's Friday evening traffic with the particular ease of vehicles that don't have to worry about anyone getting in their way. I sat beside Nikolai in the back, a careful distance between us, watching the city slide past the tinted windows.Moscow at night was different from Moscow in daylight. Softer. The lights turning everything amber and gold, the Moskva River catching the reflection of the bridges, the spires of the old buildings cutting dark shapes against a sky that never went fully black in the city.I'd loved this city once, before I'd had to become invisible in it."What do I actually need to do tonight?" I asked, without turning from the window."Stay close. Observe. If Alexei approaches you directly, you don't engage alone." He said it simply, like instructions rather than restriction. "Other than that, it's a party, Irina. You're allowed to exist in it.""And what do I have to do in the ball? I'm not sure I'm going

Chapter Twenty

IRINA VOLKOVTwo glasses of wine into the evening and I had mapped the entire room.It was habit. The same thing I'd done in every café, every restaurant, every location I'd ever run a con in. Count the exits. Identify the variables. Know who's watching who and why. The skill had kept me alive for two years and it didn't switch off just because I wasn't running anything tonight.Or so I told myself.The truth was that the room was interesting. These people were interesting. The particular ecosystem of old money and new power and the careful performance of both. I recognized types I'd studied, had impersonated versions of, had extracted money from in one form or another over twenty-two months.I circled the room twice while Nikolai handled a conversation with a broad man in a grey suit who seemed to be apologizing for something at length. Roman materialized at my elbow from nowhere, a glass of something sparkling in each hand, wearing an expression of total contentment."You look like

Chapter Twenty One

NIKOLAI DRAGUNOVI didn't sleep.This wasn't unusual. Sleep had been a negotiation since I was nineteen years old, since the night I'd stood in a hospital corridor and been told my father was dead and felt the floor of everything I'd understood about the world shift permanently beneath me. In the years since, I'd learned to use the hours between two and five AM productively — reading, working, playing through chess problems that required enough concentration to crowd out everything else.Tonight the chess wasn't working at all.I sat at the board in my study, a glass of whiskey untouched at my elbow, and looked at the position I'd set up forty minutes ago without having made a single move. The pieces stood in their formation like they were waiting for me to remember what I was doing.The name on the program was sitting in my chest like a stone.I'd been looking for that name for thirteen years. Not actively though. Not with resources deployed and men in the field because I hadn't know

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