KNOX’S POV

The car is waiting. The driver knows where to go because Rayana arranged everything while I was busy drinking myself into a productive stupor, and the route from the airport to the Volkov estate is one I could drive blindfolded.

Every turn mapped in muscle memory from a childhood spent being driven to and from this place in the back of cars with tinted windows, because Alexei didn’t want the neighbours to see his son’s bruises.

The gates appear. Iron, old, the Volkov crest embedded in metalwork that my great-grandfather commissioned and my father never bothered to maintain.

The Volkov packs have always been in North America —...