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Roman’s jaw tightens. I can see the wolf in the muscles cording along his neck, how his hands flex at his sides, fingers curling and uncurling.

“So we do nothing,” he says. His voice is flat but the flatness is a lid on something boiling.

“We do something precise. We find out who DeSanto is buying from. We find out who’s financing him. We cut the supply chain and let him starve. When he’s desperate enough to make a mistake, we take what he has left and we do it cleanly.”

“That takes weeks.”

“It takes as long as it takes.”

“Meanwhile he’s on our territory, taking our materials, telling every crew in the city that the Voronovs are soft.”

“No one who matters thinks we’re soft.”

“Perception is currency, Dominic.” He steps closer. Not a challenge, not quite, but the space between us shrinks and I feel his wolf testing mine, the invisible pressure of a beta pushing against the alpha’s boundary. “Every day we let this slide, we lose ground.”

“With humans?” I ask.

“With everyone.”

I know exactly what he means. The old wolves watch human territory the same way they watch pack territory. A weak alpha doesn’t get to choose which kind of challenge comes first.

“Give me two weeks,” I say. “If the supply chain approach hasn’t produced results, we revisit.”

“Revisit.” He says the word like it tastes bad.

“Two weeks, Roman.”

He stares at me. The wolf is right there, right behind his eyes, and for a second I think he’s going to push harder. If he does, I’ll have to put him down, not physically but with the full weight of alpha authority, the kind of dominance that doesn’t leave room for debate. I don’t want to do that. Roman is my brother. He’s also the only wolf in this pack whose instincts I trust as much as my own, even when they point in the wrong direction.

He breaks eye contact first. Not submission. Deference, which is different, and which he’ll remind me of later.

“Two weeks,” he says. He turns and walks out and doesn’t close the door behind him, which is his way of saying the conversation isn’t over, just paused.

I stand in my office alone and think about what Roman said. Perception is currency. He’s right. In the world we inhabit, the human underworld that runs parallel to the pack’s territory, perception is the difference between stability and chaos. If the DeSanto crew thinks we’re weak, others will think it too. The ecosystem I’m trying to manage is built on a foundation of fear, and fear requires maintenance.

But I can’t maintain it the way Roman wants. Not now. Not with a federal task force pulling at our financial records, not with Sophia inside our operation building a mental map of our money, not with the pack’s existence balanced on a knife edge between secrecy and exposure. One wrong move, one body that gets found, one police report that connects to the task force investigation, and the systems I’ve spent decades building come apart.

I need Roman’s instincts. I need his aggression, his willingness to do what I won’t. But I need it on a leash, and he’s straining against the leash harder every month.

I sit at my desk and open the DeSanto file Lex assembled. I read it with one part of my brain while the other part does what it always does now, what it’s done every waking moment for three weeks.

It reaches for her.

Not physically. I’m in my office. She left for the day nearly an hour ago, and there’s a city between us. But the bond doesn’t operate on geography. It operates on something deeper, something wired into what I am. Usually it gives me impressions. Emotional textures rather than facts.

Tonight, it gives me cold. Movement. Unease. My attention lifts from the file.

Sophia.

The wolf rises instantly. I tell myself there are a dozen reasons she could be outside. Dinner. An errand. A walk. Then another pulse comes through the bond. Her heart accelerating. Fear maybe?

I’m out of my chair before I consciously decide to move.

Twenty minutes later, I’m standing beneath the Kinzie bridge watching her run toward me through the dark. I tell myself I’m checking the perimeter of her running route, assessing security gaps. Making sure no one from the DeSanto crew, or anyone else with an interest in the Voronov organization, is tracking the woman who lives in our building and works in our office.

That’s the operational justification. The truth is simpler.

I followed her.