Chapter 178: Two Ivanou brothers

Sienna had spent hours buried in her screens, and slowly, piece by piece, the picture had started to come together.

She found a birth registry first, tucked deep in a database that had clearly not been touched in years. Don Capri’s name was nowhere on it, but Aliya’s birth mother was. Sienna traced the woman’s name back through old records, old news clippings, old court documents, until she found what she was looking for: a relationship, brief but documented, between the woman and Don Capri.

Which meant Aliya could very well be Don Capri’s illegitimate daughter. A child he had taken in and quietly raised as his own. But that alone wasn’t enough. It didn’t confirm not fully that Aliya wasn’t Katalya Ivanov.

So Sienna dug further. Deeper. Into the Ivanov family itself.

That was when things grew strange.

She found fragments of hidden files, buried under layers of deleted records and overwritten data, the kind of digital scrubbing that only happens when someone with real resources wants something erased from existence entirely.

Somewhere in the wreckage of those files, she found something unexpected the Ivanovs had once been two brothers. Twins. And one of them had vanished without a trace, decades ago, with barely a mention left behind.

She also learned that the Ivanov family had not always been what they were now. When they first arrived in the Middle East, they had been honest businessmen. Legitimate. No empire built on fear back then. No white mansions guarded by small armies.

Everything she uncovered only left her with more questions than answers.

She was still hunched over her keyboard, Marcus seated close beside her, both of them quietly piecing together what they’d found, when the door opened.

Viktor stepped inside.

Sienna’s fingers froze over the keys for half a second before she casually angled the screen away, doing her best to look like she’d been doing absolutely nothing important.

"I know what you two are up to," Viktor said, arms crossing over his chest.

"We didn’t do anything," Sienna said quickly.

"Marcus." Viktor’s gaze shifted, sharp and pointed. "Even you."

Marcus lifted both hands slightly, giving Viktor a look that clearly said don’t put this on me. "You know how stubborn your wife can be," he said.

Sienna shot him a glare the unmistakable you little snitch look but Marcus only shrugged, entirely unbothered.

"Alright, fine," Sienna sighed, turning back to Viktor. "I’ll stop. I don’t want to poke the man." She paused. "But I think I’ve found enough."

In her mind, the pieces were already falling into place. Whoever Aliya really was, she wasn’t Don Konstantin’s daughter, not with any certainty, anyway. And the don himself had never actually confirmed it. He’d simply seen a necklace and decided that was proof enough.

Maybe, Sienna thought, he wanted it to be true so badly that he never bothered to ask the right questions.

"You promise?" Viktor asked, watching her carefully, unconvinced but too tired to fight it further.

"Yes," Sienna said. Then, without missing a beat, she turned her full attention back to him, all business now. "Any progress? What’s the plan?"

"I will have my trusted men come in," Viktor said, pacing slightly now, his mind clearly working through the logistics as he spoke. "But it will take weeks to cross the border without raising suspicion. Until then, I can take out the men in our house. Marcus and I can handle them."

"There are more than twenty of them," Marcus said.

"Forty men, actually," Sienna cut in, "with machine guns."

Both men turned to look at her.

"And since Marcel and Elena are working with them," she continued, counting things off almost mechanically, her eyes narrowing slightly as she worked through it, "it means they already know where you keep all your weapons. They’ve taken charge of them. Aliya is in your room she knows exactly what you kept in there." She paused, letting the numbers settle.

"Which leaves us with forty armed men, two vipers, and two big fools to fight with what your three pistols?"

Viktor blinked, genuinely caught off guard. "Wow," he said slowly. "You counted them."

He considered himself an observant man. He noticed things most people missed. But he hadn’t pieced together half of what she’d just laid out in a matter of seconds.

"Well," Sienna said, a small note of pride creeping into her voice, "I’m observant too."

"But boss," Marcus said, frowning, "you used to keep mansion guns here, in the master’s bedroom."

"He took them out the second day I moved into this room," Sienna said simply.

Viktor’s head turned sharply toward her. He hadn’t known she was aware of that. He’d done it quietly, without telling her, partly so she wouldn’t feel even more frightened than she already had been in those first days at the mansion and partly, if he was honest with himself, because some small, cautious part of him had worried what she might do with a room full of weapons if she ever got upset enough.

"So what’s the plan?" Marcus asked, breaking the brief silence.

"Leave them to me," Sienna said. "I mean.. let’s wait for the reinforcements. And I need you both to keep calm in the meantime." She rubbed her temple lightly, exhaling.

"I’m really tired of being cooped up in here." She pushed back from the chair and stood, rolling her shoulders.

"I’m going to take a walk," she said. "I’ll come with you," Viktor said immediately. "I want to go alone," Sienna said.

"No way, Sienna." Viktor’s voice hardened, the earlier softness gone. "Not while those vipers are in our home."

"You haven’t had any rest since those people got here," Sienna said, her voice softening as she looked at him.

"I know your blood is boiling to kill them. Believe me, the time will come when you will. And I won’t even stop you. Not this time." She reached out, resting a hand lightly against his chest, feeling the tension still coiled beneath his shirt.

"But we need to be calm. Try not to start a war with that man." She always called him that man. Not Don Konstantin. Not by name. Somehow, saying his name out loud felt more dangerous than the sound of his voice over the phone, as though speaking it might summon him into the room.