Page 21

Calmly, I leaned against the desk, folding up my bloodied sleeves while I watched Damir curl his fingers into fists and ram his knuckles into the man pressed up against the wall.

Sweat trickled down his face, drenching the collar of his shirt, and he clenched his left arm, swinging it into the man’s face. Heavy grunts echoed in the room but the man was still on his feet, proving to be a lot tougher than we thought.

Damir gave me a look over his shoulder, silently asking whether to continue. I circled a finger in the air, urging him on. And the shouts continued again.

The body at my feet twitched once, then stilled. I watched, feeling nothing, as the crimson pool darkened the rug. He wasn’t dead. Not yet, anyway. But he’d been an accomplice to the screaming bastard by the wall and had to take his own share of the package.

The rats sold us out to Customs at the dock, and they’d done it with their scumbag partners, who’d been stealing our crates.

Eventually, when we were done getting names, I was going to fucking end the both of them. It was always the same. A life ended, another name crossed off, and I’d move forward, unburdened.

I’d stopped keeping count years ago.

Faces blurred together—pleading eyes, curses spat through broken teeth, the last ragged gasps of men who thought they were untouchable or smart enough to stab me in the back and get away with it. None of it mattered. They all ended the same.

Maybe there was a time when I hesitated. When I thought there was a line between who I was and what I did. But that line had long since disappeared. Now, there was only the focus and determination of getting the job done.

Watching Damir deliver blows in quick succession to the groaning asshole, I never felt better. And my head had never been clearer.

I pushed myself off the desk, stalking closer to Damir. Putting a hand on his shoulder, he stepped aside, and the groaning man fell to his knees before me, his breath coming in ragged gasps, blood dripping from his split lip onto the floor.

His eyes searched mine, begging for mercy, but there was none.

“You know why you’re here.” I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t need to. His fear did all the talking.

“Please,” he stammered, spitting out blood. “Miron, I…I can fix this. I swear I didn’t need to. My wife is sick. I needed the money. But I can fix this, I promise.”

I sighed and crouched down, leveling my gaze with his.

“You think this is about fixing?” I murmured. “You stole from us. Lied to my face. Had the feds breathing down our necks, and, on top of that, your stupid squad created big trouble that called the Pakhan’s attention. That isn’t something you fix. It’s something you pay for. And I don’t care if your wife is sick. You should have come to me for the fucking money!”

He whimpered as I pulled my knife from its sheath between my belt. A beautiful thing, it was. Sleek, sharp, and ever-ready to do the job. I let the tip trace a slow path across his cheek, the pressure just enough to break the skin, to make him flinch.

“You know, you had your chances to come forward and own up to your shit. Maybe then I’d have let you live. You could have gotten your boys to return the things they stole before I put Damir on the job, but you didn’t. You thought you wouldn’t get caught,” I continued, almost bored. “I let you breathe longer than you deserved. And yet here we are.”

His sobs started then, pitiful, desperate. I’d seen it all before. Regret meant nothing when it came too late.

I pressed the blade to his throat, not enough to kill. Not yet. Just enough for him to feel how close the end was. My other hand gripped his jaw, forcing his teary eyes to meet mine.

“Tell me,” I said, tilting my head. “Was it worth it?”

His lips trembled, but he had no answer. I smiled. Then I gripped his neck and started slicing through the thick skin of his throat.

The man’s screams tore through the room. Blood dripped from my knife, slow and steady, onto the floor beneath him. I saw the color drain from his face. I watched him writhe, his breath coming in ragged sobs.

Then….

A creak. Barely a whisper of sound. But enough to know that someone else was here.

Damir’s head snapped to the door at the same time as mine did, and Hazel stood there.

Frozen. Eyes wide, breath shallow, hands trembling at her sides. For a moment, neither of us moved or made a sound, except the man in front of me, gasping for breath.

The look in her eyes, filled with horror and disbelief, cut deeper than any blade ever had. She shouldn’t have seen this. Not me like this.

I let out a slow breath, adjusting my grip on the knife. “You shouldn’t be here. How the fuck did you get here? Who the fuck let you in?”

Hazel didn’t answer. Didn’t blink. Just stared. At me. At the man. At the blood. She looked pale and was trembling. Her wide, disbelieving eyes flicked between me and the other bloodied body beside my desk.

She looked sick. Disgusted. Like she was seeing a stranger instead of the man she’d come to find.

She had something to say to me—I saw it in the way her lips parted, in the way her hands clenched at her sides. But whatever words she had died the second she saw me like this. The second she saw what I really was.

I clenched my jaw. “Hazel.”

Nothing.

A muscle in my neck ticked. I’d seen men beg for their lives, seen them break, seen them turn into hollow shells. But this…her silence, it made my pulse hammer in a way no enemy ever had.

“Turn around and close the door behind you.”

She didn’t move.

“Hazel, I need you to fucking leave this room right now, damn it!”

Jerking like a restarted engine, she scrambled out of the room with shaking hands.

Combing my fingers through my hair, I rose to my full height and handed Damir the blade. He didn’t look happy about her interference, but I didn’t fucking care.

“Take care of him. Don’t let him bleed out just yet until I handle her.”

“Miron, you know we have to—”

“I swear to God, I’m going to run my fist through your fucking chest, Damir! For once, just shut the fuck up and do what I say!”

I left him in the silence, barging out of the room with my heart doing strange flips in my chest when I saw her pressed against the wall, with her arms wrapped around her like a shield and tears flooding down her cheeks.

I took a step forward, and she flinched. A small movement, barely there, but I caught it. And I hated it.

I hated that she was afraid of me because I knew she had every reason to be.

“I need you to tell me how you got inside. Did someone tip you off?”

“W—what?” She had a hard time looking me in the face and speaking. “No. No, I came…I searched your file to know where I could find you. I wanted to see you. It’s a Friday; I guessed you wouldn’t be home. Miron, it’s a club. Believe me or don’t, but I just walked in here, and…I heard crying.”

“There was no one out front?”

“No one.” Hazel shook her head, and as if she suddenly remembered, her eyes grew wide again. “Miron, that man—what are you planning to do to him?”

“Hazel….”

“Oh, God.” She broke down, letting herself crumble and fold into a sobbing mess. “You were going to…weren’t you?”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to, and don’t stick your nose in business that doesn’t concern you.”

I was cold deliberately to push her far away from what her eyes had seen. I knew what this was going to do to her; it would break her, mess with her head, and give her sleepless nights. And I felt like a fool for being the one to cause that.

“Please.” She surprised us both by springing forward, close enough for me to smell the cinnamon shampoo in her hair. “Please, Miron. I know I have no right. I don’t know what he did, but I’m sure whatever it is, you can forgive him. You can report him to the police, just don’t…don’t kill him. Please.”

The way she still believed in mercy, in second chances. She had no idea that men like me didn’t grant them. When she mentioned the police, it dawned on me that she hadn’t understood the magnitude of what she’d walked into. We had more of the goddamn police force on our side than the side of the law. We were justice. Only a few people like Jeffery found their way around the lacunas to loop us into the civilian system.

Seeing the tears in her eyes disturbed me. Watching her cry touched me in places I didn’t know existed. On reflex, I lifted my fingers to wipe them away, and, again, she moved away; this time, her gaze brushed over the blood stains on my hands and shirt.

Silently, I backed away from her and walked into the room. Damir was holding the knife to the bleeding man’s neck, and his eyes met mine at the door.

“Let him go.”

I could count the number of times I’d seen Damir lose control. This moment was another one on the list. Without warning, he struck the man with his shoes. Again. And again.

“Damir!”

He stopped. “Do you want me to take him to a hospital, too?”

I knew Damir was being sarcastic, but that was what Hazel would have wanted. Her heart and entire soul were just too fucking pure, and somehow I knew I’d pick that instead of leaving her to believe I was a monster.

“Dump him at the nearest one.”

Heaving, and without so much as an acknowledgment, Damir dragged him by the arms and tugged him through another exit door in my office. He had his reservations, and they were clear to me. We never had to let traitors go. Never. The risk of letting them go was higher than when they hadn’t been caught.

But we’d found them and taught them a lesson they weren’t going to forget anytime soon. If they tried shit again, I knew exactly how their lives were going to end.

I shut the door and turned around to find her watching me. “Damir’s taking him to a hospital. If he still fucking dies, know that’s on him. Now, let’s go somewhere else where we can talk. You said you wanted to me, and if you had to come all the way here, then I assume it’s important.”

Her chest heaved with relief, and she pushed herself off the wall.

I moved toward the left, hoping she was following, but in a blink, I noticed she was walking the other way—away from me.

Fuck.

“Hazel, where are you going?”

No answer.

“He’s taking them to a fucking hospital. What else do you want?” I called out again.

She didn’t answer, and I was forced to watch her small back and curvy hips disappear through a dark corridor. A muscle in my jaw twitched. Right now, for the first time in years, I felt something close to fear.

Not for myself, but for her. For the possibility of losing her.