Page 28

Rain streaks the windshield in thin, steady lines, the kind that doesn’t wash the world clean—just makes it quieter. Heavier.

Our convoy cuts through the back roads like a knife, tires kicking up mist that clings to the darkness.

Three SUVs, staggered formation, engines growling low beneath the sound of the rain.

The headlights slice through shadowed trees and winding turns, casting fleeting glimpses of wet asphalt and glistening branches.

I sit in the lead vehicle, unmoving, jaw clenched, eyes locked on the screen mounted just above the dash.

A single blinking dot pulses on the map in front of me.

Alina’s last known signal. Her location, still unconfirmed, but close.

The silence inside the vehicle is absolute.

My men speak with their weapons now, not words.

Their eyes flick toward me and then away again, the pressure of my mood thick in the air like static before lightning.

They feel it. They always do. The tension, the coiled rage, the focus that leaves no room for error.

I haven’t spoken since we left the city. There’s nothing left to say.

In my mind, I see her as she must be now—bound, afraid, thrown into some stinking room, surrounded by filth and shadows and men who think she’s just a girl. I imagine her flinching at every sound, breathing through panic, wondering if I’ll come for her.

The image blurs my vision with fury.

I blink once. Then again. It doesn’t go away, only sharpens.

I’ve already imagined a hundred ways to kill Jackson. Some quick. Most slow. All of them precise, intentional, crafted for suffering.

When I get there—when I take Alina back from their hands—I will make sure the ground remembers their screams.

Dima leans forward from the passenger seat, tapping the screen twice, then pointing to a blinking red boundary.

“We’re close,” he says, voice low. “Isolated farmhouse. No registered owners. No utility records. Looks clean on the outside.”

“Kill box,” I say.

He nods once. “Perfect for it.”

Of course it is. They want me charging in blind, arrogant, desperate. They want to gut me in front of her. End the Bratva’s most feared enforcer in a farmhouse in the woods, with my pride bleeding out at her feet.

What they don’t understand—what they never understood—is that I am never blind.

I am certain.

My hand rests lightly on the pistol at my thigh. Checked. Loaded. Ready. Another in the small of my back. A knife strapped under my jacket. Each one a promise.

Every second we get closer, the calm inside me deepens.

Not peace. Not hesitation. Just control.

The kind of control I need to keep the vision in my head from overtaking everything—the one where I find her dead, broken, used. The one where I was too late.

Even now—alone, terrified, locked away—I know there is steel in Alina’s spine. I’ve seen it. Felt it. In her voice, in her stare, in the way she said my name like she hated me and needed me in the same breath.

I will not let her be a casualty. I will not let her be mine and then be lost.

“ETA?” I ask.

“Ten minutes,” Dima replies.

I nod.

The rain picks up slightly, whispering against the roof. The road narrows. The trees press in closer. The last stretch before the slaughter.

I don’t know what I’ll find behind those walls, but I know what I’m bringing with me.

Hell.

I haven’t slept, not even for a second.

***

Alina

The cold, sour air presses down on me, and my skin itches from it, my lungs feel tight, and my nerves are flayed raw. I pace in tight, anxious circles, eyes glued to the barred window like I expect something—anything—to appear out there in the dark.

All I see is mist and trees.

I’m a prisoner waiting for execution.

A creak echoes from downstairs—wood bending under a heavy boot. Then raised voices, muffled and sharp. I can’t make out the words, only the tone. Then silence again. Too sudden.

Something is off.

The quiet isn’t peace.

It’s expectation.

I freeze in place, staring at the cracks in the floorboards like they might offer me answers. The house feels alive now, holding its breath. Something is coming. I can feel it in my bones.

He’s coming. Andrei.

I don’t know how I know. Maybe I’m imagining it. Maybe I want it so badly that my mind is inventing signs. I feel him out there. Like gravity. Like something inevitable drawing closer.

If I know it—so does Matías.

He isn’t hiding this. He wants Andrei to come. He wants him walking straight into a trap, chest bared, teeth bared. He wants a spectacle.

He wants blood.

I rush to the window again, fingers clawing at the frame, nails scraping against rotted wood. The bars are solid, rusted deep into the stone. I kick the wall beneath them, again and again, the thud of my foot the only answer I get. Nothing budges. Nothing moves.

No escape.

My breath comes fast, then faster. The first touch of panic claws at my ribs.

If he walks into this, he’s going to die.

I slam my palm against the wall. Then again.

Again.

The panic shifts, changes—calcifying into something colder. Sharper.

If I can’t stop what’s coming, I have to do something when it arrives.

I wipe the sweat from my palms onto the front of my pants. I look around the room—bare mattress, broken floorboards, cracked walls. Nothing useful. Nothing sharp. Nothing I can turn into a weapon.

Maybe I don’t need a weapon, maybe I just need to be ready.

I pull the thin sheet from the mattress, twisting it into a rope. It’s pitiful. Probably useless. But it gives my hands something to do, something to grip when the world starts to spin.

I hear footsteps, closer now. Heavier. Multiple sets—too many.

The floor creaks beneath them.

My heart hammers once, hard, against my sternum.

I back into the corner of the room, clutching the twisted sheet like it might matter, eyes locked on the door.

They’re coming.

***

Andrei

The convoy halts in silence.

Engines hum low under the steady hiss of rain. Mist curls off the blacktop, wrapping around the tires as the doors open in unison. I step out first, boots hitting wet gravel, gun already drawn. The cold doesn’t touch me. The rain might as well be dust.

Dima is at my side immediately, his coat plastered to his frame, rifle ready. He gives a sharp series of hand signals. Our men break off, silent and focused, slipping into the darkness like wolves. No noise. No hesitation.

This isn’t an assault, it’s an execution.

We move fast. Surgical. No shouting. No wasted movement. They’ve had their chance. We don’t offer second ones.

The first two guards don’t even have time to lift their weapons. A muffled shot—then another—and they collapse into the mud, necks snapped back, eyes wide with the surprise of dying.

The house looms ahead, squat and rotting beneath the weight of the storm. A perfect place for rats.

By the time someone inside realizes what’s happening, I’m already through the back door.

The house erupts around me.

Gunfire bursts from the upper windows, shattering glass, splintering wood. Screams follow—short, confused, panicked. A flashbang goes off down the hall. Light cuts through the smoke, white and brutal.

I don’t flinch. I move through the chaos like a shadow.

Ruthless. Calm. Precise.

My footsteps echo across the warped floorboards. The shape of the rooms comes back to me fast—Dima’s briefing, the satellite images, the terrain. I know every angle. Every corner.

A man rounds the hallway, rifle in hand, finger tightening on the trigger.

Too slow. I shoot him once, center mass, and he drops before his knees can even buckle.

Another guard bolts for the front door—panic all over him, weapon forgotten. I raise my gun and fire once. He crumples in the doorway, face down in the mud.

Cowards always run.

“Second floor!” Dima’s voice cuts through the gunfire. “Back room!”

My chest tightens—not from fear. From focus.

Alina. Upstairs. That’s all that matters.

***

Alina

The footsteps outside my door are fast. Heavy.

My heart lodges in my throat as I back toward the wall, fists clenched, breath held—until I hear the first bang.

Then a second.

The door crashes open.

Andrei stands there, a storm made flesh.

He’s soaked in rain and blood, his black coat hanging heavy against his frame, his gun still smoking. His chest heaves, but his eyes are steady—focused—sweeping the room until they land on me. For a heartbeat, everything inside me collapses with relief.

I stumble toward him, and he catches me. My fingers fist in his shirt, clinging to the only real thing in the world.

“It’s a trap,” I gasp. “They’re waiting for you—”

“I figured,” he growls, already pulling me close, already moving.

Gunfire explodes from downstairs.

The sound is deafening—screams, the pop of automatic weapons, the crash of splintering wood. My pulse surges. No time. No breath. Just instinct.

He spins, placing me behind him as bullets punch through the walls. His back is broad and unyielding, his hand tight on mine, dragging me through the doorway.

Ortega’s men pour into the hallway. Dark shapes with rifles raised and murder in their eyes.

Andrei opens fire. Two go down instantly, headshots precise and brutal.

I stumble over a body—one of the guards—and my foot hits a pistol, slick with blood. I don’t think. I grab it, fingers slippery, heart screaming inside my chest.

Another man charges around the corner.

I raise the weapon. My hands shake as I pull the trigger.

He goes down hard—shot low, screaming, blood gurgling from his mouth.

My stomach turns. I want to vomit. I want to cry.

I keep moving.

The hallway becomes a warzone.

Gunfire. Shattered glass. The stink of blood and metal. Shouts echo from every direction. A body crashes through a banister. Another slams into the wall beside us.

We move like one thing, Andrei ahead of me, every step shielding, defending, destroying. He never looks back—but he never lets go of me.

Every bullet he fires is deliberate. Every breath I take is because he’s keeping me alive.

We fight our way down the stairs, over corpses, through smoke, through screams. I don’t know where we’re going—I only know I won’t let go.

Not now, not when he came for me.

***

Andrei

The lower level reeks of blood and gunpowder.

Shell casings litter the floor, bodies sprawled across broken furniture, drywall shredded by stray rounds. Smoke coils through the corridor, thick and biting, clinging to the walls and seeping into the air like it belongs there.

I hear the click of a hammer before I see him.

Matías.

He steps out from the main room like he owns the place, suit torn at the shoulder, face smeared with someone else’s blood, but grinning like the devil.

A pistol dangles from his hand. His eyes flick past me—to Alina, then back again.

He smirks. “All this,” he drawls, voice too smooth, too casual, “for a girl?”

I step forward once, slow, controlled. The rage is there—it’s always there—but I’ve learned how to use it. Let it sharpen, not explode.

“You touched what’s mine.”

The words leave my mouth like steel. Final. Absolute.

Matías’s smile twitches at the corner. His finger curls tighter on the trigger.

Then everything detonates.

He fires. I fire.

The world narrows to a heartbeat.

A flash. A thundercrack.

Pain rips across my shoulder, hot and slicing—but I don’t stop. Don’t fall.

I see my bullet land—Matías stumbles, a grunt escaping his throat, blood blooming beneath his ribs.

Alina screams behind me—sharp, broken—but she doesn’t fall either. She stays standing.

A breath. A blink.

Matías staggers back, clutching his side, fury and desperation replacing arrogance in a single second. His men surge in from the other hall, laying down cover fire, yelling in Spanish. He disappears behind them like smoke, dragged into the shadows, leaving a trail of red behind him.

Coward.

His escape is sloppy, panicked. It won’t save him.

Not for long.

Alina is at my side, her eyes wide, skin pale beneath the dirt and blood. She’s trembling—bad—but upright.

I reach for her without thinking, one hand gripping the side of her face, cradling it roughly, turning it toward the light.

I scan for blood that’s not mine. Wounds I missed. Anything.

“You’re hit,” she gasps, reaching for my shoulder.

“Doesn’t matter,” I mutter. “Are you hurt?”

She shakes her head fast. “No. No, I’m fine. I’m—” Her voice catches, tears threatening again.

She doesn’t cry, she doesn’t collapse. She’s fire. Barely breathing, but burning.

I pull her in. My arm wraps around her back, pressing her into my chest, grounding both of us in something real.

“You came,” she whispers against me, voice raw with disbelief.

My grip tightens. I don’t kiss her. Don’t say anything soft. That’s not what this moment is for.

“Always.”

One word. Cold. Certain.

She nods once, her body sagging against mine for just a second before she catches herself.

We aren’t safe yet, but she’s alive.

I got to her in time.

Now Matías Ortega knows exactly what it means to fuck with me.