Page 35

35

Lev

The room smells like old paper and anger.

I lean against the far wall, arms crossed over my chest, as Viktor paces behind his desk. Zasha sits calmly in one of the leather chairs, quiet yet alert—he hasn’t spoken much all night, but I can sense the coiled tension in him like a blade sheathed for too long.

The secure phone on the desk lights up and vibrates once. Viktor grabs it before it rings again.

“Thiago,” he answers flatly.

I watch him closely, reading every flicker in his expression as the cartel boss delivers his end of the deal. Thiago’s voice is muffled through the speaker, but I hear enough—just enough.

Mendes never left the city.

He’s been tucked away in a brownstone in Hell’s Kitchen, hiding behind a handful of loyal cartel foot soldiers who still believe he matters. Thiago claims it was out of his hands—said Mendes lied, used back channels, pulled strings without clearance.

Doesn’t matter.

Viktor hangs up without a word and meets my gaze across the room. No theatrics. Just ice.

“He’s here,” Viktor says.

Zasha doesn’t blink. “How tight?”

“Three to four men on rotation outside. Possibly more inside. Surveillance tech. Nothing we can’t cut through.”

I push off the wall, blood already humming beneath my skin. “We go tonight.”

Zasha nods. “If he hears Thiago was asking around, he’ll bolt. We won’t get another chance.”

Viktor walks to the bar cart and pours himself a drink, but doesn’t sip. His hand is tight around the glass.

“This should be my revenge,” he says. “Alina is my sister. He tried to take her, tried to kill my niece or nephew before they ever had a chance to live.”

My jaw tightens. “I know.”

Viktor turns to me, his eyes hard. “So I should be the one to end him.”

I don’t raise my voice.

“I am the one who is going to marry her,” I say. “The child he was going to end is my blood; therefore, mother and child are both mine to protect.”

The words hit the air like a thrown gauntlet. Viktor stares at me, unmoving, with tension crackling between us like a lit fuse. Then he exhales through his nose- slow, controlled.

He sets the untouched drink down on the desk and steps around it. “You better make it hurt.”

“It will.”

Zasha rises from his chair, rolls his neck once, and then heads toward the weapons closet. “I’ll prep the gear. We go in and out, take him alive if we have to, but if it’s a clean shot—”

“He dies,” I finish.

Viktor grabs his coat and shrugs it on. “He dies either way.”

The three of us move in sync—old rhythms honed by years of collaboration and loyalty. We don’t need detailed plans; we are the plan.

As I check my weapon and slide a blade into the sheath at my back, I think of Alina. Of her small, shaking body in my arms. Of the bruises Mendes left. Of the fear in her voice when she begged him not to touch her, and I see red. I let it simmer low in my chest, where it burns cleanest. When we step out into the night, no one speaks. We’re going to hunt a monster. And I’m the one who gets to kill it.

Hell’s Kitchen is sleeping, but not for long.

The brownstone is located at the edge of the city, near the Port Authority, which is great for this operation. The estate looks ordinary—dark brick, black iron fence, a clipped tree casting shadows across the entry. But we know better. The silence is a lie. Inside, a man who deserves far worse than death is hiding behind men who don’t yet realize tonight will be their last.

I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles crack.

Zasha sits beside me in the passenger seat, checking the silencer on his pistol for the third time. He doesn’t speak; he doesn’t have to. In the back seat, Viktor is already slipping on his gloves, eyes sharp and mouth flat. Even in his silence, you can feel the weight of who he is—Pakhan, brother, enforcer, executioner.

But tonight, I lead because this is personal.

We pull into the alley two buildings away and cut the engine. From there, we move like shadows—dressed in black, armed to the teeth, and trained for moments like this.

I gesture with two fingers. Zasha heads toward the west side entrance. He’s our ghost—he’ll eliminate the two exterior guards without so much as a grunt.

Viktor trails behind me by five paces. He keeps an eye on our six, his stride unhurried yet lethal, like a lion stalking its prey. Leading him should feel strange. But it doesn’t.

We approach the service door. It is reinforced yet poorly wired—nothing but a relic. I reach into my pocket, pulling out a compact signal jammer and a pocket tool. In less than fifteen seconds, I short the alarm loop and slide the lock open with a soft click.

We’re in.

The hallway is narrow, stale with the scent of old smoke and bleach. No cameras—good. But I don’t trust luck. I never have. I give a sharp tap to the comm bead in my ear. “Z, west clear?”

A soft crackle. “Two down.”

“Rear’s clean,” Viktor mutters low behind me.

We move deeper into the building, step by step. We don’t talk again. We don’t need to.

We approach a room with light spilling out from beneath its closed door. I lift my fist, signalling a stop, and listen. The voices of two men drift to me, and I turn to Viktor. He nods once and takes up position outside the door.

I kick it in clean and fast.

The first man doesn’t even get a word out before Viktor’s silencer puts him down with a headshot.

The second lunges for his weapon, but I’m already across the room. With one twist of his wrist, a snap of the neck, he drops like a marionette with cut strings.

“Clear,” I whisper.

We press forward through the brownstone’s maze of staircases and quiet rooms. Each turn could be a trap. Each breath could be our last if we’re not sharp. But this is what we do. This is what we were built for.

A faint creaking sound comes from the floor above. I motion upward to indicate its source. Viktor nods. Zasha reappears from the shadows, blood on his shirt, blade in hand.

No one speaks as we ascend together. Mendes is upstairs. And we’re coming for him.

The upstairs hallway smells like money and cologne. Expensive wood floors. Velvet runners. A vase that probably costs more than most people’s yearly salary. And behind the last door, the ghost of my past is waiting.

We don’t knock; I kick it open.

The door slams against the wall with a crack, and Mendes scrambles to his feet from a leather chair. His eyes widen when he sees us. He doesn’t even reach for a weapon. He’s not that stupid.

“Viktor,” he blurts, trying to compose himself. “Look—this is a misunderstanding. I didn’t order anything—”

“Shut up,” Viktor says, cold as a glacier.

Mendes’s eyes jump to Zasha, who’s already closing the door behind us, his expression unreadable, his hands gloved and ready.

Then Mendes looks at me. And everything in him changes.

“Lev…” he says slowly. A sick smile stretches across his face. “Now that’s a face I haven’t seen in years. I’ll be damned.”

“No,” I reply, stepping closer. “You’ll be dead.”

His smirk falters. “Wait. Wait, wait. Listen, you know me. I didn’t mean anything personal. I wasn’t going to hurt her; I just wanted her as my bride.”

He tries to ease the tension in his voice, but it’s too late. The memories of being a raggedy teenager under him came flooding back. I was skinny. Starved. Cold. Running dope for this piece of shit in back alleys for scraps. I remember the fist that knocked me to the concrete; the gun pressed against my temple. I remember the bone-deep certainty that I was about to die over money I never even touched.

He treated me like garbage. And now he dares to look at me like we share history?

“You were nothing but a rabid dog with a crew,” I say. “And I was a kid.”

He puts his hands up, but I see the trembling. “You’re with Viktor now, right? You’ve made something of yourself. You think you’ve won. But you will always be nothing but that boy who I pulled from the gutters.”

Wrong words.

I grab him by the collar and slam him into the wall.

He gasps, the wind knocked out of him. I pull my knife from its sheath—not for the kill, just for the statement. I drag the tip down his cheek. Slowly. Deliberately. His whimper makes the hairs on my neck rise in satisfaction.

“You used to beat me for fun,” I whisper. “I remember every time you made me bleed just to feel powerful. Every time you called me nothing. Every time you used me.”

“I—I gave you a job!” he wheezes.

I punch him once, hard. Right in the mouth. Blood sprays across the floor.

“You gave me trauma,” I say.

Another punch. A rib cracks. He screams.

“Please—Lev—”

“For ten thousand dollars,” I hiss, grabbing his hair and yanking his head back, “you were going to kill me. A kid. For twenty grand. But now?”

I press my blade into the meat of his shoulder. “Now, I’m going to kill you… Not for twenty grand, but for touching what’s mine.”

He chokes on his blood as he tries to speak. “I…I…did not know.”

“You tried to force yourself on her. You tried to terminate my child. You didn’t just cross a line, Mendes.”

I lean in, my voice a breath.

“You declared war.”

His eyes dart to Viktor. “You going to let him do this?”

Viktor’s arms are crossed. “I would have loved to do it myself.”

I stare into Mendes’s pleading eyes, and at that moment, I don’t see power. I don’t see the soulless drug peddler. I see a coward bleeding and cornered. The thought of what he almost took from me fills me with rage, and I raise my gun, pressing it right between his eyes.

He tries one last time. “Lev, please—”

Boom.

The shot echoes, sharp and final. Mendes’s body slumps to the floor in a heap of flesh and regret. The silence after the gunshot is heavier than the blast itself. Blood pools beneath his head, soaking into the carpet. I stand over him for a long time. And then, slowly, I sheath my blade, holster my gun, and turn to Viktor.

“It’s done.”

He gives me a curt nod. Zasha’s already checking the hallway. I stare down at Mendes one last time, and my voice comes quiet.

“That was for Alina.”

Mendes’s body lies slumped at my feet, blood seeping into the thick Persian rug. His eyes are still open, blank and glassy, as if even in death he doesn’t understand that the world no longer spins around him.

Viktor gives Zasha a single nod.

Zasha pulls out his phone with no expression on his face. Two taps. That’s all it takes. Our cleaners will be here in fifteen minutes—ghost crew. No names, no prints, no mess left behind. The brownstone will look untouched by morning, like Mendes never existed.

I stare down at the man I once feared. The man who had almost ended me before I’d even begun. He looks smaller now. Human. And nothing about him deserves a second thought.

Viktor walks past me first. His boots thud slowly and heavily against the hardwood, but he doesn’t look back. He doesn’t need to. Zasha follows, maintaining his usual silent rhythm beside him. I linger for one last breath, then turn and walk after them.

Silence fills the air. Only the sound of three sets of footsteps echoes down the hallway, leaving behind a bloodstained corpse and a history we no longer owe anything to. We step out into the cold New York night. The street is quiet, and the air is crisp. Sirens howl faintly in the distance, but none are for us. For the first time since Alina was taken—since I left her broken and alone—my chest feels lighter.

Not because I fixed everything, but because I finally did something right. The past is dead now; Mendes is dead. The next time I look Alina in the eye, I won’t just be the man who came back for her; I’ll be the man who ended the nightmare.

The sun is just beginning to rise over the edge of Viktor’s estate, spilling warm light through the tall windows and casting a soft golden hue across the marble floors. I walk down the hall toward her room, each step measured, as the storm inside me finally stills.

I feel… clean.

Not because there’s no blood on my hands—there was. But because I can finally look her in the eyes and promise her my forever. I’ve trimmed my beard and ran a razor along my jaw, as if I could shave off the weight of the past with every stroke. I’m wearing dark joggers and a plain black tee, no weapons, no armor. I didn’t come to her today as an enforcer.

I came as her man.

When I push open her bedroom door, it’s quiet inside. She’s just finishing tying the drawstring on a loose pair of joggers, her damp hair brushed back over her shoulders. A faint line of moisture clings to her throat, the lingering aftereffect of the quick shower she takes every morning—she says it’s the only thing that makes her feel like her body still belongs to her.

And God… seeing her like this?

Her face is fresh, her skin glowing, and her belly is still flat, but the sight of her like this knocks the wind out of me.

Our eyes lock, and my heart flips in my chest like I’m seventeen and stupid again.

“I thought you’d be resting,” she says gently, like she wasn’t expecting to see me yet.

I step inside. “I couldn’t.”

She studies me for a beat. Her eyes trail over the clean line of my jaw, my casual attire, and the softness in my expression. She instinctively knows it’s over. She doesn’t ask how it went. Doesn’t need to.

“I’m glad it’s over.”

I nod. “It’s over.”

Her throat works around the emotion I know is climbing there, but she holds herself still. “How do you feel?”

A flicker flashes behind my eyes—cold cement under my knees, blood filling my mouth, the steel barrel of Mendes’s gun pressed against my temple.

Twenty thousand dollars. That’s all I was worth to him back then.

But now…

I look at her. At us.

“Like I finally buried the boy Mendes tried to kill.”

Her face softens as she opens her arms to me. And I go to her like I was made to.

She sits on the edge of the bed, and I lower myself beside her, one hand instinctively wrapping around her waist. The other cradles her face.

There are no shadows between us anymore. No secrets. No ghosts. Just her. And me. And the weightless silence of peace.

She reaches for me, her eyes soft but shining with a fierce intensity. She guides my other hand to her belly, as if to say this is our beginning. I sit beside her, cradling her in my arms. The silence thickens—but it’s not heavy; it’s sacred.

And then we kiss. It’s profound, committed- a vow sealed within our souls. Not a fleeting thing, but something profound, as if we’ve both stopped running.

I’ve finally found my way home, and it is not a building but a person. I will never let the world touch her like that again. Not while I breathe. Not while I’m hers.