Page 59 of Rescuing Ally, Part 2 (CHARLIE Team: Guardian Hostage Rescue Specialists #8)

“You laid hands on Malia.” Walt’s voice breaks slightly, emotion bleeding through professional composure. “Bruised her. Hurt her. Made her afraid to be touched.”

He doesn’t hesitate. A single knee strike to Malfor’s gut, delivered with enough force to lift the broken man off the carpet. Malfor folds like origami, retching blood and bile onto expensive marble that will never come clean.

“She flinches when I try to hold her.” Walt grabs Malfor by what’s left of his hair, dragging his face up to meet eyes that burn with quiet fury. “She can’t let me touch her without panicking.”

The combat knife appears in Walt’s hand like magic, sliding between ribs. Not fatal—Walt’s too good of a medic to make killing mistakes. But agonizing. The blade finds nerve clusters and twists, painting new colors on the canvas of Malfor’s suffering.

“That’s for every time she woke up screaming,” Walt says quietly, twisting the knife one final time before stepping back.

Carter approaches last, and everyone in the room feels the temperature drop. Dead-eyed fury radiating like heat signature from a man who’s seen too much, lost too much, forgiven too little. The detective who’s spent his career finding justice for victims finally faces a monster who deserves none.

“You cut off Jenna’s fingers.” Carter’s voice carries no emotion whatsoever—flat, professional, matter-of-fact. “Two of them. Made her watch while you did it.”

He lifts Malfor’s trembling right hand, almost tenderly. Places it carefully on the blood-slicked marble desk, fingers splayed like a pianist preparing for a performance.

“You took two. I’m taking four.” Carter draws his blade—not a combat knife, but a surgical scalpel. Precision instrument for precision work.

The first finger separates cleanly at the knuckle. Blood arcs across white marble like abstract art painted in arterial spray. Malfor’s scream rises to frequencies that shatter what’s left of his dignity.

Second finger. Same joint. Same precision. Same arterial spray painting walls with the crimson evidence of justice served one digit at a time.

“She can’t write anymore,” Carter continues conversationally, working with the precision of a craftsman. “Can’t hold a coffee cup properly. Can’t type without pain.”

Third finger. Fourth finger.

By now, Malfor is incoherent with shock. Blood loss is combining to shut down everything except the capacity for suffering. He sobs without dignity, teeth chattering like broken machinery as pain detonates through neural pathways designed to process far less trauma.

Carter steps back, blade clean, expression unchanged. The cop who’s seen every variety of human evil, finally getting to balance scales that have been tilted toward injustice for too long.

“Your turn,” Ethan says to me, stepping aside.

The storm outside reaches crescendo as I approach what’s left of Alexei Malfor. Lightning illuminates mountain peaks while thunder provides a soundtrack for the final movement of this symphony of vengeance.

“Hank died because of you.” My fourth shot takes him in the chest, puncturing lung tissue and sending arterial blood splashing across expensive art that will never be worth cleaning. “You shot him and made me watch him die.”

The fifth shot shatters his shoulder, bone fragments mixing with his blood. Malfor’s breath comes in ragged gasps as his body begins the final shutdown sequence, systems failing one by one like lights going out in a dying city.

“And now you get to experience what he did,” I continue, watching life leak from eyes that no longer hold calculation or malice—just animal terror facing inevitable extinction. “Bleeding out. Knowing death is coming. Having time to think about every evil choice that brought you here.”

His expensive watch still ticks on his wrist, marking time he no longer has. Swiss precision counting down to justice delivered in full.

“The difference between you and him,” I add, standing slowly and looking down at the wreckage of a man who thought himself untouchable, “is that Hank died surrounded by people who loved him. While those who hate you, will watch you take your final breaths and be damn happy about it.”

The light slowly fades from his eyes as arterial pressure drops below sustainable levels. Blood pools around his body while his heartbeat grows weaker, fainter, counting down to the moment when Alexei Malfor becomes nothing more than expensive meat cooling on expensive carpet.

Justice served.

Blood debt paid.

Every injury avenged in full.

Hank can rest now.

The man who thought himself untouchable bleeds out on flooring that costs more than most people’s homes, surrounded by operators who’ve balanced scales that death tilted wrong. His eyes stare at nothing, seeing whatever waits for men who build empires on suffering and greed.

Alexei Malfor dies as he lived—alone, afraid, and drowning in the consequences of choices that seemed clever at the time.

I stand slowly, weapon lowered, breathing air that tastes of justice, or maybe it’s just the absence of rage that’s defined me since Hank died.

Killing Malfor should bring peace, closure, and some sense of completion. Instead, it feels like the punctuation at the end of a sentence that can’t be rewritten.

But it feels right.

“Gabe?” Ethan’s voice cuts through the strange calm that has settled over me.

“I’m good.” I check my watch, note the time with professional detachment. “Mission complete.”

“Building’s wired for demolition,” Brass reports. “Three minutes to clear before this place becomes history.”

“Copy that.”

We move toward our extraction point. Down stairwells rigged with explosives, through corridors painted with violence, past bodies of men who chose the wrong side of a war they couldn’t win.

Rain pounds the mountainside as we emerge into a storm that’s reached its full fury. Wind howls through peaks while lightning illuminates terrain that looks like God’s own killing ground.

It’s the perfect kind of weather that swallows evidence.

The aircraft engines spin up for immediate departure despite weather that would otherwise ground civilian flights. We board as exhaustion settles over operators who’ve spent violence like currency and found themselves wealthy beyond measure.

We came to balance the scales and deliver justice.

Mission success.

As we lift off, the charges left behind detonate throughout the compound, turning it into rubble. Malfor’s Montenegro fortress becomes a crater and a cautionary tale for anyone foolish enough to threaten what we protect.

I stare at the destruction below, watching fire consume the evidence of justice served and debts paid. The compound burns like a funeral pyre, expensive furniture and priceless artwork feeding flames that reach toward storm-laden clouds.

The empty space beside me feels different now.

Not a wound that won’t heal, but a memorial to the man who made me better than I ever thought I could be.

“It’s done,” Ghost says quietly, settling into a seat across from me while the aircraft climbs toward clearer skies.

“Yeah.”

“Feel better?”

I consider the question while Montenegro disappears behind us, taking Malfor’s corpse into the darkness where he belongs.

“No,” I answer honestly, tasting truth that’s bitter as cordite. “But it feels right.”

“Sometimes that’s enough.”

“Sometimes.” I check my weapon one final time. “Sometimes justice is what you do when peace isn’t possible.”

The aircraft banks toward home, carrying operators who’ve balanced scales that death tilted the wrong way.

Justice served through violence.

Love protected through war.

Memory honored through blood and fire and righteous fury.

Hank would understand. Hell, he’d probably approve. He always said some debts could only be paid in kind, and some threats could only be answered with superior violence.

I’m tired.

It’s time to go home to the woman we both loved, and to rebuild a life from what remains.

Time to find out if revenge tastes like peace or just another kind of emptiness.

Either way, Alexei Malfor will never hurt anyone again.

That has to be enough.