10 Days to Surrender (Ozerov Bratva #2)

44. Sasha

44

SASHA

The Glock’s slide snicks in place. Full metal symphony.

Feliks peers through the nicotine-yellow blinds of the office we’re squatting in, looking for anything abnormal in the streets below. “I hope it’s true what they say about God loving drunks and idiots,” he mumbles. “Because this plan is crazy.”

I toss him a flask of bourbon from the desk. “Just in case, take a sip. Check off both boxes.”

He laughs and throws back a nip of the liquor, then passes it around. Viktor, Roza, and Ilya all follow suit. When it gets back to me, I cap it and set it aside. I don’t need liquor. Not for bravery or luck.

I have all the things that matter going for me already.

Ariel’s hair tie sits pink around my wrist. It’s hilariously out of place with my black tactical gear and the many weapons littering the surface of the desk, but somehow, it’s the piece that ties it all together.

I told her I’d come back to her.

I fucking meant it.

Today is how we make that happen.

The old leather chair creaks as I lean back, watching Roza’s pirated surveillance feeds flicker across my monitors. Dragan’s men scurry like ants between Red Hook warehouses and Midtown penthouses glittering like diamond-encrusted tumors. They’re predictable in their patterns. Stupid in their confidence.

“Alright. Last checks time. Timeline’s set,” Feliks announces, spreading a map across my desk. Red dots mark our targets: gambling dens, warehouses, front businesses. All the pillars holding up Dragan’s empire. “Viktor’s men are in position at the docks, with the Albanians in place as extra muscle. Roza’s ready to scramble their communications. I’ve got the Triad on the casinos, two Bratva teams on the drug packaging facilities, and two more groups of the meanest Russian bastards you’ve ever met ready to bust up every weapons storage depot Dragan has to his name. Plus, thanks to your boy Kosti, every remaining loyal Greek is armed to the teeth and waiting to be rerouted to wherever we need them. All ready to move at the stroke of midnight.”

I holster the Glock, leather creaking. “And the main event?”

Feliks grins, all teeth. “Truck’s loaded. Enough C4 to redecorate Dragan’s skull across six boroughs.”

Pavel fidgets and sighs from his seat in the corner. “The Greeks…” He hesitates. “You sure about trusting them? After Leander?”

“They hate Dragan more than they hate us,” I say. “And Kosti promised they’re good for it. That’s enough for now.”

The monitors flicker. Grainy footage shows Dragan barking orders at the docks, that fucking lupine strut of his. I flex my healed hand. Every joint moves smoothly. Not a hitch or tremor to be found.

Feliks tosses me a Kevlar vest. “Zoya made me swear you’d wear this. She also said, ‘ Don’t die, idiot.’ Her words, not mine. I would’ve called you a fucking idiot.”

I chuckle as I strap it on. My reflection catches in the window—dark clothes, darker eyes, scar white against my throat. I look exactly like the monster Ariel first ran from. But now, that same darkness serves a better purpose: protecting what’s mine. Keeping my family safe.

I touch the hair tie again. My skin is still prickling with the aftermath of the FaceTime call as dawn rose. How she smiled at me through the phone screen last night, belly swollen with our children.

Everything I am, everything I’ve built—it all comes down to this moment. This chance to carve out a future where my kids never know their father’s kind of pain.

Ilya checks his watch. “It’s 11:47.”

I nod, feeling the old familiar battle-calm settle over me. “Let’s go remind these fuckers whose city this is.”

God help anyone who stands in my way.

The warehouse clock tower chimes midnight.

My boot heel crushes a spent cigarette, the first I’ve had in days. Above us, spotlights swing like drunken pendulums. The hair tie bites into my wrist as I look at Feliks where he stands to my left.

I nod. He nods back.

Then the dogs come pouring out of hell.

Every Bratva man at my back takes aim and fires. Shrapnel peppers the loading bay. A Serbian’s half-eaten gyro hangs suspended in midair before splattering against a forklift, followed by the bloody remains of the man who was eating it. I put two in another’s chest before the first boot even hits ground.

Then we run barking from the shadows. My whole Bratva, down to the last loyal man, descends on Dragan’s main warehouse, preceded by a hail of gunfire. Serbian soldiers and scouts are cut down like the harvest. Some scream as they go. Most don’t get the chance.

“Flank left!” Pavel’s voice crunches through comms. I vault over a pallet of counterfeit vodka, the Glock’s rhythm syncopating with my pulse.

Crack-crack . Two more shadows drop.

It’s smoke and gunfire everywhere, laced with the wails of these drowning rats. My phone vibrates once in my tactical vest—Roza’s signal that their communications are officially scrambled. Right on schedule. I can hear the confusion in their shouts as conflicting orders and white noise surge through their earpieces.

A meaty hand grabs my ankle. I stomp down hard—nasal cartilage crunches—then silence the offender with a knee to the trachea. A throwing knife finds his neighbor’s eye before the body finishes sliding down the shelves.

I check my watch. 12:11 A.M.

“Status?” I growl into the mic.

Feliks’s laughter crackles in response. “The Albanians took the docks easy as pie. As we speak, the Triad guys are roasting Serbs in the Golden Dragon’s woks. We might’ve set some new land speed records on this one, boss.”

A grin splits my face in two. I perk up when I hear a man screaming in Serbian, because my bloodlust has not quite been fully sated yet. When I round the corner of the warehouse, I see him: one of Dragan’s lieutenants, backing into a freezer unit, AK-47 trembling.

His eyes dart to the hair tie, then up at me.

I smirk at him. “My fiancée sends her regards.”

One shot in each kneecap brings him to the floor. He collapses, bawling, as I stride up to him, pluck the rifle from his grip, and cast it aside.

“Look at me.” I press the Glock’s warm barrel under his chin. “Where’s Dragan?”

He points one quivering finger down an adjacent hallway. I nod in grim thanks. Then I end his miserable life.

Leaving the dead lieutenant behind, I stride down the hall like the Grim Reaper, stepping over bodies and adding others to the piles.

My boots leave bloody prints on the concrete. Each shot I fire is precise, economical.

Another Serbian breaks cover, screaming as he charges me with a knife. Poor bastard must have run out of ammo. I sidestep his wild swing and put him down with a double tap to the chest. Textbook.

In the warehouse beyond me, the gunfire is already starting to die down. It’s been less than fifteen minutes since we breached, but the warehouse floor is littered with Serbian corpses. A few survivors have thrown down their weapons, hands raised in surrender. They won’t last long.

I key my radio. “Building secure. Phase one complete.”

Feliks’s voice returns: “All the rest of the secondary targets all went down simultaneously. They never knew what hit them, Sasha. Clean fuckin’ sweep.”

I allow myself a small smile as I reload. Dragan’s empire is crumbling, and he doesn’t even know it yet.

But he will.

Very, very soon.

I kick open the door at the end of the hall down which the Serbian lieutenant pointed. It’s an empty office, unremarkable. But the leather of Dragan’s office chair still holds his body heat.

I run my fingers over the mahogany desk, imagining him sitting here not ten minutes ago, thinking he was untouchable. I wonder what he’s thinking now.

The wall safe hangs open, its contents scattered. I’m sure they’re nothing important—Dragan is an arrogant motherfucker, but not a stupid one. Sure enough, all I find are useless passports, ledgers, a Glock 19 with serial numbers acid-scorched.

I’m slamming the drawer shut when tires crunch outside.

I stride to the window and look out. Three stories below, a black Mercedes pulls up at the curb, its armored bulk gleaming under sodium lights.

And there he is.

Dragan emerges from a side door, flanked by what’s left of his security detail. Even from here, I can see the tension in his shoulders, the way his head whips back and forth as he surveys the street. He knows he’s fucked. The silence from his outposts must be deafening. As deafening as this C4 is about to be when it blows this warehouse to the fucking sky.

Just before he ducks into the car, some instinct makes him look up.

Our eyes lock through the glass.

His face goes slack with shock as recognition hits. The great Dragan Vukovic, seeing a ghost. Seeing the man he thought he’d killed, standing in his office like Death himself has come calling.

I bare my teeth in what might charitably be called a smile. I want him to see me. I hope he understands exactly what’s coming for him.

His bodyguard yanks the car door open, breaking the spell. Dragan practically dives inside.

I watch the Mercedes peel away, leaving rubber on asphalt.

“Run, run, little rabbit,” I murmur, tapping the tip of my gun on the window glass. “It won’t be much longer now.”