Chapter 20 Aleksandr
ALEKSANDR
When one believes death is coming, do they ever stop calling for it?
Does a grown man learn not to sniffle, or cry, or ask for God, when a stronger man brings him down? Does he not know this is the will of gods—that one man is made to hunt, and another to be hunted?
The man sniffles, a thick glob of snot spilling from his nose, clinging to his upper lip as he tries to breathe through his mouth. A pathetic display of what could very well be his last moments.
I sit in the chair across from him, silent, hands resting loosely on my knees. The single overhead bulb swings with a lazy rhythm, cutting a circle of light through the basement. For a moment, he tilts his face up toward it, like the heat of that bulb might hold salvation.
“Is this how you want to spend your last minutes?” I ask, my voice quiet, flat.
His eyes dart to me, wide and bloodshot, wet with fear. He looks like he can’t decide whether to beg or vomit. “Please. I didn’t—”
“You did,” I interrupt, not raising my tone, watching as the shakes start to take him over.
I am not like Nadia or Nik. They enjoy the spectacle—the mess, the blood, the sound of bone giving way.
I don’t. I prefer precision. I prefer a method that leaves no trace but still takes everything from you.
My tools are poisons: slow, inevitable, a certainty you feel creeping through your veins while you sit there and beg.
Cleaner than blood. Harder to detect—if you know what you’re doing.
I know this isn’t the right way. In fact, Gwen practically screamed that at me while I was packing my materials.
But her way? Her way is slow. Her way means the NYPD is still circling us, and she’s still sitting in a cell for sixty more hours.
I can’t stand for that. I can’t let her sit there that long.
Tyler blubbers something, his head ducking, eyes glued to his knees like the sight of his own shaking legs will protect him.
“Oh, so you…” I reach to my right, take the folder, and flip it open, my fingers calm and deliberate as I trace the pages until I find the name.
“…Tyler Richards. Newly elected New York District Attorney. You’re telling me you didn’t start an investigation into the Petrov family after being paid by Takeda Matsumoto? ”
Nadia is going to have a field day with this.
The Yakuza. Of all people. Trying to take us down with subpoenas, indictments, bribes—like paper and ink could ever replace blood. And all because she refuses to do the one thing Takeda has been screaming for: to hunt down his son and hand him over like a gift. Sho. The heir.
Instead, Nadia stands in his way. And so now he’s chosen to come at us from every angle—legally, criminally—thinking he can choke us in court where he couldn’t break us in the streets.
He has no idea what kind of war he has started.
Takeda thinks that if he can’t break her with force, he’ll strangle her with the law. He doesn’t understand that Nadia’s stubbornness is carved into her bones. She cannot be moved. And after what he has done—after the stunt that put my girl in danger?
Takeda should be grateful I haven’t already flown to Tokyo to take his head off with my own hands. The only thing stopping me is Nadia. And, to a lesser degree, Sho.
“Please,” Tyler whispers, “just… my daughter—”
“Your daughter,” I cut in, my voice like ice, “is upstairs. Excited to start junior high. Ignoring the faint scent of carbon monoxide that’s been seeping through your house for the last two hours.”
His head snaps up, color draining from his face.
“She thinks it’s the stove. Maybe a pan burned. She opens a window. Turns on the fan. And she keeps going with her morning. She thinks she has time—while my wife sits in a prison cell because of you.”
“W-who?” he stammers.
I turn a page. The rasp of the paper is loud in the silence.
I glance at him over the folder. “Do you think your daughter smokes, Tyler? Maybe she fell in with the wrong crowd? Tried a little weed? Or maybe your wife will make tea tonight. Maybe pancakes in the morning. All it takes is a little flame. One spark.” I click my fingers.
“And your beautiful upstate estate goes… boom.”
His lip trembles.
“And you?” I continue, voice even. “You will already be dead from fentanyl before the sirens reach your driveway. And the story they’ll tell about your family? A broken pipe. A tragic accident. A little explosion. Nothing worth looking into.”
His chest heaves, ragged. He sounds like an engine trying to start in the dead of winter.
“Please,” he chokes out again, voice cracking, all the defiance gone. “I swear, I didn’t—”
“You did.” I set the folder down with a final, precise tap against my knee. I lean forward, elbows on my thighs, and hold his gaze until he can’t look away.
“This is the part where you stop lying, Tyler,” I say softly. “Because whether your daughter gets to breathe fresh air again depends on how useful you are to me in the next ten minutes.”
The bulb swings above us, casting us in and out of light. For a long, heavy moment, I let him drown in the silence, let him listen to his own panicked breaths. Then I ask,
“Now tell me—do you want to live? Do you want your wife and kids to live?”
Tyler’s bottom lip slackens, trembling, a line of spit clinging to the corner of his mouth. His eyes roll, pupils blown wide until only a thin rim of color remains. Sweat soaks his shirt, sticking damp to his chest and arms. His body jerks like he’s trying to shake something out of his skin.
He sags against the ropes, head lolling to the side, breath coming in uneven bursts—shallow, then gasping, then shallow again.
“Answer me, Tyler,” I say, and when he doesn’t, I slap him sharply across the face. His head jerks, the impact snapping him back for one second.
“Do you feel that?” I ask, tilting my head, my tone as calm as if I’m asking him about the weather. “The way your heart feels like it’s trying to claw its way out of your chest?”
His throat works, but no sound comes out.
“That,” I say, holding up a vial of Narcan between two fingers, letting him see it clearly, “is your body telling you that you are running out of time. Do you want to die?”
“N-no,” he whimpers, barely audible.
“Then you are going to make a phone call,” I tell him, my voice turning to steel. “And you are going to demand the immediate release of Lily Petrov.”
I lower the vial just out of his reach. “Or you will never get the chance to make another call again.”
I let him sit in it a moment longer, let the tremors roll through his body until he can barely hold his head up. Then I reach into his jacket pocket and pull out his phone. Face ID opens it easily when I tilt it toward his swollen, terrified face.
He tries to say something, but it comes out as a wet, garbled sound.
“Save your breath,” I murmur, scrolling through his contacts. “You’ll need it in a moment.”
I find the number I want—the one tied directly to the precinct where they’ve been holding her—and press Call. The ringing fills the basement, sharp against the rasp of his struggling breath.
When a woman answers, her voice clipped and professional, I don’t speak. I shove the phone against his mouth.
“Speak,” I order, my hand fisting in his collar.
Tyler stumbles over his own tongue, voice raw and unsteady, but the words come out like a gunshot: “Release Lily Petrov. Immediately.”
There’s a pause, static crackling on the line. “Mr. Richards, I—”
“I said,” he snaps, desperation twisting his tone, “drop all charges. Now. Do it now, or so help me God—”
Another beat. Then a quieter voice on the other end, resigned: “...Okay.” The line goes dead.
I pull the phone back, click it off, and slip it into my pocket.
“That wasn’t hard,” I say, my voice almost light as I drive the needle of Narcan into the muscle of his thigh. He jerks as the antidote floods his system, his body trying to right itself as the poison recedes.
“My daughter… my wife,” he stammers, wheezing as his body starts to calm.
“They’re currently in Maine,” I tell him, my voice flat. “Visiting your mother-in-law. You piece of shit. You don’t even know where they are while you’re selling your soul to Takeda Matsumoto.”
I step back, watching him sag into the ropes, sobbing now that his heart has slowed enough to let the tears come. “Now, if you continue the investigation into the Petrovs, I will make you watch me kill everyone you love, and I promise your death will be the slowest, understand?”
He shakes, unable to say another word, when all he can do is pathetically sob. I turn and leave, the sound of his ugly, broken crying following me until the door shuts.
The shadows outside swallow me whole, and my thoughts are already far from Tyler Richards.
I’m going straight to her.
To my Lily. My wife.