The Debt (Sordid Debt Duet #1)

Chapter Two

Jarek

Museum of Science…

The first shot sounded like a car backfiring. Then came the screams. Time seemed to slow down, then it fractured as one moment, they were a family walking back to their hotel; the next, they were caught in a storm of lead and chaos.

“Oh my God!” Lisbet’s scream cut through the cacophony of gunfire and shouting. Spanish and Russian curses filled the air as the street erupted into a war zone.

Jarek scooped Emma up and felt her small body spasm against his chest as she screamed out in terror.

“Run!” The word tore from his throat as he grabbed Lisbet’s hand. Fear made her fingers slick with sweat. “There’s an alley ahead. Move faster, Lisbet!”

He positioned himself behind them, using his body as a shield. The first bullet that hit him felt like a sledgehammer to the kidney. The second caught him higher, near his shoulder blade.

“Fuck,” he grunted as the impact drove him to his knees. Emma tumbled from his arms. “Keep running, Lisbet. Get Emma out of h-here.” The words came out wet, metallic-flavored.

That’s when he saw him. Tall, broad-shouldered, moving through the chaos like a shark through bloody water. The dark sunglasses and the cap drawn low over his forehead hid his face, but Jarek had no doubt he was staring at a coldblooded killer—one who held power, perhaps even the Bratva Pakhan who had personally come to handle what was probably a territorial dispute.

The single shot seemed casual. Almost elegant.

“NOOO!” He watched, horrified at the response to the impact. In a split second, the single round tore through Lisbet’s chest and exited, only to slam into Emma’s skull. The result of the ugly transfer of kinetic energy from just one lead slug, traveling at thousands of feet per second, mutilated the bodies of the only two people he loved. They lay broken in front of him like discarded marionettes.

Helpless, Jarek saw the man step over their bodies. The Russian’s face showed nothing. Not a thread of remorse or recognition of the lives he’d just destroyed. They were less than nothing to him, just collateral damage in his war for territory. Behind him, his men executed wounded Mexican cartel members with mechanical efficiency.

Blood flowing from his wounds merged with the sanguine pool that bloomed underneath the bodies of his family. With trembling hands, he reached for Lisbet. Her beautiful blue eyes, which had once captivated him, stared vacantly into the night sky.

“No, no, no, my love, please,” he sobbed as he pressed his hands against the gaping wound in her chest. Blood seeped between his fingers. “Stay with me, Lis. I beg you, please stay with me.”

His fingers searched for a pulse. He found nothing but the cool touch of her skin.

“Don’t do this to me, Lisbet,” he begged as he began compressions, counting desperately through his tears. “One, two, three... come back to me... please come back…” he sobbed in desperation as his gaze caught a twitch from his little girl. Keeping his gaze on Lisbet, he continued his frantic movements.

“Baby girl, stay still,” he choked out, not stopping the compressions. “Daddy’s here. Everything’s going to be okay. Just... just stay with me, my love.”

His arms burned as he continued pumping Lisbet’s chest, but he couldn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop. The world had narrowed to the rhythmic motion of his hands. Another twitch from Emma… another sob tore through his chest.

“I know you’re scared, my darling. I know. But you’re so brave, my beautiful little girl. Help is coming. Just stay calm. Daddy’s here. I’ll keep you safe.” His voice cracked. “Tell me about Mr. Hops. Remember how he protected you from the monsters under your bed?”

The silence that followed his question was deafening.

“Emma?” Raw panic clawed at his throat. “Emma, answer Daddy!”

Sirens wailed in the distance as he finally turned to his daughter. Mr. Hops lay half-hidden under her in a spreading pool of crimson, its once-white fur now stained dark. But it was his daughter’s face that shattered what remained of his world.

His beautiful Emma, his precious little girl who had just lost her first tooth, who still believed in fairy tales and magic... Half of her angelic face was simply... gone...

“NO!” A primal and broken scream tore from his throat. “Please, God, no!”

Hands grabbed him from behind as police officers flooded the scene. He fought them, thrashing wildly as they pulled him away from his family.

“Let me go! Let me fucking go. My family needs me!”

“Sir, you need to step away. They’re gone.”

“NO! Not my wife! Not my baby! Not my precious little girl!”

But as they dragged him back, his eyes locked with Lisbet’s vacant stare one final time. The blue eyes that had once held such warmth and love had lost their light. Beside her, Emma’s stuffed rabbit lay as still as its loving owner, a silent witness to the moment his world ended.

Through his tears and the fog of grief and shock, one thought crystallized with terrible clarity—the Russian would pay. If it took his last breath, the last beat of his broken heart, he would make him pay.

“I will find you, you bastard,” The vow of retribution came out as a whisper, but it carried the full measure of an ironclad determination to avenge the deaths of his family. “No matter what or how long it takes... you will fucking pay for what you did here tonight!”

The murdering bastard had never looked back as he walked away, pausing only to put a bullet in a wounded cartel soldier begging for mercy. To him, this had just been business. His territory was protected and his rivals eliminated. Little did he know that in sparing Jarek’s life, he unleashed a dormant darkness, an invincible power unrelenting in his quest for vengeance.

The trauma surgeons who saved Jarek’s life had given him a ten percent chance of surviving his wounds. They were astounded that he beat the odds.

But the man who woke up in that Atlanta hospital wasn’t the same one who had walked into that street with his family. That man—the successful doctor, the loving husband and father—had died with them.

What rose from that horror was something else entirely, something forged in the crucible of utter hatred and honed into a lethal weapon with a single purpose.

The memory faded back to the compartment in his mind that would never be forgotten. The darkness inside him pulsed with renewed purpose. Soon, the time would come that Gregor Polov would reap what he had sown. And the sudden impact of that violent moment upon him would linger just long enough for his life to end in a bright flash.

Jarek was aware of Declan watching him with an expectant face.

“No, Declan. I don’t miss Ireland.”

“Come on, Jarek. We both grew up there. You know what everyone says… you never forget your roots, your heritage, and the complexity of a cold stout.”

“You got that right.” A smirk pulled at the corners of Jarek’s mouth. “No one makes a dark, thick yard of grog like the Irish.”

A Guinness wasn’t the only thing the Irish had of their own. Although they shared a culture and language, tribal feuds contesting territory were common among the ancient Celts and Picts that lasted for generations.

Yes, we excel at revenge—cold, patient, and absolute.

Polov would learn that soon enough. Once again, his mind drifted to the past as he pressed his palms against the cold glass, staring unseeing at the prehistoric display as more memories surfaced...

Three months after the shooting, he was discharged from Atlanta General. The doctors called his recovery miraculous. He called it hell since every breath without Lisbet and Emma was agony. He used an agent to sell his medical practice and house in Dublin, knowing he’d never be able to live there again. He had nothing left of his old life except the wedding ring he still wore and Emma’s blood-stained rabbit he couldn’t bring himself to throw away.

His first contact with the underworld came through Miguel, a janitor at the hospital who had connections with former IRA members. The man had overheard Jarek muttering about the Russian Pakhan during his fevered dreams.

“You want to hurt the Bratva? Their Pakhan, Gregor Polov?” Miguel whispered to him one night as he pretended to mop the floor.

“That’s his name? Gregor Polov?” The words were barely above a whisper as he grated them through clenched teeth.

“Yeah, the one and only.” His eyes darted furtively. “I know some people in Dublin. Ex-military. They hate the Russians more than you do. They will help.”

Dublin. His hometown. The symmetry felt appropriate. It didn’t matter that he didn’t want to, but it made sense to return to a place where his vengeance would become reality as he embraced the darkness and became something lethal. A man who was able to induce fear into hardened criminals and make them check their shadows at night.

Irish gangs didn’t welcome unknowns with open arms. It was absurd to think otherwise. Members had to be vetted. They had to have a documented history. A former medical doctor who once had a thriving practice shows up with two bullet scars and dead eyes? Not a good look. But he had something they needed—a general surgeon with medical expertise, someone who could extract bullets and stitch wounds. More importantly, he had the cold, unflinching demeanor of a seasoned combat veteran that made professional killers uncomfortable.

“Ye’re diff’rent,” Connor O’Brien, the Southies Gang’s Boss, said after watching Jarek calmly treat a shotgun wound while under heavy fire from rival gangsters. “Most men, they come in hawt, wantin’ blood reit awey. But ya... yer building somethin’, ain’t ya?”

Jarek didn’t bite at first. “The morphine syrette hasn’t kicked in yet. Hold this screamin’ Mary down so I can dig the buckshot out of him before he goes into shock. Am I building something? In a manner of speaking. Before I build, I have a need to know. Knowledge is power. I need to understand how organizations like yours work. How they think. How they survive and how they can be dismantled.”

O’Brien snorted out a sharp cackle, devoid of any humor. “Whaddaya sayin” Doc? Are ya askin’ me how to go about smokin’ a Southie? And if I give up me fookin’ secrets to ya—jus’ fer laughs over a few pints—then what? Ya wouldn’t make out the front door of the pub. I’m jus’ shittin’ ya, Doc. What is it that yer lookin’ ta do?”

“I’m looking to create something bulletproof. Something stronger.” Jarek’s voice had been clinical, as if discussing a medical procedure rather than building a criminal empire. “Strong enough to reach across oceans and tear apart a Russian king.”

He started small. First, learning the street trade, understanding the genesis of territorial disputes, and studying how money was moved through shadow networks and shell companies. His medical knowledge proved invaluable, not just for treating wounds but also for understanding how to fatally inflict them. He knew which severed arteries would cause exsanguination the fastest, how to crush a windpipe with one blow and cause asphyxiation, or how a high-velocity round entering just above the bridge of the nose at the Glabella or ‘T box’ immediately severed the spinal cord to cause flaccid paralysis which eliminated any possibility of involuntary muscle spasms. The victim was dead before they hit the ground.

Within a year, he had carved out his own corner of Dublin’s underworld. Not through brute force but through cunning and guile. He treated rival gang members, building a network of favors and information. Little by little, he learned their strengths and weaknesses and discovered their secrets. After a while, having insinuated himself into their lives and gaining their trust, he was able to sow internecine warfare within the gangs.

That was when he found Declan—a broken junkie who reminded him of all he had lost. Saving him had been an act of kindness, the last reminder of the Hippocratic oath he had once sworn to uphold.

Later, Declan’s unwavering loyalty would prove invaluable. By the time O’Brien’s body was found in the River Liffey two years later, no one could prove the good doctor’s involvement. But everyone knew. He had become someone else—a man who was able to induce fear into the same hardened criminals who had become his acquaintances.

Five years later, his gang made the move to the United States and infiltrated Boston to become one of the richest and most feared of the Irish mobs.

For ten years, he had made sure his legacy became known across the States. Every criminal, every leader of every mafia group or syndicate, knew his name… The Dark One.

Now… the time had come to cull the Atlanta Bratva bastards.

Jarek flexed his fingers as he remembered the first time he had used them to take a life rather than save one. That transition had been surprisingly easy. Perhaps because he himself had died that day in Atlanta. Since then, he had become a specter, learning to haunt more effectively.

Jarek grimaced as he reached into his coat’s inner pocket. His fingers trembled as he touched the small, worn rabbit that had never left his side. Even now, nearly two decades later, parts of its fur were rust-stained despite the attempts to clean it.

Emma had named it Mr. Hops. It was a gift from her grandmother on her fourth birthday, just two months before Atlanta. The rabbit had been pristine white then, with floppy ears and a blue ribbon around its neck. Emma had insisted on taking it everywhere. “He keeps the monsters away, Daddy,” she’d explained with four-year-old logic.

But Mr. Hops couldn’t keep the real monsters away that day in Atlanta.

He had found the stuffed animal half-buried under Emma’s body, soaked in their mingled blood. In his trauma-induced haze at the hospital, he had refused to let the nurses take it away to be cleaned. It was the last thing Emma had held, her tiny fingers clutched around it even after...

The rabbit became a tether to what he had lost and what he’d become—a reminder that monsters were real, wearing expensive suits and carrying automatic weapons instead of hiding under beds. Every time he touched the matted fur, he saw Emma’s last moments and Polov’s casual stride as he stepped over their bodies.

Some nights, in the rare moments he allowed himself to feel anything at all, he would take out the rabbit and imagine he could smell Emma’s favorite strawberry shampoo instead of the metallic tang that never quite faded. Those were dangerous moments when the carefully constructed walls around his grief threatened to crack.

But mostly, the blood-stained rabbit served as a reminder of his purpose. This wasn’t about power or territory or profit. This was about a little girl who believed stuffed animals could protect her from monsters… and the monster who had proved her wrong.

To Jarek, the rabbit wasn’t a symbol of his weakness but a testament to his resolve. Every drop of blood on that toy was a promise written in his family’s blood, a contract he would fulfill, no matter the cost.

The rabbit was a symbol of his little girl’s innocence. And he would keep it until Polov had paid his debt.

“Boss?” Declan’s voice pulled him back to the present. “You went somewhere dark just now.”

Jarek turned from the display. His face was a mask of cold composure.

“Not that dark. Just remembering where it all began.” His fingers unconsciously twirled the wedding band he now wore on the opposite hand.

“Sometimes you have to go through hell to learn how to become the devil.”