Chapter 23 – Lev
The city burned in fragments, as if someone had taken Chicago and fed it to the flames one piece at a time.
Orange light bloomed against the night sky from Bratva warehouses that had been burning for three hours straight.
Smoke rose in black columns that twisted and writhed like the dying breaths of giants.
Downtown traffic had become a war zone—Bratva cars flipped and smoking at intersections, with their occupants either dead or scattering like roaches when the lights turned on.
Sniper fire cracked over rooftops near the east docks, muzzle flashes lighting up the darkness in deadly Morse code. Each shot represented another chess piece removed from the board, another soldier who wouldn’t see morning.
Petro Kozak had arrived, and he’d brought hell with him.
From the operations room in the underground facility, I watched my city tear itself apart on dozens of screens.
Security feeds showed masked figures moving through streets that had been Antonov territory for three generations.
They wore black leather and iron rings, some bearing Saint Michael’s sigil branded into their necks like cattle—if cattle chose their own branding and wore it as a badge of honor.
Dozens of Cossack mercenaries, trained in the dying arts of vengeance. Old World killers who thought murder became holy when you whispered the right prayers over the bodies.
Maps were strewn across every available surface, marked with red X’s where we’d lost ground and blue circles where we were holding the line.
Screens flickered with real-time updates from street cameras, drone feeds, and the phones of every Bratva soldier still breathing in this war zone.
Voices came through comms tight with stress and the kind of controlled panic that meant people were dying faster than we could count them.
I stood at the center of it all, hands braced on the tactical table that had served as command central for every family war since my father’s time.
The irony wasn’t lost on me—I was orchestrating this battle from the same room where my dad had planned his campaigns against the Kozaks twenty-seven years ago.
History repeating itself in blood and fire.
“Maxim.” My voice cut through the chaos. He looked up from a screen showing casualty reports, his face grim. “Take Anya and Eleanor. It’s time.”
Anya, who’d been sitting quietly in the corner for the past hour, monitoring communications and pretending she wasn’t terrified, straightened in her chair.
I could see the protest forming on her lips, the same stubborn determination that made her refuse to leave my hospital room for the week while I was in a coma.
“No.” I met her eyes across the room, letting her see exactly how non-negotiable this was. “You promised.”
The words hit like a physical blow. She had promised last night, when I’d explained what was coming, when I made her understand that staying would mean watching me die or becoming another casualty in Petro’s holy war.
Maxim stood, checking his sidearm with practiced efficiency. “I’ll die before I let anyone near her.”
I shook my head, already moving toward my own weapons cache. “You won’t have to die. I’m finishing this by the end of tomorrow.”
“Lev.” Drew’s voice carried a note of warning. “You know Petro’s luring you out. Every attack tonight has been designed to make you react, to draw you into the open where his snipers can take clean shots.”
I nodded, checking the clip in my Sig Sauer before sliding it into the shoulder holster. “I know.”
“And you’re going anyway.”
A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth—the kind of smile that used to make my enemies reconsider their life choices. “He’s luring me into his trap. I’m luring him into mine.”
Because that was what this had always been about—not territory or revenge or even the blood debt between our families. It was about pride. Petro needed to kill me personally, needed to look me in the eye while he played out whatever fantasy he’d constructed about divine justice and holy vengeance.
That need would be his downfall.
“The warehouse district,” I said, pulling on the black tactical vest that had stopped more bullets than I cared to count. “Pier 47. It’s isolated, defensible, and has enough open ground that he can’t surround me without exposing his people.”
“It’s also a perfect kill box,” Trev pointed out from across the room. He’d been monitoring Sasha’s medical feeds while coordinating with our remaining street assets. “If this goes wrong—”
“It won’t.” I cut him off because doubt was a luxury I couldn’t afford right now. “Petro wants a duel. Old World justice, dressed up in religious rhetoric. He’ll come alone, or close to it.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
I glanced toward Anya, who was gathering her things with the mechanical precision of someone trying not to think about what came next. “Then you make sure my wife and child are safe, and you burn this city to ash until nothing with the Kozak name draws breath.”
The weight of that responsibility settled on everyone in the room. These weren’t just soldiers I was talking to—they were family, bound by something deeper than blood or money. They understood what was asked of them.
Protection for the innocent. Vengeance for the fallen. The same code my dad had taught me, passed down through generations of men who chose violence so others could choose peace.
***
An hour later, I was alone in my car, speeding down Lake Shore Drive with the kind of focused intensity that turns driving into a form of meditation. The Charger’s engine growled like a caged beast, 500 horsepower of American engineering that responded to my will like an extension of my own body.
In my rearview mirror, headlights multiplied like cancer. Motorcycles first—fast, agile, perfect for urban hunting. Then SUVs, black and anonymous, filled with Kozak soldiers who thought tonight ended with my death.
Let them think it.
I took the turn onto Lower Wacker at a speed that made physics weep, tires screaming against asphalt as I drifted through the curve with the precision of someone who had turned car chases into an art form. Behind me, engines roared and metal shrieked as my pursuers tried to match my pace.
Some of them succeeded. Most didn’t.
Bullets hit the rear window, safety glass holding, but webbing with cracks that turned the world behind me into abstract art. I ducked low, one hand on the wheel, the other reaching for the modified .45 that rode passenger seat like a faithful companion.
The warehouse district opened up ahead of me—acres of abandoned industrial dreams and rusted infrastructure. This was where Chicago’s manufacturing heart used to beat, back when Americans made things with their hands instead of their keyboards.
Now it was a graveyard of concrete and steel, perfect for the kind of conversation Petro and I needed to have.
I veered onto an old Bratva access road, one of the forgotten arteries that connected our legitimate businesses to our less legitimate ones.
The surface was cracked and potholed, designed to discourage casual exploration.
My pursuers’ vehicles bounced and struggled, their urban assault configurations poorly suited for this kind of terrain.
Perfect.
I killed the lights and slammed the brakes, letting the Charger slide sideways into position behind a concrete barrier that had been weathered by decades of Chicago winters. The engine ticked as it cooled, and for a moment, the world fell into a silence so complete I could hear my own heartbeat.
Then the sound of tires crunching over broken glass and debris. Car doors slamming with the solid thunk of armored vehicles. Footsteps on gravel, coordinated and purposeful.
Petro Kozak stepped out from behind a black Escalade, and the moonlight turned him into something from a medieval painting.
All shadow and menace, broad shoulders wrapped in a coat that probably cost more than most people’s cars.
The Saint Michael pendant at his throat swung like a pendulum, marking time until judgment, catching silver light and throwing it back like a challenge.
“You chose well for our final meeting, Antonov.” His accent turned my name into something ugly, a curse spoken in a language that remembered blood feuds and generational hatred. “This place was built to worship industry, to honor the work of men’s hands. Now it will witness judgment.”
I laughed, the sound echoing off concrete walls and rusted machinery. “You mean murder dressed up in prayer.”
He looked up at the skeletal remains of a crane that had once lifted steel beams toward the sky, now reaching into darkness like a supplicant’s arms. “Saint Michael slays the beast wherever he finds it. I am his sword, and every Antonov I strike down, I do in his name.”
“You’re a butcher who thinks God takes orders from you.”
The words hit exactly where I intended them to. His face darkened, righteous fury replacing calculated menace. This was the crack in his armor—the pride that made him need to be right, need to be holy, need to transform his bloodlust into divine mandate.
Petro reached into his coat and pulled out a blade that looked like it had been forged in some medieval armory. The steel gleamed with oil, its edges having tasted blood, hungering for more.
“Let’s see which one of us Saint Michael claims tonight.”
I drew my own knife—seven inches of carbon steel that had been my companion through more fights than I cared to remember. It wasn’t blessed or consecrated or touched by anything more divine than human skill and the will to survive.
But it had killed more holy warriors than Petro had probably prayed for.
“You want to know the difference between us?” I circled left, watching his footwork, cataloging the way he held his weapon. “You think God cares about your war. I know he stopped paying attention to men like us a long time ago.”
“Blasphemer.” He lunged forward, blade seeking the soft space between my ribs where life lived closest to the surface.
I slipped aside, letting his momentum carry him past me, and opened a thin line across his forearm with the kind of casual precision that came from years of practice. First blood to me, but this dance was just getting started.
“Your daughter prayed while she tortured innocent people,” I said, resetting my stance, watching him reassess my capabilities. “Thought Saint Michael was guiding her hands while she planned to poison my pregnant wife.”
His eyes widened slightly. Pregnant. He hadn’t known about the baby, hadn’t factored that into his calculations of divine justice.
“Even better,” he snarled, coming at me again with renewed fury. “The bloodline dies with the whelp.”
That was when I stopped playing games.
The blade that had been meant for my throat found only air as I dropped low and came up inside his guard. My knife found the space just below his sternum, angled upward toward his heart with surgical precision.
But Petro was faster than his bulk suggested. He twisted, taking the blade in his side instead of his chest, and brought his own weapon down in a vicious arc that would have opened my skull if I hadn’t rolled backward.
We separated, both bleeding now, both understanding that this ended with death.
“Your God isn’t coming to save you,” I told him, tasting copper and adrenaline.
“He already has,” Petro whispered, and I saw the detonator in his left hand just as his thumb found the trigger.
The warehouse behind me erupted in fire and fury, shockwaves slamming into my back and driving me to my knees. Heat washed over me like the breath of dragons, and I realized that Petro had never intended to walk away from this fight.
He’d planned to take me with him into whatever hell waited for men like us.
But I had promises to keep, and death was just another enemy to outmaneuver.
Time to show this holy warrior what real devils looked like when you threatened their families.