Chapter 7
Anton
Fuck, I don’t need her pity.
I yank the shirt over my head, toss it in the corner, and strip out of my jeans like they’re the problem. They’re not.
It’s her voice. That soft, apologetic shit.
“I’m… sorry.”
Like I’m something to be sorry for.
Like I was a kid again. Just a kid with nothing but loss stitched into his bones.
I change into track pants, jaw tight. The floor’s still warm from where we ate. Still smells of soy sauce and sweat.
I cross to the bench. Grab the tape. Start wrapping slowly. I need a sweat. I need silence.
I need my fucking head back.
Papa used to say a man only cries once: when he’s born.
After that? You shut up and bleed quietly.
Not because he was cruel. Because no one came for us.
And no one ever would.
Pity was for boys who had someone to call. I didn’t.
Mama was already in the ground. Papa was busy trying not to join her.
And me?
I was just the warm body left over. Easy to miss. Easier to use.
So I learned early: if someone pities you, it’s because they think you’ve already lost.
And I don’t fucking lose.
I roll my wrist and pull the wrap tight. One loop, two. The bones in my hand crack like knuckles biting each other.
Good.
Behind me, I hear movement—shoes on concrete. Dima’s gait, slow and heavy. Mary’s lighter. Quieter. But I hear her.
She hesitates at the door.
I don’t turn around. But I feel her watching me.
She thinks I didn’t notice the way she looked at me after I told her who I was. What I did. Who I killed.
Her expression went soft. Too soft. Like she didn’t know if she should hug me or run.
Don’t hug me.
Don’t try to fix something that was born broken.
The door clicks shut. Their footsteps fade.
I finish taping the second hand and step into the ring. The canvas gives under my weight. Same as always. Like it knows me.
I don’t put gloves on. Just raise my fists.
Thud.
Thud.
I hit the bag harder than I should; the bag doesn’t hit back.
But I pretend it does.
The first punch is tight. Controlled. All in the shoulder. The second lands harder. Heat spreads across my ribs.
I need the ache. Need the sting in my knuckles. I need something real.
Because the look on her face is still there, behind my eyes. That soft, wet look like I’m some wounded fucking dog she found on the side of the road. The kind you’re supposed to put down. Not pet.
Fuck.
I slam the bag again. The chain groans. The hook screeches in the beam above.
But it’s too late.
I’m not in the gym anymore.
I’m back there.
Fourteen. Brighton Beach. Sweat in my eyes. Blood in my mouth. And no one coming to help.
It was the old butcher on Neptune who gave me the first job. Foma. Crooked spine. Liked to call me detka when he was drunk and mal’chik when he wasn’t.
“You fast?” he asked, stuffing a fat roll into butcher paper, grease soaking through.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Liar,” he muttered. “But we’ll see.”
He handed me the package. No smile. Just a nod toward the alley out back.
“Wait there.”
I waited.
Still had my school shoes on. Laces fraying, soles flapping near the toes. Mama used to sew them back together with fishing line.
Back when she was alive.
The alley was narrow. Smelled like rot and hot metal. I stood between two dumpsters, hands clenched around the paper-wrapped weight.
After five minutes, I thought maybe I passed. Maybe they were watching, testing.
Then I heard footsteps.
He turned the corner like he owned the fucking world.
Tall. Maybe twenty-two. Shaved head. Tattoos creeping up his neck like ivy; one of the local runners, from the Belarus crew. Older. Meaner. Eyes like cracked pavement.
He looked me up and down, slow. Amused.
“You the new kid?” he asked.
I didn’t answer.
“That your drop?”
Still nothing.
“You gonna hand it over, or you wanna lose teeth?”
I swallowed. Shook my head once.
He laughed. Like it was funny. Like I was funny.
“You ever been cut, malen’kiy mudak?” Little fuck.
Still nothing from me. But my palms were sweating now. My grip slipped on the package.
He stepped closer.
“You don’t move, I’ll do it for you.”
I took a breath.
Then spit at his feet.
Missed.
Didn’t matter.
He smiled like I just made his day.
Then he pulled the knife.
The blade wasn’t big. But it was fast.
I ducked left. He caught me anyway.
Steel kissed skin, shoulder to collarbone. A red smile opened up across my chest—fast, hot, unforgiving. Skin split like paper under a boxcutter, and for a second, I didn’t feel pain. Just heat. Like someone poured boiling water straight into my chest.
The sound dropped out, went muffled and strange, like I’d been dunked underwater mid-heartbeat. My vision tunneled. The alley shrank around me. Dumpster. Brick wall. His fucking smile.
Everything went white at the edges, and I couldn’t breathe—not from the wound, but from the knowing. That this was it. No help. No pause. Just me and the next cut, and the one after that.
My feet shifted without thinking.
Fight or die. I chose to fight.
He raised the knife again, but I moved first.
Tackled him. Hard. Like I was drowning and he was the last dry thing in reach.
We hit the pavement. My elbow cracked against the bricks. His knee slammed into my ribs. His fist caught my jaw—once, twice—snapping my head sideways so fast my ears rang. Stars burst behind my eyes.
But when he reached down to grab the package, instinct lit me up. I lunged. Sank my teeth into the meat of his hand, right below the thumb, and bit down like my life depended on it—because it fucking did.
He howled, the sound raw and ugly, tried to shake me off, but I didn’t let go. Not until my mouth filled with copper, warm and metallic, running down my throat like rusted pennies. Could’ve been his blood. Could’ve been mine. Didn’t matter.
He jerked back, curses flying in Russian as he clutched his bleeding hand. For a second, I thought maybe I’d won. That maybe holding on was enough.
Then he ripped the package out of my arms like I was nothing.
My body buckled forward, empty hands closing on air. I lunged after him, ribs screaming, chest on fire, blood dripping down to the pavement. He shoved me back, hard, and I hit the dumpster like a rag doll.
He didn’t stab me again. Didn’t need to.
Just stood there, smirking, butcher paper tucked under his arm, like he’d taught me a lesson worth more than the drop itself.
Then he turned the corner and was gone.
I sat there in the rot and metal stink, chest split open, blood in my mouth, hands empty.
First job. First failure.
And the last time I ever went into a drop blind.
I don’t remember standing up. Just remember walking home, sweatshirt soaked.
When I got to the apartment, Papa didn’t look up.
He was on the couch. Cigarette dangling. Half-empty bottle on the table. News on the TV with no volume.
He glanced once. Just long enough to see the blood.
Then he flicked his ash and said, “You fucked up. You lost. You want pity? If you’re still breathing, it means you can do it again. And this time, you don’t lose.”
No bandage. No questions. Just the rule.
Survive = Try again.
I did.
Week after week. Job after job.
Until the pain stopped mattering. Until the fear got replaced by math. One more day. One more run. One more set of teeth to dodge.
Until I stopped caring about why.
Until living didn’t feel like a win anymore. Just the next round.
The bag snaps back toward me, rope twisting. I duck. Swing again. Left jab, right cross, elbow.
My lungs burn.
But it’s not enough.
Because in her voice, in that split fucking second, she made me twelve again. Made me feel like I needed saving.
And I don’t.
I survived that alley. I survived Papa.
I survived twenty years of blood and concrete.
I don’t need softness disguised as mercy. Not from her. Not from anyone.
The bag creaks on its chain, still swaying, and that’s when I hear it—
“Boss.”
Lev’s voice, flat. No lilt. No teasing.
I stop.
Turn.
Both of them are standing by the door. Lev, arms folded, brow low. Boris, one hand in his hoodie pocket, the other holding a protein bar like it’s the only thing keeping him from diagnosing me out loud.
Neither of them says it, but they don’t have to.
I’ve been hitting that bag like it killed someone.
And maybe it did.
I don’t need softness. I don’t need weakness dressed up as care. And I don’t need feelings.
Especially not hers.
Lev peels off the wall first. Doesn’t say a word. Just ducks under the ropes, towel slung over his shoulder. He tosses it at me without warning. Lands against my chest, damp from his own sweat.
“You done trying to murder that bag?”
Then he holds out a bottle of cold water. Condensation slicks down his fingers. I take it, crack it open, and drain half without breaking eye contact.
Boris doesn’t move from the doorframe. Just watches. Silent judge, hoodie shadowing his eyes.
“Feel better?” he asks.
“I feel fine.”
“Sure you do.” He folds his arms, watching me like he’s got all the time in the world. “That’s why you’ve been beating the shit out of our equipment for twenty minutes.”
I wipe the towel across my chest, soaking up the sweat. My ribs ache where the scar tissue pulled tight. Old wound, old reminder.
“She got to you,” he says.
“She didn’t get to anything.”
“Right.” Lev ditches the smirk, and suddenly, he’s not joking anymore. “You know what I think?”
“I don’t care what you think.”
“I think we should keep her,” he says it anyway, the idiot. Pizda.
I stop wiping. Look at him. “What?”
“Keep her. Like a pet.”
The words hang in the air between us. Boris stops chewing his protein bar.
I repeat it back to him. “Like. A. Pet.” My mouth twists. “She’s not a stray mutt you throw scraps at; she’s dead weight now. We’ve got Viktor. We’ve got the paper trail. She’s not leverage anymore. Big difference.”
And it’s true. Even if she planted the USB, even if Caleb was dumb enough to run his mouth in that office, it wouldn’t matter. Viktor’s enough to burn the whole scheme down. Evidence, confession, corpse—he’s the full package.
Which means we don’t need her.
But we’re still keeping her.
But I’m still keeping her.
“She’s a liability,” I hiss.
“She’s useful.” His voice stays flat, matter-of-fact. “And more than that, she fits.”
“Fits what?”
“This.” He gestures around the gym, at Boris, at me.
“Dead weight doesn’t sit at the table with us.
Dead weight doesn’t get trained, doesn’t keep breathing after everything she’s seen.
She’s not a liability. She’s the crack in the wall.
And you know as well as I do, we don’t let cracks go.
We either seal them… or we keep them close. ”
I narrow my eyes. Since when does Lev talk like this? He’s the one who laughs when the world burns, and now he’s preaching about cracks and keeping them close.
“Besides, she makes us more… human,” Lev continues. “And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”
“We’re not human. We’re predators.”
“Yeah? Well, even predators need something to protect.” He tilts his head, studying my face. “And you want to protect her. I can see it eating you alive.”
The water bottle crackles in my grip.
“You think she pities you,” he says. “But that’s not what I saw out there.”
“What did you see?”
Lev leans back, shoulders loose, mouth quirking like he’s half-amused at me. But his eyes… those stay serious.
“I saw a woman scared out of her mind, and still standing there, wanting to learn. That’s not pity, boss. That’s trust.”
I want to tell him he’s wrong. Want to remind him what we are, what we do, why someone like Mary should run screaming in the opposite direction.
Instead, I finish the water and set the empty bottle on the ring apron.
“She doesn’t belong here,” I say finally.
“Maybe not,” Lev agrees. “But she’s here anyway. Question is: what are we gonna do about it?”
Boris finally speaks up from across the room. “She makes good food.”
Both Lev and I turn to stare at him.
He shrugs. “What? I like food.”
Lev laughs, short and sharp. “There you go, boss. Boris likes her cooking. Dima thinks she’s brave. I think she’s interesting.” His grin fades. “And you think she’s worth protecting, even if it scares the shit out of you.”
“I’m not scared.”
“No?” Lev steps closer, the stink of cigarettes clinging to his clothes. “Then why are you bleeding all over the gym?”
I glance down. My knuckles are cracked open, red drops hitting the canvas.
I smirk, dry. “Because bags don’t talk back when you hit them. Unlike you.”
Lev huffs but doesn’t push.
I toss the towel aside and peel the wraps off my hands, skin raw underneath. Enough. Time to work.
“We move Viktor tonight.”
That shuts them both up.
Lev blinks. “Thought you said dawn.”
“Change of plan. He stays in secondary lockup any longer, Timofey gets more time to maneuver. I want Viktor under Igor’s eyes before midnight.”
Boris shifts against the wall, eyes narrowing. “You think Timofey’s already moving?”
“I know he is.” I grab my shirt off the bench and pull it over my head. “Everything’s too quiet. Quiet means someone’s working angles we can’t see.”
Lev spits a laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “Fucking Timofey.”
“Gear up,” I tell them. “We roll in twenty. Quiet in, quiet out.”
Something’s coming. I can feel it.
And it won’t be quiet for long.