Chapter 12
Anton
Blyat.
There’s blood in my trunk, and I’m the one who put it there.
I didn’t plan on killing anyone today.
Wasn’t even supposed to be that kind of night. Follow the lead, watch the girl, report back. But plans don’t mean shit when a man pulls a gun two feet from a target I haven’t decided what to do with yet.
Now there’s a body leaking into a tarp, and I’ve got more questions than I started with.
Walther P22 with a threaded suppressor. Custom-tuned. Clean shot. One to the base of the skull. No screams, no second chances. Just silence, the way I like it.
The pistol’s still warm when I set it back in the glove compartment.
I watch the house from three cars down, headlights off, engine cold. The porch light flickers, buzzing against the night.
She steps out. Just for a second.
Shoulders hunched. Eyes wide. Arms crossed like she’s trying to hold herself together. She scans the street, breath shallow, like she’s expecting something to leap out of the shadows. Her gaze lands near the gravel. Her body stiffens. She sees it.
The blood.
“Blyat,” I mutter under my breath. Not fast enough. I should’ve cleaned the scene better. Should’ve dragged the body further out before the shot. Now she’s seen the aftermath. If she calls the cops, this quiet block turns into a crime scene, and I’m the asshole holding the matches.
She freezes.
Stares at the dark patch like she’s trying to rewire her brain on the spot.
Her palm cracks against her own cheek. Hard. A jolt to force herself back into denial.
She shakes her head, muttering something I can’t hear, twisting the moment into a version she can live with. Something explainable.
She drifts to the hose, fumbling at the knob. The stream sputters out, too weak to wash anything away, just enough to smear blood into mud.
She bolts back inside, quick enough that the screen door rattles on its hinges. A lock clicks. Curtains shift.
She’s scared. She should be.
Whoever sent that man wanted her gone; quiet, clean, before she even touched the door.
They were late.
I wasn’t.
The man came from the alley; no hesitation, no wasted motion. Baseball cap pulled low, jacket zipped tight. Tall. Right build for a pro. Close enough to be local. Quiet enough not to be.
He had a suppressed Ruger tucked under his shirt. Reached for it just as he cleared the fence line. Two more steps and he would’ve had a clean angle on her front door.
I didn’t give him the third.
Now he’s cooling in the trunk, body wedged between a tire iron and a contractor tarp I bought from a Home Depot two cities over. No wallet. Burner phone. No ID. Just a weapon and the look of someone who was there to finish something.
Which begs the question:
Who the fuck sent him?
Because this isn’t random. This isn’t a junkie trying to score or a carjacker making the wrong turn. This was a job. A contract.
And the mark? Mary Catherine Sullivan.
I wasn’t supposed to know her name.
Boris was the one who flagged her. The bank—Brightside National—came up dirty when he started tracing the money trail back to Viktor Kozlov. A thousand moving parts. Layered transfers. Shell LLCs. Most of it circled back to the same branch.
Same manager. Dave Thornton. Washed-out prick with a history of debt and a gambling problem. Two offshore accounts and a wife who thinks he’s just underpaid. He’s been helping Viktor move Bratva money out the back door for months.
But that wasn’t the surprise.
The surprise was Mary.
Boris sent me CCTV footage—lobby feed from the branch. I wasn’t paying much attention until I froze the frame and saw her. That face.
That same woman from the night before, half-drunk and pressing her hand against my cock like she owned it. Mary. The one who, in that stupid half-mumbled haze, told me where she worked.
She looked professional in the footage, clean, composed, handing a deposit slip to some greasy little runner. But my gut twisted, anyway.
I watched footage from three different angles, and it’s always her. The money gets dropped, and it’s her hand that takes it. Thornton keeps her close. Too close.
Boris ran the prints on the deposit slips. Hers.
Either she’s part of it… or she’s the perfect fucking patsy.
I tell myself I need her alive. She might know more. She might lead me to Kozlov.
But that doesn’t explain why I’m still parked outside the quiet little house.
Or why my cock twitches when I think about the first time she touched it.
Drunk, sloppy, with no clue who she was grabbing.
White blouse buttoned high, like she’s some modest little church girl.
But it hugged her body like a second skin.
Those tits. That ass. That black pencil skirt rode her curves like it wanted to fuck her too.
No heels. Flats. Sensible, tired, plain. She swapped them for sneakers before the bus ride, and I watched her do it.
I followed the damn bus.
In a car. My car. A man with access to GPS hacks, traffic cams, and enough manpower to tail a senator without breaking a sweat—and I’m crawling through traffic behind a city bus like some broke-ass stalker.
She gets off at Elm Street and Desert Rose Boulevard.
Then walks two more blocks to a rundown cul-de-sac with chain-link fences and sun-bleached gnomes.
I could’ve sent Lev or Dima to keep eyes on her while I did something more productive. Like, I don’t know… find the man stealing millions from my Pakhan.
But I didn’t.
I followed her.
And now there’s blood on the gravel, a body in my trunk, and I’m more tangled in this shit than I ever meant to be.
And someone wants her dead.
Either she’s part of this… or she’s in the middle of something she doesn’t understand.
A screen door creaks across the street. Old man in a sweat-stained tank top steps out, trash bag in hand, staring too long at my parked Charger like he’s trying to memorize the plates.
Time to go.
I start the Charger, back out slowly, turn the corner, disappear down the street. No headlights. No sound.
I drive five blocks before I finally exhale.What the fuck is wrong with me?
Phone out of the console. Dial.Two rings.
Click. A line opens. Lev’s voice first, loud, chewing something. Dima’s there too; I can hear the engine in the background.
“How fast can you and Dima get here?”
“Faster if you admit you missed me,” Lev says around a mouthful.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I mutter, cutting down a street with one flickering light. My burner buzzes again in the console. Boris. I ignore it. “Bring gloves. Bleach. And whatever you’ve got for chopping and dissolving. This one’s messy.”
There’s a crunch, like he’s cracking a shell with his teeth. “Messy’s my favorite. Dima’s driving. I’m riding shotgun with a hacksaw and a smile.”
“Use the smile. Lose the hacksaw.”
“You’re no fun anymore.”
Another voice cuts in—deep, husky.“Address.” Dima.
I give it, short and low. He hangs up without a word.
Lev sighs dramatically. “You hear that? No goodbye. No warmth. No ‘Lev, you’re my favorite psychopath.’ Just click. You two deserve each other.”
I hang up before he can say more.
Twenty-three minutes later, the knock on the trunk of the Charger is light. Familiar rhythm. Three taps. Pause. One more.
I unlock it.
The man inside doesn’t move. Still warm, but stiffening. Tarp’s soaked under his neck where the blood’s pooled, no longer fresh enough to stream.
Lev leans in, one hand braced on the edge of the trunk, the other hanging loose; casual, like he’s admiring a painting instead of a corpse.
His broad frame blocks the alley light, shadow stretching over the dead man’s chest. Six-five, built thick through the shoulders and arms, the kind of size that makes people cross the street, even when he’s smiling.
“Look at that placement. Dead center. Like a fuckin’ gift tag. You romantic bastard.”
I ignore him.
Instead, I reach into my jacket and pull out the burner I took off the body. Cheap plastic. Clean… too clean.
I hand it to him.
Lev’s grin fades as he takes it without another word, sliding it into a plastic evidence bag he pulls from his coat. His fingers move fast—habit. He doesn’t like unknowns.
He lifts his chin, watching me. “You know who he was?”
“No.”
“Then why’d you shoot first?”
“Because he wasn’t here for me.”
Lev pauses, head tilting just slightly.
“What, and you’re suddenly not the most popular guy in town?”
I don’t answer.
He studies the body again, this time slower. “Gun?”
“Ruger. Suppressed. Jacket zipped, gloves on. Professional posture.”
Lev nods. “Yeah, he came to finish something.”
“I finished it first.”
He taps the burner pouch. “Boris gonna crack it?”
“Already on it.”
Lev snorts. “Let’s hope he finds something interesting. Otherwise, we’re chopping up a ghost.”
His voice drops a note as he closes the trunk. “So, if this guy’s not Kozlov, and he’s not one of ours… who the fuck is he?”
I don’t respond.
Just roll my shoulders once.
I’m not ready to brief him. Not yet. Not until I know what the phone says. Not until Boris scrapes whatever’s buried beneath the shell accounts and burner trails. The less they know now, the safer they stay if this goes sideways.
We’ve worked together long enough to read each other without asking questions.
He doesn’t push.
Just shifts his weight, jacket creaking as he leans in again; black tactical cut open over a ripped tee, dog tags flashing once before they disappear beneath the collar.
Jeans torn at the knee, boots heavy and scarred from actual use, not fashion.
When he grins, it’s all teeth. One side pulls harder than the other, thanks to the jagged scar trailing down his jaw.
His nose never healed straight, and he never bothered fixing it.
“You want the head or the hands as a trophy?” he asks, like it’s a real question.
“Lev.”
“Right. No souvenirs. Professionalism.” He straightens, flicking the trunk closed with a light thunk. “Dima’s loading the dissolver. Got that new-grade lime you like. German. Fancy.”
I nod once and walk toward the alley behind the abandoned Thai restaurant down the block, where Dima’s already parked. Black SUV with tinted windows, newer plates.
Dima doesn’t look up as we approach. Just opens the rear hatch and pulls out a large, padded black case. The kind that says, “I could kill you in twelve ways and write a poem about it after.” Or code it into a spreadsheet.
He’s also six-five, leaner than Lev but just as lethal; less brawler, more bone saw.
Broad-shouldered, built to move fast and hit harder.
His tactical gear is clean, organized, black-on-black like a second skin.
Sleeves rolled to the elbows. Forearms inked in tight, angular lines; old scripture mixed with circuit diagrams. There’s a surgical calm to how he moves. Precise. Efficient. Too quiet.
The back of the SUV lights up as he pops the latches, revealing tools in foam cutouts. Not weapons. Instruments. Dima likes tech. Loves hardware. Gets weirdly talkative about body temps and ligature bruising. We don’t ask why.
“ID?” he asks, snapping on nitrile gloves without looking at the body.
“No wallet. Burner phone. Still locked. Boris is running it.”
Dima nods once. Lifts the tarp with the kind of detachment that says this isn’t his first corpse today. Or even his second.
“Pro,” he mutters. “Veins are clean. No tracks. Jacket’s custom; foreign stitching near the cuffs. Expensive.”
Lev peers over his shoulder. “Belgrade or Eastern Bloc. Cyrillic tags. Definitely a subcontract.” He sniffs. “No cheap aftershave.”
I glance down the alley. Dark. Still. No eyes on us.
“Get rid of him. Quietly.”
“You want him whole or in pieces?”
“Fast. Clean. No theatrics.”
Lev grunts. “Fine. But one of these days, you’re gonna let me get creative.”
“Not tonight.”
He cracks his neck. “Didn’t think so.”
An hour later, Lev slams the back of the SUV shut and wipes his gloves on a rag that looks older than his last relationship. He tosses it in the bin behind the restaurant and claps once.
“Done. Dima’s doing his whole ‘silent night, deadly night’ thing back there. Probably leaving zero trace while mentally reciting War and Peace.”
“Good.”
Lev leans against the bumper, eyes narrowing.
“So when are we getting the grand tour, boss? Where’s this top-secret hideout you’ve been nesting in?
Don’t tell me it’s another one of your anonymous motel specials or some creepy-ass bunker you only admit to after we’ve burned the evidence. ”I unlock the car and slide in.
“You’ll get the address tonight,” I mutter. “Don’t show up early.”
Lev wipes his hands on his jeans, already turning back toward the alley. “Trust me, I’m not dying to see whatever hellhole you picked this time.”
I start the engine. “It’s secure.”
He lifts a hand without turning. “So was the last one. Until it wasn’t.”