Chapter 20 - Misha #2
I move through the garden, clearing threats, coordinating with my teams through the radio.
Two more attackers emerge from behind a hedge—I drop them both before they can raise their weapons.
Another tries to ambush me from the shadows of the old fountain.
I hear him coming, spin, and put three rounds in his center mass.
The breach is contained within twenty minutes. The attackers who made it through the tunnel are dead or dying.
I stand over the last one—young, barely older than Bianca, bleeding out on the grass. He looks up at me with fading eyes, his mouth moving like he's trying to say something. A plea for mercy, maybe. Or a curse.
I don't wait to hear it. I put a bullet in his head and move on.
The greenhouse looms behind me, its glass walls reflecting the fires burning across the estate. Some of the panes are shattered now, casualties of the fighting. Bianca's sanctuary, damaged by my war.
I think about her hands in the soil, coaxing life from dead things. I think about her face when she found my father's letters, the way she looked at me like I was something worth saving.
I don't let myself think about that for long. There's still work to do. There's always more work to do.
***
By four in the morning, the assault is over.
Sergei's forces are pulling back across all fronts, their coordinated strikes dissolving into scattered retreats. The estate is battered but standing. The perimeter held. Bodies litter the grounds—theirs and ours—but the defensive lines are intact.
I return to the command center, covered in blood—none of it mine except for the shallow cut on my arm—and find Alexei and Lenkov still at their consoles, coordinating the final stages of the defense.
"Casualty report," I demand.
"Six dead, nine wounded," Alexei says. "Three critically."
Six men. Six families who will get the worst news of their lives because they chose to work for me. I file the number away, along with the guilt. I'll deal with it later. I always deal with it later.
"The attackers?"
"Thirty-two confirmed kills. We've captured four, wounded."
"Internal security maintained throughout," Lenkov adds. "No breaches of the main house."
A decisive victory, on paper. But something doesn't sit right. The assault was fierce, but not overwhelming. Sergei committed significant forces, but not everything he had.
It's like he was testing us. Probing our defenses rather than trying to break them.
And Sergei himself was never spotted. His lieutenants led the attack. Where was he?
The question nags at me, a splinter I can't dislodge. Sergei is many things—cruel, obsessive, dangerous—but he's not a coward. He wouldn't send his men to die while he watched from a distance. Not unless he had a reason.
Not unless he was somewhere else. Doing something else.
The realization creeps over me slowly, like ice forming on still water.
What if the assault was a diversion? All of it—the south wall, the east gate, the north breach. All of it designed to keep us occupied. To keep me occupied.
While Sergei did what he really came here to do.
"I'm going to check on Bianca and Anna," I say, and my voice sounds strange to my own ears. Tight. Controlled. The voice of a man trying very hard not to panic.
Alexei nods. "I'll coordinate the cleanup."
Lenkov glances at me, his expression unreadable. "I'm sure they're fine, sir. Petrov is reliable."
I don't answer. I'm already moving, heading for the basement, my boots echoing through the damaged corridors. The estate is quiet now—the eerie stillness that follows violence, broken only by distant shouts as my men secure the perimeter and tend to the wounded.
The stairs descend into darkness. The emergency lighting is flickering, casting strange shadows on the concrete walls. I pull out a flashlight and continue down, the beam cutting through the black.
The corridor stretches ahead of me. Cold. Silent. Wrong.
Something is wrong.
Petrov should be here. Standing guard at his post, weapon ready, waiting to report. He should have heard me coming, should be calling out a challenge or a greeting.
But there's nothing. Just silence and shadow and the distant drip of water from a damaged pipe.
I move faster, my weapon raised, every instinct screaming that something has gone terribly wrong.
Then my flashlight beam catches something on the floor.
Bodies. Three of them.
Petrov is slumped against the wall nearest the door, his weapon still in his hand, his eyes open and staring at nothing.
There's blood pooling beneath him, spreading across the concrete in a dark mirror.
But he didn't go down alone—two of Sergei's men lie crumpled nearby, one with a bullet hole in his forehead, the other with three rounds in his chest.
Petrov fought. He took two of them with him before he fell.
I stand frozen, staring at the bodies, at the blood, at the safe room door beyond them.
The door that should be sealed and impenetrable.
The door that's been blown off its hinges, the reinforced steel buckled inward, the frame twisted and blackened from explosive charges.
Bianca.
The name echoes in my head like a scream. Like a prayer.
Anna.
I move toward the ruined door, and I already know what I'm going to find. Already know that the worst has happened, that while I was fighting in the gardens and killing men at the gates, Sergei's real team was down here. Taking the only thing in this world that matters to me.
But I have to see it. Have to know for certain.
I step over Petrov's body, push through the shattered door, and enter the darkness beyond.