Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
KILLIAN
Volkov doesn't aim at Alessandro.
The barrel of the Makarov shifts. It is a micro-movement, a fraction of an inch to the left, but in the geometry of a kill box, a fraction of an inch changes the world. The muzzle tracks past me, past the table, past every target that tactical logic would prioritize.
It finds Padraic Kavanagh.
My father is standing six feet from his bodyguards. He looks confused. He looks like a man who has spent twenty years building a fortress of lies only to realize he locked himself outside the gates. He opens his mouth—perhaps to shout, perhaps to beg—but the sound never comes.
The shot is a flat, percussive crack that seems too small for the devastation it brings.
It hits the steel walls of the dry dock and snaps back, a deafening echo that rings in the teeth. The muzzle flash is a strobe of dirty yellow light in the industrial gloom.
The round enters Padraic's chest on the left side. Center mass. It is not a warning shot. It is not a negotiation tactic. It is a termination.
My father’s body receives the impact with a violent jolt. It’s a mechanical failure, sudden and total. His legs stop receiving instructions. His knees buckle. He falls sideways, heavy and ungraceful, one hand reaching out to grab the empty air.
He hits the concrete with a sound I will hear for the rest of my life—a dull, wet, meat-heavy thud that vibrates through the soles of my boots.
I watch him fall.
Time dilates. The world slows down to a frame-by-frame crawl. I see the dust puff up around his body. I see the dark stain beginning to spread across the front of his coat. I see his bodyguards reaching for weapons that are too late to save him.
The expected response doesn't come. There is no scream in my throat. There is no white-hot blinding rage tearing through my vision. There is no grief.
There is only a stillness so complete it borders on clinical.
My father is on the concrete. His blood is pooling, black and glossy under the harsh floodlights. His mouth is open, jaw slack, and the sound coming from it is the thin, wet wheeze of a lung that has been punctured and is drowning in its own fluid.
The man standing over him is me. And I feel nothing.
The nothing lasts one second.
Then the nothing is replaced by something else. Not grief. Clarity. Cold, razor-wire clarity.
Volkov didn't shoot my father out of strategy. He didn't shoot him to escape. He shot him to break me. He shot him to unleash the Reaper. He wants to turn me into a blunt instrument, a chaotic variable that will tear this room apart and cover his retreat in blood and smoke.
He aimed me like a weapon.
And I refuse to fire.
"Cover!" Alessandro’s voice cuts through the ringing in my ears.
The dry dock erupts.
Volkov's interior team moves first. Four operatives, professionals who don't need verbal commands. Their weapons come up in unison. They engage in a coordinated volley of suppression fire that drives Salvatore Falcone’s bodyguards back.
Salvatore is shoved to the ground by his lead man, his face contorted in a scream that is lost in the noise.
Rocco's team opens up from the catwalks forty feet above. The boom of the Benelli shotgun is distinct—a deep, chest-thumping roar that separates itself from the sharp crack of the handguns. Slugs tear chunks of concrete from the floor around Volkov's perimeter, pinning them down.
Brennan's team breaches from the maintenance corridor to the east. Their MP5s chatter, controlled bursts sparking off the steel pillars.
The air becomes a physical medium. It thickens instantly with propellant smoke, concrete dust, and the copper taste of violence. The noise is a continuous, rolling thunder that makes communication impossible.
Alessandro is beside me. He moved the moment the gun came up—a lateral displacement, sliding three feet to the right to put the folding table between himself and the shooters. His Beretta is drawn. He isn't firing blindly. His eyes are scanning the chaos, processing the vectors.
"Left column," he shouts, his voice close to my ear. "Two of Volkov's. They have an angle on Rocco."
I look. I see them. Two operatives are using a massive steel support beam as cover, directing automatic fire upward toward the catwalks to keep Rocco’s team heads-down.
"Moving," I say.
I break left. The concrete is slick with hydraulic fluid and the oil of decades. My boots skid, finding purchase through sheer momentum. I stay low, my center of gravity dropped, moving in the crouch that Yosef taught Alessandro and experience taught me.
I circle the column. The operatives are focused upward. They are disciplined, but they are distracted.
The first one sees me when I'm four feet away. He spins, his submachine gun swinging toward me.
Too late.
I fire. Two rounds. Center mass. The Glock bucks in my hand, a familiar, jarring rhythm. The rounds punch through his vest. He drops without a sound.
The second one turns. He screams something in Russian.
Alessandro's Beretta barks from across the dock. A single, precise shot. It catches the operative in the shoulder, spinning him around. It destroys his stance.
I close the distance. I don't shoot him. I step into his guard and drive the barrel of my Glock into his sternum. He folds. I pistol-whip him across the temple. He goes down and stays down.
"Volkov's moving!" Alessandro yells.
I look toward the harbor.
The eastern opening of the dry dock is a gaping maw of darkness. And moving toward it, calm as a man walking to a business lunch, is Kazimir Volkov.
He isn't running. Running communicates panic. He is walking, flanked by his two remaining personal guards. Beyond them, on the black water of the harbor, I see running lights.
A boat. A rigid-hull inflatable, engines idling, waiting at the base of the ladder.
He planned for this. The meeting was a contingency. The execution of my father was a distraction.
I move.
The dry dock is a gauntlet of crossfire. Bullets chip the concrete around my feet, sending stinging sprays of grit into my face. I step over a body—one of ours, a Kavanagh soldier clutching a wounded leg, cursing through grit teeth. I don't stop. I can't stop.
Volkov is ahead of me. He is fifty yards away.
The first of his rear guards turns to engage me. He has a ?korpion submachine gun. He plants his feet, bringing the weapon up.
I am in the open. Fifteen feet of exposed concrete between me and the nearest cover.
I don't take cover. I accelerate.
The rounds snap past me. Thwip-thwip. I feel the displacement of air against my cheek. One round clips the shoulder of my jacket, tugging the fabric.
I am inside his guard in three strides. I grab the hot barrel of the gun with my left hand and redirect it skyward. I drive a palm strike into his nose.
Bone crunches. It’s a wet, sickening sound. He staggers, blinded by pain and tears. I strip the weapon from his hands, reverse it, and smash the stock into his temple. He collapses.
The second operative is bigger. He steps between me and Volkov. His weapon is holstered. He wants to fight. He wants to buy time with his body.
I hit him.
I don't use technique. I don't use finesse. I use mass. I slam into him at full sprint, driving my shoulder into his chest. We crash to the ground, a tangle of limbs.
He punches me—a hard, short hook to the ribs.
It finds the wound.
White light explodes behind my eyes. The pain is blinding, a supernova in my side. I feel the stitches tear. I feel the wet warmth of blood spreading across my stomach, soaking the waistband of my trousers. The breath leaves my lungs in a harsh whoosh.
I roar. It’s a sound of pure agony and rage.
I grab his head. I slam it into the concrete. Once. Twice.
His resistance stops. He goes limp.
I scramble up. My side is on fire. Every movement feels like tearing paper. I stumble, catching my balance.
Volkov is at the harbor edge. He is reaching for the iron ladder that leads down to the water.
I reach him.
My hand closes on the back of his expensive wool coat. I haul him back. He spins, his elbow driving backward.
It connects with my injured side.
The pain drops me to one knee. I gasp, my vision swimming with black spots. It feels like he just drove a spike into my kidney.
He kicks me in the chest. I fall onto my back, the air wheezing out of me.
He draws a knife from his belt. A combat dagger, matte black, serrated.
He lunges.
I catch his wrist. My grip is slippery with sweat and blood. The blade hovers inches from my left eye.
He is strong. Older, but trained. He presses down, his weight behind the knife. His face is a mask of cold concentration.
"Die, boy," he hisses.
I look at the knife. I look at him.
I twist my hips. I bridge my back, using the wrestling move Da taught me when I was twelve. I throw him over me.
He lands hard on his back, the air leaving him in a grunt. The knife clatters away across the concrete.
I scramble on top of him. I pin his arms with my knees.
I punch him.
Right in the face. I feel his nose break under my knuckles. Blood sprays across my hand.
I punch him again. And again.
The rage takes over. The Reaper takes over. I am not thinking. I am not strategizing. I am destroying the thing that hurt my family. I am destroying the thing that shot my father and tried to kill Alessandro.
His head bounces off the concrete. His eyes roll back. He goes limp.
I stop.
My fist is raised for another blow. My breath is tearing at my throat, harsh and ragged.
I look at him. His face is a ruin. Blood masks his features. He is unconscious.
I reach for my Glock. I press the muzzle to his forehead.
The steel is hot against his skin.
My finger tightens on the trigger.
He killed my father. He tried to kill Alessandro. He tried to kill Rory. He put a target on everyone I love.
"Killian!"
Alessandro's voice. Distant. Shouting over the dying echoes of the gunfire.
"Killian! We need him alive!"