Chapter 23 Xander
XANDER
The warehouse crouches on Moscow's eastern edge, where industry meets the frozen wasteland beyond the city's reach.
Concrete walls rise from snow-covered earth, windows dark except for the occasional flicker of movement inside.
Intelligence reports put twelve Sokolov soldiers within those walls, armed and desperate men who believe concrete and steel can protect them from me.
They're wrong.
The night air burns my lungs, each breath forming clouds that dissipate into darkness.
Eight of my best men spread through the shadows around me, weapons cleaned and loaded, faces painted with the black stripes that mark us as predators in the urban jungle.
"Radio check," I whisper into my throat mic.
Responses crackle through my earpiece—Igor on the west side, Ivan covering the rear exit, six others positioned to catch anyone who runs.
The warehouse has three ways in and out, but we've sealed them all.
No one leaves breathing.
Arkady isn't here, at least intelligence doesn't suggest it, but more than half of the men on my list left to remove are positioned inside this building probably planning their assault on my life.
The main entrance is a steel door set into concrete, secured by chains and padlocks that won't slow us down for more than thirty seconds.
I signal to Igor, who produces the bolt cutters from his tactical pack.
Metal parts with a sharp snap that echoes across the empty lot.
The chains fall away, hitting frozen ground and I grip the door handle, counting heartbeats until everyone is ready.
"Three… Two… One…"
The door swings open, revealing a corridor lined with shipping containers and machinery.
Emergency lighting casts red shadows that dance across scarred walls, and the air inside carries the scent of rust engine oil.
I'm on a mission to finish the job given to me by my Pakhan and though my heart is still fucked up beyond all comprehension, I have to focus.
One slip could cost me my life tonight.
Voices drift from deeper in the building and we move that direction.
The warehouse opens before us, a large space divided by metal shelving units and industrial equipment that creates natural chokepoints and killing zones.
I've been in scenarios like this before a number of times, and find myself falling into the rhythm as something startles us all into defensive mode.
Muzzle flashes strobe from behind an overturned forklift as automatic weapons fire, tearing the air above our heads.
Bullets spark off metal beams and shatter fluorescent bulbs, raining glass down on our position, and my men scatter for cover.
I drop to one knee behind a concrete pillar, bringing my rifle to my shoulder.
The scope reveals three targets clustered behind shelving units, their positions exposed by the very muzzle flashes that announce their attack.
My first shot takes the center man in the chest, the impact spinning him away from his weapon.
The second finds the gunner on the left, his head snapping back as the bullet finds its mark.
The third target tries to run, but Ivan's burst from the east door cuts him down before he takes five steps.
And just that easily our position is announced to the entire warehouse and we are launched into full scale battle.
Gunfire erupts throughout the warehouse as my team engages targets from multiple directions.
The Sokolovs are good—professional soldiers who know how to use cover and coordinate their fire—but they're fighting defensive positions while we control the initiative.
A grenade arcs through the darkness, landing behind a stack of wooden crates where two Sokolov gunners have taken cover.
The explosion tears through the warehouse, orange flame and black smoke billowing upward as the blast wave rattles every surface.
When the smoke clears, body parts are scattered across a twenty-meter radius.
Blood pools between broken boards and twisted metal, steam rising where hot fragments meet cold concrete.
I'm losing men—good men who came along to fight this war in good faith.
"Northwest corner cleared," Igor reports through my earpiece.
"East side secure," Ivan follows.
I advance through the maze of debris, rifle ready as I clear each potential hiding spot.
A man steps out from behind a shipping container, pistol raised, and I put two rounds center mass before he can acquire his target.
He collapses backward, blood spreading beneath his body in a pattern that will require careful cleaning.
Another grenade detonates somewhere behind me, followed by the distinctive crack of rifle fire.
My men are methodically eliminating resistance, working through the warehouse with no room for mercy or mistake.
A figure moves in my peripheral vision—Sokolov soldier trying to flank my position through a gap in the shelving units.
I pivot and as I do I pull my pistol and fire, the bullet catching him in the throat.
He drops his weapon, hands clutching his neck as blood pours between his fingers.
He tries to speak, probably calling for help that won't come, but the wound prevents anything more than wet, gasping sounds.
I watch him die, noting how long it takes consciousness to fade and life to leave his eyes.
"Building secure," comes through my earpiece as the last gunshots fade to echoes.
Ivan and Igor have accomplished with our team what I could not do alone, but I'm in no mood to celebrate.
God would that I had a chance to do this over again.
I'd take my time and slit their throats one by one, exacting revenge for my battered heart on these sick fucks who made my life a living hell.
All because I can't control a fucking woman who shouldn’t even matter to me.
I walk through the warehouse, surveying the aftermath of the violence.
Bodies lie scattered across the floors in every area, their blood mixing with dust and debris to create a paste that will require harder work to remove completely.
Igor appears at my shoulder, his tactical vest stained with powder residue and someone else's blood.
"Clean sweep, Boss. No survivors."
I nod, checking each face among the dead.
Foot soldiers mostly, men whose names appear on our intelligence reports but carry no particular significance beyond their allegiance to Arkady Sokolov.
Their deaths bring us closer to the final reckoning that awaits at year's end.
"Casualties?" I ask.
"We lost one…" His head sinks.
"Rowan was hit by a grenade. And Leo took shrapnel in the arm, but he'll live."
Losing men in firefights is inevitable, but tonight's operation was supposed to be clean.
I sigh hard knowing I will have to report to Markov that we lost a man, probably to his wife that her husband fought bravely, but I can't let it deter me.
The job isn't finished yet.
I pull out my phone and scroll to Nadya's number, thumb hovering over the call button.
She should be sleeping in her sister's apartment, surrounded by normal things like family photographs and children's toys.
Clean things that exist outside the world of violence and retribution.
It's what she wants—I know that, and I'd love to give that to her.
But this warehouse needs her attention.
So many bodies require removal, blood stains demand elimination, and evidence must disappear before Moscow police arrive to investigate reports of automatic weapons fire.
I type out the address and send it without additional context.
She'll understand what the message means, and she'll gather her supplies and make whatever excuses are necessary to explain another midnight emergency at the hotel where she supposedly works.
The thought of seeing her again creates tension in my chest I thought I pushed away.
In the car, she told me she loved me even as she prepared to walk away.
The contradiction feels venomous, leaving wounds that won't heal with vodka or the spilling of blood.
She loves me but can't survive in my world.
I love her but can't exist in hers. It's misery no matter how you look at it.
My men begin the preliminary cleanup, moving bodies to central locations where disposal will be easier.
They work like soldiers who've performed this ritual hundreds of times, reducing human beings to logistical problems that require systematic solutions.
It's beautiful in its simplicity, but to women like Nadya, it's trauma, and I know why she wants to run.
I should stay and supervise to ensure the scene is properly sanitized before we withdraw.
But the thought of facing Nadya while blood still stains my clothes makes breathing difficult. She won't look me in the eye.
I know it, and she'll only give me more excuses.
Family comes first, and she is making the right choice, but sometimes the right choice gets you killed.
Will she clean up after me one final time before disappearing forever?
Or will this warehouse become the place where she finally accepts that loving a monster requires becoming one?
"I'm leaving," I tell Igor, holstering my rifle.
"Handle the preliminary work until she arrives."
He nods without question, professional enough not to probe into decisions that don't affect operational security.
But I see the calculation in his expression, the way he files away information about my attachment to the woman who scrubs our sins from crime scenes.
I drive back to my safehouse feeling empty, passing homes where average folks are climbing into bed for the night or already resting peacefully.
Nadya used to be one of them.
Forensic science student with dreams of legitimate career, helping her sister raise children who believe the world contains more good than evil.
I pulled her from that life into mine, corruption spreading like infection through everything she touched.
Now she carries my secrets, knows my methods, has seen me kill men with her own eyes.
The knowledge makes her complicit whether she wants to be or not.
In the eyes of law enforcement, she's an accessory to murder.
In the eyes of my enemies, she's a legitimate target.
In the eyes of the Pakhan, she's a liability that needs permanent resolution—or she will be, just like my previous cleaner, when he finds out.
I pull up to the safehouse and park, climbing four flights of stairs to an apartment I don't want to be in without her.
I pour vodka and stand at the window, watching snow fall on a city that sleeps now.
Somewhere in that maze of lights, Nadya is gathering cleaning supplies and preparing for another night of erasing evidence.
She'll arrive at the warehouse within the hour, assess the carnage, and begin the methodical process of making those murders disappear.
Her training will kick in and by dawn she will be home sleeping it off, trying to forget I exist, all while I'm here drowning my sorrow in alcohol and thinking of ways to make it stop.
I drain the vodka and check my weapons, muscle memory guiding the ritual of cleaning and maintenance.
It's the only way I can move on and not succumb to the numbness that wants to swallow me whole.
Arkady Sokolov still breathes.
Until his body is feeding worms in frozen ground, my mission remains incomplete.
And until my mission is complete, everyone connected to me remains in danger.
My phone buzzes with a text message from Igor.
Package delivered. Work proceeding.
Nadya has arrived at the warehouse, seen the aftermath of tonight's violence, begun the process of making it disappear.
She'll work through the night, transforming carnage into pristine concrete floors that reveal nothing of the bloodshed that happened within those walls.
By dawn, the warehouse will show no trace of the men who died there.
Their bodies will vanish into the industrial furnaces that consume Moscow's waste, reducing human remains to ash.
But their deaths won't bring me closer to the woman I can't stop loving or the life I can't allow myself to want.
Some distances can't be crossed with violence.
Some problems can't be solved with bullets and blood.