Chapter 3
Chapter Three
ROCCO
He’s smaller than I expected.
The file said six-foot-one, one hundred and seventy pounds.
Looking at him now, that weight seems like a gross overestimation.
He’s all bone and tendon, a thin reed wrapped in an expensive wool coat that probably costs as much as my truck.
He stands in his kitchen with the lights low, his tie loosened around a neck that looks like I could snap it with one hand.
He doesn’t scream. He doesn’t run for a phone or a knife. He just watches me with those pale blue eyes behind his glasses. I can see the gears turning. He’s taking my measure, cataloging the damage I’m carrying, filing me away in some sterile mental cabinet.
I step further into the room. The floorboard under my heavy boot groans—the third one from the left, a loud, dry sound that echoes in the empty apartment. The place is exactly what I expected from a man who lives in his own head. It’s a morgue.
Grey couch. Glass table with nothing on it. Bare white walls. It doesn’t look like a home; it looks like a stage set for a life he isn't actually living. There is a single glass sitting in the sink, a ghost of a drink he didn't finish. The whole place has the warmth of a stainless-steel tray.
"Grab your bag," I grunt. "You’re coming with me."
He doesn’t move. His eyes travel from my face—the split cheekbone, the blackening jaw, the dried blood on my temple—down to my hands. He looks at my swollen knuckles and the rust-colored stains on my henley. I can practically hear the medical terms clicking into place behind those lenses.
Blunt force trauma. Multiple contusions. Probable fracture.
He sees a monster. I see a tool.
"I don't know who you are." His voice is steady. Too steady. The low, controlled tone carries that particular arrogance—he thinks he’s the smartest person in the room. It makes my teeth itch. "But whoever sent you has made a mistake. I’m under the protection of the Volkov family."
"I know who owns you, Doc. Kazimir doesn't have a say in this."
I close the distance in two strides. He doesn’t retreat. His feet stay planted, but I see the tendons in his neck pull tight. His body is preparing for an impact his mind won't acknowledge.
"Your Russian handlers can file a complaint with my brother," I say. I’m close enough to smell him now—not rain or arrogance, but the sharp, biting scent of bergamot soap and hospital-grade antiseptic. "Right now, you’re getting your kit and you’re walking out that door with me."
"And if I refuse?"
I look at his hands. Long, elegant fingers. They are steady as stone, even with me looming over him. Surgeon’s hands. The only reason I’m standing in this air-conditioned cage instead of sleeping off my fight in a dark bar.
Alessandro needs those fingers. He needs the mechanic inside this man.
"Then I carry you," I say. "And I don't give a damn about scuffing the luggage."
His jaw tightens. A micro-expression—there and gone, swallowed by that frigid composure. He holds my gaze for three seconds. I count the beats of my own heart against my ribs.
He turns without a word. He walks to a closet near the front door and pulls out a black leather medical bag. It’s heavy. He handles it the way a soldier handles a sidearm—automatic, practiced.
"I’ll need to know the nature of the injury," he says, his back to me.
"You’ll need to shut up and move."
I grab his arm. My hand wraps entirely around his bicep, my fingers overlapping. He’s nothing but wire and bone under that coat.
The second I touch him, he goes rigid. Every muscle in his frame locks down. It’s an involuntary, animal reaction—the response of a body that has learned to brace for damage.
I file that away. Someone has put hands on this man before. Someone has taught his body to expect the worst from a grip on his arm.
I pull him toward the door.
The hallway is a narrow throat of a space. Pre-war building, high ceilings, but the corridors are tight. I go first, my hand still clamped on his arm.
Adrian is a shadow behind me. He’s clutching his medical bag against his chest, his breathing loud and rhythmic. Four counts in, four counts out. He’s forcing his pulse to stay low.
The elevator is fifteen feet to my left. The stairwell is twenty feet to my right. I choose the stairs. Elevators are just upright coffins with buttons.
I’m three steps from the heavy metal stairwell door when the elevator chimes.
The sound is a needle in my ear. A polite, mechanical ding that bounces off the plaster walls.
I stop. Adrian smacks into my back. His shoulder blades hit my spine.
The elevator doors slide open.
Two men step out. The first is compact and wiry, wearing a leather jacket over a shoulder holster. The second is a wall of meat with a shaved head and the dead eyes of a man who has buried too many bodies. They aren't cops. They aren't building security.
Russians.
The wiry one sees my face and his hand goes to his hip. I’m already moving.
I shove Adrian sideways with my right hand. He hits the wall hard. His medical bag skids across the carpet. I lunge for the blond before he can clear his holster.
I grab his wrist and twist. I feel the joint grind and the small bones pop. His shot goes wide.
A deafening roar fills the narrow corridor. A round punches into the ceiling. Grey plaster rains down like ash.
The big one is on me a second later. He doesn’t have a gun. He has a fixed-blade tactical knife—six inches of black steel aimed right for my kidney.
He’s fast for his size. I pivot, dragging the blond in front of me like a human shield. The knife sinks into the blond’s shoulder. He screams—a high, thin sound that cuts through the ringing in my ears.
I use his weight as a battering ram. I drive both of them back into the elevator car.
The big Russian snarls and shoves his partner aside. He slashes out with the blade. The steel catches my left forearm—a hot, bright line that opens the skin from wrist to elbow. I feel the muscle separate.
Blood sheets down my hand, making my grip slick and unreliable. He pulls free and resets his stance.
There’s no room to move. This is my kind of fight—ugly, compressed, decided by who can take more punishment. The answer has always been me.
He thrusts. I don’t dodge. I catch the blade in my left palm.
The steel slides between the third and fourth metacarpals. The pain is a nuclear detonation. It travels up my arm and settles in my jaw, white and blinding.
I close my fist around the blade, trapping it in my own meat. His eyes go wide. He tries to yank the knife back, but I’ve got him. I grip the steel and pull him forward into a headbutt.
My forehead connects with the bridge of his nose. Bone crunches. It’s a wet, heavy sound. His head snaps back. His grip on the handle dies. I rip the knife free from both his hand and my own palm.
The blond is back up, bleeding from the shoulder, reaching for his fallen Makarov. I throw the knife. I’m not a knife fighter; I’m a brawler. But at four feet, you don't need to be an expert.
The blade hits him in the thigh. It buries to the hilt. He goes down howling.
The big one is staggering, blinded by the blood pouring from his nose. I grab him by the back of his skull and drive his face into the corner of the wall.
The plaster craters. I do it again. His body goes slack. I let him drop like a sack of grain.
The blond is still crawling toward his gun, dragging the leg with the knife in it. I step on his hand. The small bones in his fingers compress and snap under my boot. He makes a sound like air escaping a punctured tire.
I pick up the Makarov and press the cold muzzle into the base of his skull.
"How many more?" I growl.
He gasps, blood pooling under his chest. "Odin," he wheezes. One. Downstairs.
I pistol-whip him across the temple. His head bounces off the carpet and he goes out.
The hallway falls silent, except for the hiss of a busted light and the sound of my own lungs rattling. Each breath feels like dragging a rake through my chest.
I look at my left hand. It’s a ruin. The cut across my palm is a deep red mouth. I can see the white flash of the flexor tendon through the gore. My arm is worse—the sleeve of my henley is soaked, dripping onto the carpet in heavy splashes.
I have maybe fifteen minutes before the adrenaline quits and I pass out.
Adrian is pressed against the wall. His back is flat against the plaster. His eyes are wide—the first uncontrolled expression I’ve seen on his face. He looks at the blond on the floor, then at the big one, then at me.
His mouth opens. Closes.
"Your bag," I bark. "Pick it up. We’re leaving."
He stares at me for two more seconds. Then something clicks. The shock vanishes, replaced by that clinical wall of ice. He retrieves his bag and stands up. His hands are steady again. Whatever he saw in the last sixty seconds, he’s already packing it away.
Useful. A man who can compartmentalize under fire is a man who can cut into a body while the world burns.
"Move. Stairs."
I follow him down, keeping my body between him and the hallway. The stairwell is cold, concrete, lit by a single bulb on each landing. Our footsteps echo—his measured, mine heavy and uneven.
My left leg is starting to stiffen. The adrenaline is losing its argument with the pain.
Ground floor. Back exit. The alley smells like wet trash and old iron. My truck is half a block away. I push through the door and scan the street. No Russians. Just the empty city and the cold rain.
"Run," I say.
He hesitates. I grab his arm—the same bicep—and pull him into a sprint. He runs like a man who has never had to hurry. Long-legged, uncoordinated, his breath hitching with every stride.
The truck is twenty yards away. I dig the keys from my pocket with my right hand, leaving red smears on the metal fob. I unlock the doors and shove Adrian into the passenger seat.
He hits the seat hard. His bag lands in the footwell. I slam the door and circle to the driver’s side. By the time my ass hits the seat, I’ve got the engine turning over.
I floor it. The tires bark against the asphalt as we jump into the street.
I drive with my right hand on the wheel. My left arm is a dead weight in my lap. I press the hem of my shirt into the slash on my forearm, but the fabric is already saturated.
Blood is everywhere. It’s on the gearshift. It’s on the console. It’s dripping onto my jeans. The pain has moved past white-hot and into a deep, grinding throb that pulses with my heartbeat.
Adrian is a statue in the passenger seat. His seatbelt is on—a reflex that survived an abduction. He’s staring through the windshield, his jaw locked so hard the muscle is jumping.
He hasn't said a word since the apartment.
I merge onto the FDR Drive, heading north. The East River is a black void on our left. I’m doing ninety.
"You’re losing volume."
His voice cuts through the cabin. Flat. Clinical. He isn't asking if I’m okay. He’s noting a mechanical failure in a piece of equipment.
"I’ll live," I grunt.
"The laceration in your palm has breached the deep flexor group. If the tendon sheath is open, you will lose the use of your fingers within hours." He doesn’t look at my face. He’s staring at the blood pooling in the cup holder.
"The forearm is weeping from the brachial branches.
You need pressure and sutures. You won't make it to the safehouse like this. "
I glance at him. His eyes are narrowed. Focused. The mask is back on. He isn't a victim anymore; he’s a technician looking at a broken engine.
"You’ll fix it when we get there," I say. "After you fix the man on the table."
"I am a prisoner."
"You were a prisoner in that clinic, Doc. I just changed the scenery."
His head turns. Those blue eyes find mine in the dark. The streetlights strobe across his glasses—rhythmic, sharp flashes of white. There’s something in his face I didn't expect. Not fear. Not even anger.
It’s the silent judgement of a surgeon looking at a patient who is too stupid to know he’s already dead.
"And if I refuse?"
I keep my eyes on the road. The bridge is coming up. The city is a smear of light behind us.
"You try to run, I break your legs. You try to scream, I break your jaw." I flex my right hand on the wheel, the movement pulling at the bruises on my chest. "You save the man on the table, or you'll never hold a scalpel again."
The truck hurtles into the dark. The doctor sits with his clean hands folded over his bag.
Neither of us speaks again.