Chapter Twenty-Five
Leonid
I look up at the old, abandoned office complex looming before me. Swiftly, I survey the perimeter, spot areas where there could be traps, and take note of the number of guards we can spot through the window.
The rain is cold, pouring over the concrete corpse from dark gray skies. The shattered windows gape like hollow eye sockets. The exterior brickwork is cracked and choked with creeping ivy. Clinging to the rotting facade is the faded logo of a defunct logistics firm.
A memory springs up from the ashes, flashing through my mind—a faint recollection from over a decade ago that picks the wrong time to resurface.
I grit my teeth, clenching my jaw hard.
Even then, my enemies tried to scare me—a rival syndicate that thought they were significant enough to threaten me. They lingered around the perimeter of Tatiana’s school long enough to send a message that they had eyes on her. On my sister.
It was the last time they ever looked at anyone; the last time they ever got a chance to fucking breathe.
The details remain vivid—bright red and orange flames furiously licking up the oxygen in the air, thick black pillars of smoke rising into the clouds, scorching heat glazing my skin as I watched, the air choking me with the smell of burning wood as the house fell into an ashen ruin, lifeless bodies everywhere.
And now there’s Vasili, who deludes himself to believe his story would end any differently.
I pull back the slide on the gun with fluid, practiced motion.
The metallic click echoes violently in the damp air as the first 9mm round is stripped from the magazine and driven into the chamber. It’s a beautiful, merciless sound.
The slide snaps forward and locks into place. The safety is off.
I raise my hand. It’s all the signal they need.
The men fall in line by my sides, guns raised as we march forward. The rusty glass doors give way with a muted groan under the weight of my boot. We slip into the suffocating gloom of the complex and the men cough, then grumble indistinctly.
“What the actual hell?” Mikhail coughs beside me, covering his face with his elbow. “It fucking stinks in here.”
The stench is foul, like rotten corpses, wet concrete, and old dust. I grit my teeth. “What did you expect from a fucking pig? This is his natural habitat. You just keep your eyes on getting what we came here for.”
Loud static crackles overhead, and, following my hand signals, the men fan out behind me in perfect sync, their boots making no sound on the debris-littered floor.
“You know, Leo...” More static interrupts, and after a deafening screech of feedback, his voice returns.
“That’s not a very nice thing to say. But I know you’re always crazy and bloodthirsty, so you literally say whatever stupid shit comes to mind.
I’m feeling generous tonight; I’ll let it slide.
We really do appreciate your visit. How can we help you? ”
I haven’t felt this much rage in a while—the kind that’s blinding, fully capable of drowning all logic, until all you desire is to crush the head of your enemy in your hands.
It makes my heart pump faster and faster, until my blood roars.
I tighten my grip on the handle of the gun to keep myself grounded, before I fall into a violent wave of bloodlust.
I tilt my head back, jerking my gaze from corner to corner in search of the hidden cameras I know he’s using to spy on us. I find one, a small black camera with a blinking red dot, mounted high on the wall in a tight corner, and I look straight at it. “You think this is a fucking game?”
“Isn’t it?” I hear the subtle jeer as his voice floats down from the ceiling. “Because if it isn’t, I truly am intrigued about why you’d randomly show up here.”
Control, Leo.
I breathe in slowly, trying to calm myself down, when all I hear is my blood roaring in my ears. “You have something of mine, and I want it back.”
“Err, no. There’s been a mix-up.” There’s sudden silence in the background, and then we hear a heavy chair scraping across the floor.
He returns, speaking much closer to the microphone now.
“What we do have here is a pretty whore that I, personally, can’t wait to sink into.
It looks like we’d be a great match. What’s your name, sweetheart?
Oh! Would you look at that? She actually has your last name. ”
My vision goes red.
“I’m going to fucking kill you, Vasili!”
Vasili’s maniacal laughter echoes off the walls of the building while my men fan out into smaller teams, spreading themselves across the lobby.
“What do we call this, Leo? The day of reckoning?
Narrowing my eyes, I raise my gun, tilt it an angle above my head, and aim at the black camera. “It’s the day you die, bastard. The day I get to send you back to your maker.” I pull the trigger and watch as the camera shatters into pieces. “Enough talk! Come out here and face me!”
Just before I turn back around, a voice yells from the shadows of the first floor, “Ambush!”
A group of heavily armed mercenaries charges out of the ruined office cubicles with their weapons raised, muzzles flashing against the peeling wallpaper.
I don’t flinch. Adrenaline hits my system like liquid fire, transforming me yet again into the man who watched that house burn to the fucking ground.
I step directly into their line of fire, lifting my gun with precision.
I press the trigger twice, and the heavy recoil vibrates up my arm as two rounds find the center mass of the lead gunman. He drops like a stone, but I don’t check to see him hit the floor; I’m already moving, driven by pure strength and terrifying speed.
Another mercenary lunges at my side with a combat knife. I catch his wrist mid-air, crunching his bones beneath my white-knuckled grip as I twist his own blade into his throat.
“Where is she, huh? Where the fuck is she?”
He chokes and his eyes roll to the back of his head. I spin away, using his collapsing body as a shield against a hail of incoming bullets.
“Move to the left!” Mikhail shouts over the noise.
The fight becomes messier and more chaotic, like a violent explosion threatening to rock the foundations of the building.
It’s deafeningly loud in the enclosed concrete space.
I duck, running through the earsplitting roar of gunfire, the frantic shouts of dying men, and the splintering of wood and drywall as bullets tear them apart.
Concrete dust fills the air, mixing with the metallic stench of fresh blood.
A masked man rushes at me, and I drive the heel of my boot into his knee, snapping it backward. He drops to the floor and I put a bullet through his skull before he can even scream. When another man charges forward to avenge his partner, I send him crashing through a shattered glass partition.
He doesn’t get back up.
“Leonid!”
I snap my head around to see Mikhail signaling upstairs. He must have received intel on where Tatiana’s being held hostage.
I drop the empty magazine, slapping a fresh one in, and the slide snaps forward. I stand in the middle of the carnage, chest heaving and covered in blood, and my eyes lock on the heavy iron staircase leading upward.
The warm-up is over. It’s time to send that bastard to hell.
I advance up the iron stairs. My boots crunch on the shards of broken glass littering the steps.
Every muscle in my body is coiled tight, a time bomb wrapped in tailored wool.
I move past a long, suffocatingly quiet hallway where the peeling wallpaper hangs like dead skin from the walls. More gunshots ring from the lobby downstairs, but the world has shrunk down to a single, hyper-focused point.
On instinct, I kick open the door at the very end of the hall.
And there she is. In the corner of a damp, barren back room, Tatiana is tied tightly to a rusted metal chair. She’s battered, with dark bruises blooming across her cheek and blood drying beneath her nose.
At the sound of my feet on the floor, her eyes snap open, and a quick sigh of relief escapes me.
She’s alive.
The sight of her broken skin hits me like a match to gasoline. My anger doesn’t just grow; it doubles, and a blinding, white-hot fury replaces the cold ice in my veins.
But before I can take a single step toward her, a low, grating chuckle echoes from the farthest corner of the room.
Vasili steps into the light, smirking, entirely unbothered by the slaughter I just left downstairs.
His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, his slacks are dusty, and a heavy black revolver hangs loosely in his grip. He looks like a man who thinks he’s already won.
I’m going to knock that smirk off his face.
“She’s beautiful, I’ll admit,” he says, then throws a quick glance at her. “Smooth skin, perfect lips, sexy body. Fuck, she’s every man’s wet dream. Maybe, if you’d given us a few more minutes, I’d know what she tastes like…down there.”
My teeth grind as I lift my gun. “Where do you prefer? Your mouth or your eyes?” I growl.
He cocks his head to the side, his eyes lit with mirth. Then he raises his weapon, ready to finish me.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe my fingers,” he sneers. “I groped her.”
“Son of a fucking bitch!”
I don’t fire my gun; I lunge across the space between us, knocking his gun to the floor as a deafening shot blasts into the ceiling.
But the bastard doesn’t collapse like I expected him to.
Driven by pure, frantic survival, he fights back—dirty, desperate, and wild.
He rams his elbow violently into my ribs, trying to create distance between us, and grabs a jagged piece of broken timber from the floor, swinging it wildly at my head.
He scratches and claws, spit flying from his lips.
I know what he’s doing—fighting for his life, throwing every cheap, uncalculated trick he has at me, but every blow he lands only feeds the fire burning under my skin.
He dared to touch my blood, and now I’m going to paint this room with his.
In a swift, blinding motion, he slides a jagged hunting knife out from underneath his shirt.
He swipes the blade in a vicious arc; the silver edge glints in the light.