Chapter Two - Rostya
The warehouse floor is quiet now, save for the echo of dripping water somewhere in the distance and the dull hum of machinery above.
I stride in from the shadows, my knuckles still streaked with blood, raw skin pulled tight over bone.
My suit jacket clings heavy to my shoulders, soaked with the stench of iron.
I don’t bother to take it off. I want it there, want the weight of it pressing down, reminding me what I’ve done. What I always do.
Violence is ritual. The rhythm of fists against flesh, the breaking of bones, the wet gurgle of men choking on their own blood. It should have left me cleansed, emptied of the poison I carry.
Tonight the air tastes wrong, bitter, as if I’ve drawn blood and still fed nothing. There’s an edge to it, sharp and unseen, like teeth gnashing just beyond the dark.
The muffled thrum of bass leaks through the ceiling from the club upstairs. Men laugh, women dance, liquor flows as though the night isn’t breaking apart beneath us. Their world drowns in pleasure while mine cracks open.
The sterile hum of servers gnaws at my ears, steady, mechanical, reminding me that power doesn’t live only in broken bodies anymore. The metallic tang clings to my skin, settling thick in my throat.
Ivan is waiting at the door. Back straight. Eyes sharp. His hand hovers too close to his gun, twitching like he expects a fight that isn’t there. My presence shouldn’t unnerve him, not after all these years, yet the tension coils between us anyway. He feels it. The shift. The wrongness in the air.
I stop in front of him, and he doesn’t meet my eyes. That alone sets the coil inside me tighter.
“What is it?” The words are flat, stripped down to iron.
He hesitates. I see his jaw work, his throat move. Silence stretches, fraying by the second.
“Say it.”
His voice scrapes raw when it comes. “There’s been… activity. On the servers.”
I narrow my eyes. “Activity.”
“Unusual traffic.” His hand flexes against his thigh, betraying nerves he tries to bury. “More than that. Sir… it’s bad.”
The muscles in my shoulders tighten, but I don’t move fast. I push past him, the door slamming shut behind me, and the office swallows us both.
The servers line the far wall, humming their endless tune, cold light spilling blue across glass and steel. Their glow casts fragments of myself across the room, reflections shattered across every pane. Dozens of pieces of me staring back. None whole.
“Talk.” My voice is low, a command carved sharp enough to cut.
Ivan swallows again, his eyes flickering toward the monitors. “The firewalls buckled. Too much incoming traffic. Layered, masked, hidden through proxies. Hundreds. Thousands, maybe. We caught alarms—everywhere at once. We tried to trace it, but…” He falters.
“But you failed.”
His silence is the only admission I need.
“What did they take.”
His answer comes quiet, strangled. “Financials. Laundering paths. Contact chains. Maybe more. We cut power mid-stream, but damage was done.”
I feel it like a blade sliding between ribs. Months of operations, maybe years. Fragile networks stitched together through bribes, threats, bodies buried so deep they should never have surfaced. In a single night, gone.
I don’t move. The stillness makes Ivan sweat. He knows this stillness. Knows it better than anyone.
Then I slam my fist into the desk. The sound cracks like thunder, rattling glass, sending papers skittering to the floor in pale, fluttering panic. A glass tips and shatters, shards scattering across the concrete.
“Who?” My voice tears through the room. “Who touched my system?”
“We don’t know yet,” Ivan blurts, words rushing like he thinks speed will soften them. “Not amateurs. This was precise, surgical. Whoever it was knew where to push.”
I stalk the length of the room, pacing tight circles.
My blood roars in my ears, anger lashing sharp with every step.
Violence is how I keep control, but fists don’t mean anything here.
This isn’t a battlefield of men and knives and bullets.
This is wires and shadows. Numbers. It taunts me because I can’t break it with my hands.
“Why wasn’t it stopped?” The words crack out, one after the other. “Why do I pay for security if my walls fall in an hour? Why are my men watching cameras instead of catching this?”
“We tried—”
“That’s not good enough.”
The monitors flare brighter, drowning the room in blue. It paints my face in cold fire, reflection fractured across every screen. I don’t look whole anymore. My empire doesn’t look whole anymore.
My mind pulls forward, racing through the worst possibilities.
Shipments flagged at customs. Accounts frozen.
Rivals sitting smug with knowledge of my routes, my laundering trails, my secrets.
Foreign hands waiting to slip in and cut my throat while I bleed from the inside out.
The government… always hungry, always waiting for a crack.
The hum of servers gnaws louder, mechanical mockery, as if the machines themselves know what I’ve lost.
“No one does this to me.” My voice is low, but it carries, steady in a way fury shouldn’t be. “No one reaches into my house, my empire, and walks away.”
Ivan shifts, the fear in his posture clashing with the loyalty etched into his face. He doesn’t speak. Smart.
“They want to fight me in the dark?” My hand drags across the desk, scattering papers like ash. “Then I’ll drag them out into the light. I’ll carve their names from the wires they hide behind. And when I have them, I’ll make sure they understand—”
I turn, eyes locking on Ivan, and he flinches at the sharpness in my gaze.
My fists curl, the ache of split knuckles pulsing, reminding me of what I do best. Violence is language, and I’ll speak it fluently when I find the one who dared touch me.
Whoever they are, they’ve made a mistake.
The doors slam open, hard enough to rattle the glass along the walls.
The room swallows a different kind of army now—hoodies pulled tight, glasses reflecting the glow of monitors, quiet men with fingers sharpened into weapons.
They look out of place among men who bleed for me with fists and guns, but I know better.
These are killers too, only their battlefield is made of wires and shadows.
At their head is Miron.
My brother moves with deceptive ease, tall frame angled with lazy grace, lean like he’s been carved from steel. The sharpness in his gaze betrays it, though—cold, analytical, cruel in ways even I can’t match.
Where I break men’s bones, he dismantles empires one keystroke at a time. He carries the Sharov blood in him, ruthless as I am, but his cruelty is intellectual. Detached. It’s what makes him dangerous, and what makes him mine.
Still, every time I look at him, I see both my greatest asset and the reminder of a kind of power I can’t cage.
“Rostya,” he greets me softly, voice pitched calm, like he’s walking into a library and not a battlefield. “You’ve made a mess.”
I snap my cigarette alight, inhale smoke deep into my lungs. “I want it fixed. Now.”
His lips twitch, not quite a smile. “Digital warfare isn’t fists and rage. It takes time.”
“Time is blood,” I growl. “I don’t bleed for anyone.”
He takes the seat before the glowing monitors, the blue light climbing up his jaw.
His fingers hover, then descend. Keys clatter in a staccato rhythm, sharp and quick, screens blooming with cascading lines of code, proxies lighting up and burning away.
The glow shifts constantly, like chasing ghosts.
I pace behind him, smoke curling around me, the predator who cannot strike in this kind of war.
My men linger useless at the walls, restless energy bleeding into every corner of the room.
The hum of servers blends with the frantic tapping of Miron’s fingers, and it grates on me, stretching every second into a test of restraint.
“This isn’t amateur work,” Miron murmurs, his gaze never leaving the code. “They’re precise. Surgical. Every proxy burned behind them, every trace hidden under a dozen others.” He pauses, tilts his head. “This isn’t just business. This is personal.”
The word bites deeper than I expect. Personal. Someone dared to touch me not as rival, but as enemy. The distinction matters. It makes the game bloodier.
Hours drag by. The office turns suffocating, the tick of the clock too loud, the servers’ buzz drilling into the skull. Ivan’s boot taps the floor, small but steady, until the sound claws under my skin.
“Stop!” I snap, and the word lashes through the air like a whip. He freezes instantly, guilt flushing his face.
I lean against the desk, cigarette dying between my fingers, the ash long and brittle.
The room feels smaller the longer we wait.
My thoughts spiral down into places I keep locked away.
Memories of betrayals, rivals with daggers hidden in smiles, men I buried and swore would never rise again. Except ghosts always find a way back.
Or worse, someone inside. A leak. A crack in loyalty. The kind of rot that destroys an empire from the inside out.
I glance at my hands. Knuckles raw, blood smeared across them in drying streaks. Fists are what built this kingdom, flesh-and-bone certainty. Against a faceless ghost, they might not be enough. For the first time in years, that thought needles deep under my skin.
Fragility. A word I despise, but it curls around me in the blue glow, speaking of empires falling to whispers and keystrokes instead of bullets.
The sound stops. Fingers frozen mid-strike. Miron sits utterly still, and the silence that follows him is loud enough to choke the room.
Every man goes still with him. Even I do.
Slowly, his head tilts. His gaze narrows, sharp as a blade. Then his hands move again, deliberate, careful, retracing. His voice comes low, more to himself than to us. “There. Too clean. Nobody hides that clean unless they want you to notice.”
The hunt begins.
Lines of code dance across the monitors, proxies peeling away one by one under his assault. My men lean forward, breaths held, as if watching the moment a predator corners its prey. Time folds in on itself, stretched thin, taut with anticipation.
Then Miron straightens, pushing back from the desk, satisfaction flickering across his features. His eyes gleam when they meet mine. “Got something.”
“What?”
“I don’t have a name, but I found an IP narrow enough to follow. Narrow enough to hunt.”
The room exhales as one, tension breaking. Relief flickers, though it’s edged with dread—because they all know what comes next.
I don’t explode. I don’t shout. Instead, I pour a drink from the decanter in the corner, slow, deliberate. The amber liquid glitters under the blue glow, smooth as honey, sharp as fire. I take a sip, let it burn down, and finally smile.
“They slipped. Or they wanted to be found. Either way…” I turn the glass in my hand, the ice clinking like distant chains. “They’re mine now.”
Ivan shifts, the men exchange glances. They all know what my smile means. The chase has begun.
In my mind, I see them already. The phantom behind the screen. Dragged into the light, stripped of their shadows. Their screams echoing off the warehouse walls, folding into the chorus of men who thought they could touch what belongs to me.
Crossing me has a cost. It won’t just be paid.
It will be carved into their flesh. Written in their blood. Indelible. Unforgettable.
Outside the office, orders ripple into the night. Men scatter, phones light up, the empire stirs like a beast pulled from sleep. Every piece shifts toward one singular goal.
Revenge.