Chapter 16
Kane
Blood drips from my chin onto the filthy alley pavement.
Not my blood.
Not Viktor’s.
Four Presko soldiers lie dead or dying behind us, their bodies twisted in the shadows where we dragged them after the ambush.
My knife is still in my hand, slick and warm. Viktor leans against the brick wall beside me, chest heaving, his own blade dripping. We made it out by the skin of our teeth—just barely avoided the full trap on our way to meet the street spy.
I wipe the blood from my face with the back of my sleeve and look at Viktor.
A wry, exhausted grin cracks across his face…
“At least you don’t think it was me who killed your brothers anymore,” Viktor says, voice rough with adrenaline and dark humor.
A short, bitter laugh escapes me. The sound echoes strangely in the narrow alley.
“No. Not anymore.” I shake my head, the pieces finally locking together. “It was Don Presko. That old bastard. After all these years of supposed loyalty between our families… he’s the one who ordered it.”
The realization lands like a hammer to the chest. The Presko family had been allies—sometimes uneasy, but allies nonetheless—for decades.
My brothers had done business with them, shared territory, even attended weddings and funerals together. And now this. A knife in the back. A slaughter in a warehouse. The kind of betrayal that burns hotter than any bullet.
Viktor pushes off the wall, rolling his shoulder where a graze from a bullet had torn his jacket.
“Smart play now is to retreat,” Viktor says. “Link up with Ivan and Kirill. Plan a full assault. Hit their strongholds, cut off their supply lines, make them bleed for months.”
I shake my head, already moving. “That’s exactly what Presko expects.
I know how he operates. He’ll have fortified everything, waiting for us to come at him the way my brothers would have…
strategic, patient, calculated.” My voice hardens.
“The last thing he expects is us going straight for his throat tonight. Right now.”
Viktor stares at me for a long beat, blood still streaking his face. “That’s a big risk. Your brothers wouldn’t have taken it.”
“I’m not my brothers,” I reply simply.
A slow, dangerous smile spreads across Viktor’s face. “No. You truly are the Young Menace.”
I bark a short laugh as we start moving, slipping through back alleys and side streets, keeping to the shadows.
“I don’t feel so young anymore,” I say ruefully. “Life moves on.”
“It does indeed,” Viktor say, a steely focus in his eyes.
We hustle across town in silence after that, two bloodied ghosts moving with purpose. My mind races ahead to Presko’s apartment building, the layout I’ve studied for years, the weak points in his security.
Vengeance has a taste tonight, and it’s metallic and sweet.
* * *
We reach the block near Presko’s luxury apartment building twenty minutes later. I’m itching to move in immediately, gun already in hand, when Viktor grabs my arm.
“Wait,” Viktor says. “Just a moment.”
Impatience flares, but then I see them—Ivan Zorin and Kirill Antonov emerging from the shadows like they were born from them.
The two Daddies move as one, synchronized and deadly.
Viktor nods toward them.
“This is how we do it,” Viktor says quietly. “Together. The four of us. If you want it to be that way.”
I meet each of their eyes in turn. Ivan’s cold calculation. Kirill’s quiet fury. Viktor’s steady resolve. For the first time since my brothers died, I don’t feel completely alone at the top.
“I want it,” I say. My voice is steel. “Let’s end this.”]
“Let’s fucking do it,” Ivan says.
“Just like the days we all hit the streets,” Kirill says. “Except this time, we’re all fighting on the same side.”
We move like shadows, our guns locked and loaded, suppressors attached, bodies low. The building’s private entrance is guarded by two men. We take them down silently: Viktor slits one throat, I put a bullet through the other’s eye at close range.
No alarms. No noise. We drag the bodies into the service stairwell and keep climbing.
Floor by floor, the resistance grows…
On the sixth floor, three more Presko soldiers step out of an elevator.
We’re ready. Ivan drops the first with two suppressed shots to the chest. Kirill takes the second in a brutal hand-to-hand struggle that ends with a knife to the jugular.
I put three rounds into the third man before he can raise his weapon.
Blood sprays across the wallpaper.
We step over the bodies without slowing.
“Onward,” I growl, my mind focused solely on the final prize.
The higher we climb, the more tension coils in my muscles. This is it. The man who ordered the deaths of Milo and Loren is only floors away. Every step feels like justice finally catching up.
We reach the penthouse level. The corridor is quieter… thicker carpet, softer lighting, the stench of wealth. Two elite guards stand outside the double doors. Viktor and I take them down simultaneously with perfectly timed headshots. The bodies slump without a sound.
I kick the doors open.
The luxurious apartment unfolds before us: marble floors, modern art, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the glittering city.
Don Presko sits in a large leather armchair near the windows, an old man in a silk robe, surrounded by three more bodyguards who scramble for their weapons the moment we enter.
Chaos erupts.
Gunfire fills the room—suppressed pops from our side, louder cracks from theirs.
Kirill takes a graze to the arm but keeps firing.
Ivan drops one guard with clinical precision.
Viktor puts two rounds into another. I charge forward, shooting the last bodyguard in the knee and then the head as he falls.
“He’s fucking moving,” Ivan cries. “Get to him.”
Presko tries to reach for a hidden gun under the table. I’m on him before he can touch it. I slam my fist into his face, once, twice, feeling cartilage crunch. Then I shoot him in both legs—deliberate, painful wounds. Presko screams, collapsing back into the chair.
“You killed my brothers,” I snarl, pressing the hot barrel of my gun under his chin. “You betrayed everything our families stood for. For what? More territory? More money?”
Presko’s face is pale, twisted in pain, but there’s still defiance in his eyes. “The Kamedov name… was getting too strong,” he spits. “It had to be done.”
Rage explodes through me. I grab him by the collar of his expensive robe and haul him up. He’s lighter than he looks—old, frail, but still carrying the weight of his sins.
I drag Presko across the room toward the balcony doors, kicking them open. Cold night air rushes in.
Viktor, Ivan, and Kirill watch in silence. They know this is mine.
Presko’s eyes widen as I lift him over the railing. His legs kick uselessly, blood dripping down onto the balcony tiles far below.
“This is for Milo,” I growl. “This is for Loren.”
Then I let go.
I watch as Presko falls screaming into the night. The sound cuts off with a sickening impact many stories below.
Justice, raw and final.
I stand at the railing for a long moment, breathing hard, blood cooling on my skin. The city stretches out beneath me, alive, indifferent, forever changed.
My brothers can finally rest. The men who took them have paid.
Viktor steps up beside me. “It’s done.”
I nod slowly. The weight on my chest feels lighter, but not gone. There will be consequences. Retaliation from what remains of the Presko family. New wars to fight. But tonight, vengeance has been served.
I turn away from the balcony, wiping blood from my hands.
“Now,” I say, voice steady, “we go home.”
Home. To William. To my darling boy.
The thought of him waiting cuts through the violence like a blade of light. I have blood on my hands and a crown of violence on my head, but I also have him. And for the first time, I believe I might be able to keep both.
The Young Menace has grown up.
And the city will learn to fear the man he has become.
* * *
The adrenaline is still roaring through my veins as Viktor and I slip out of the Presko building through a service exit, leaving chaos and one very dead Don Presko shattered on the ground.
Ivan and Kirill have already melted back into the night to handle cleanup and misdirection. The four of us have become something real tonight—a unit.
But my mind keeps circling back to the reason we’d been out there in the first place.
The street spy.
We’d never reached him.
The ambush had hit just three blocks from the old warehouse where he was supposed to be waiting with fresh intel on Presko’s movements. Four Presko soldiers had come out of nowhere, guns blazing, clearly tipped off that someone was sniffing too close. We’d handled them, but the spy…
I need to know.
“Circle back to the warehouse,” I tell Viktor as we climb into a stolen nondescript sedan a few blocks away. Blood is still drying on my hands and collar. “I want to see what happened to our man.”
Viktor doesn’t argue. He drives in silence, both of us scanning every shadow. The city feels different tonight, heavier, like it knew blood has been spilled at the top and the balance is shifting.
The warehouse district is quiet when we arrive. Too quiet. We park two blocks away and approached on foot, guns drawn, moving like ghosts. The side door we’d planned to use is hanging open, one hinge broken. A bad sign.
I go in first, Viktor covering me. The smell hits immediately: copper, shit, and fear. A single hanging bulb still swings gently in the middle of the space, casting long, sickly shadows.
Our street spy, a wiry man in his late thirties named Razor, one of Padraig’s most reliable assets, is slumped against a stack of rotting pallets.
His throat has been cut ear to ear. The blood pool beneath him is already congealing.
His eyes are wide open, frozen in terror.
A crude message had been carved into his chest with a knife:
TRAITORS DIE SCREAMING
I stare at the words for a long moment, jaw clenched so tight it aches.
Razor had a wife and young daughters. He’d been feeding us information for years, always careful, always paid well.
Tonight he’d been waiting to tell us something important enough that Presko had sacrificed four soldiers just to silence him.
Viktor crouches beside the body, checking for any hidden message or note. Nothing. They’d been thorough.
“Poor bastard,” Viktor mutters. “He held out long enough for us to get away, at least. Gave us the window we needed.”
I nod once, but the rage inside me is cold now. Sharp. Focused.
Presko is dead. Thrown from his own balcony like the garbage he is, or was.
But the rot he’s left behind is still spreading. Razor’s death was just the latest symptom. There will be more bodies if we don’t move fast to consolidate power and crush whatever remained of the Presko machine.
I pull out my phone and send a quick message to Padraig…
KANE: Viktor is gone. Presko handled. Tell his family the usual — full support, no questions. Double the pension. Make sure the boys never want for anything.
Padraig’s reply comes almost instantly…
PADRAIG: Already on it. The streets are whispering. Word of Presko’s fall is spreading. Some crews are celebrating. Others are nervous. You good?
I don’t answer right away.
Am I good?
I look down at Viktor’s ruined body one last time. Another loyal man lost because of the same old game. Because someone always wants more. Because trust is a luxury men like us can rarely afford.
I turn away.
“Let’s burn the place,” I tell Viktor. “No evidence. No spectacle. Just another warehouse fire in a city full of them.”
We pour accelerant from a can we find on-site, light it, and walk out without looking back. Flames are already licking up the walls as we reach the car.
As we drive away, the orange glow in the rearview mirror paints the night sky. Razor’s sacrifice won’t be forgotten. His family will be taken care of. And every remaining Presko loyalist will soon learn what happens to those who touch what is mine.
I lean my head back against the seat, suddenly exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with the fight.
Because tonight I finally delivered justice for my brothers.
But the cost keeps rising.
And the boy waiting for me… brilliant, and far too good for this life… is quickly becoming the highest price of all.