Chapter 21
The chair beside Dom’s bed is empty when I wake up.
I blink in the early morning light filtering through the medical facility’s windows, my neck stiff from falling asleep curled against Dom’s uninjured side.
He’s still sleeping, his breathing deep and even—the first real rest he’s gotten since the shooting.
Marcus is at his laptop in the corner, surrounded by empty coffee cups and the organized chaos of his intelligence gathering.
But Axel’s chair—the one he hasn’t left for days except to use the bathroom—sits vacant, his leather jacket draped over the back like a discarded skin.
“Where’s Axel?” I ask Marcus quietly, not wanting to wake Dom.
Marcus looks up from his screen, dark circles under his eyes making him look older than his thirty-one years. “Gone when I got back from my security check an hour ago. Left this.”
He hands me a folded piece of paper with my name scrawled across it in Axel’s distinctive handwriting—all sharp angles and barely controlled energy, like the man himself.
R—
Some ghosts you have to face alone. Don’t come looking for me. Don’t send the others. This is personal now.
Trust me.
—A
My blood runs cold. “Fuck.”
“My sentiment exactly,” Marcus says grimly. “I’ve been trying to track his phone, but he’s disabled it. No GPS, no communication, nothing.”
“What aren’t you telling me?” I demand.
Marcus hesitates then turns his laptop screen toward me. “I finished analyzing the intel Kieran provided. The mercenaries weren’t just hired muscle. They were specialists. Former military, ex-intelligence operatives. The kind of people you bring in for surgical strikes.”
“So?”
“So one of them had a very specific skill set. Psychological warfare, interrogation, target elimination using… creative methods.” Marcus’s fingers drum against his desk. “Methods that match the profile of someone Axel has been hunting for years.”
The pieces click together with sickening clarity. “The Ghost Hunter.”
Marcus nods. “Real name Viktor Kozlov. Yes, from that Kozlov family. He’s been using mercenary work to track down fighters who escaped his… experimental programs. Axel was one of them.”
I sink into the empty chair, Axel’s jacket soft against my back. The fragments of information we’ve gathered about his past suddenly form a clearer picture—the mysterious scars, the way he sometimes flinches from unexpected touch, the nightmares he thinks we don’t notice.
He must’ve been part of this experimental program before my father took him in.
“How long has he known?” I ask.
“Based on his browsing history? He identified Viktor from the security footage about six hours after the attack. He’s been planning this ever since.”
Dom stirs beside me. His dark eyes open and immediately seek me out then move to the empty chair.
“Where’s our wildcard?” he asks, his voice rough with sleep.
“Gone hunting ghosts,” I reply, showing him the note.
Dom reads it, his expression growing darker with each word. “Son of a bitch. How long?”
“Unknown,” Marcus answers. “Could be hours. Could be all night.”
Dom shifts and immediately sucks in a breath, one hand going to his side. The effort must have pulled at his stitches. His face goes pale, jaw clenched tight enough to crack a molar.
“Dom,” I warn, reaching instinctively.
“I’m fine,” he growls, even though sweat beads at his temple from the effort. “We need to find him.”
“Axel specifically said not to come looking,” I point out, though every instinct I have is screaming at me to track him down.
“Since when does Axel make tactical decisions for this family?” Dom’s voice carries that dangerous edge that means he’s about to do something reckless. “He’s walking into a trap. Viktor Kozlov doesn’t work alone.”
“Dom, you’re barely—”
“I’m fine.” He grits it out, each breath shallow as he forces his legs over the edge of the bed. Sweat dots his brow. He picks up his shirt and falters just a second.
“You’re not fine,” I say, stepping closer.
“Doesn’t matter.” He pulls the shirt over his head with stiff, jerky motions, biting back a grunt when the fabric grazes the bandage. “Axel’s out there. Marcus, what do we know about Kozlov’s current location?”
“He’s been staying at a warehouse complex on the south side. Industrial area, minimal civilian traffic.” Marcus pulls up satellite images on his screen. “Dom, Raven’s right. Axel specifically requested—”
“Axel can kiss my ass.” Dom is reaching for his shirt, moving carefully but determinedly. “Nobody in this family faces their demons alone. That’s not how we work.”
I watch this stubborn, protective man push through his pain because one of ours is in danger, and something fierce and desperate claws at my chest. “You can barely stand.”
“Then I’ll sit in the car and coordinate.” His eyes meet mine, dark and absolutely implacable. “I’m not staying here while he’s out there fighting battles that could get him killed.”
My phone buzzes with an incoming call from Kieran. I answer immediately.
“We have a problem,” he says without preamble. “My uncle’s moved up his timeline. He’s coordinating with the Kozlovs for a joint strike tonight.”
“Tonight?” My heart sinks. “Axel’s already gone after Viktor.”
Kieran sucks in a breath and blows it out loudly. “Shit. He’s walking into a coordinated attack.”
“Where are you?”
“Twenty minutes out. I’ll pick up weapons and additional personnel on the way.”
I look at Dom, who’s managed to get his shirt on despite the obvious pain, and at Marcus, who’s already pulling up tactical maps and communication protocols. My family, ready to walk into hell for one of our own.
“Make it fifteen minutes,” I tell Kieran. “Bring everything you’ve got.”
The next hour passes in a blur of preparation and mounting dread.
Dom insists on wearing body armor despite his injury, arguing that he’ll be more of a liability if he gets shot again.
Marcus coordinates with his network of informants to get real-time intelligence on the warehouse complex.
Kieran arrives with a small arsenal and two of his most trusted men—former special forces who ask no questions and follow orders without hesitation.
“Still no word from Axel?” Kieran asks as we load into the vehicles.
I check my phone for the dozenth time. “Nothing.”
“His phone’s been dark for four hours,” Marcus reports from the passenger seat of the lead car, “but I’ve been monitoring police scanners. No reports of violence in that area yet.”
“Yet being the operative word,” Dom says grimly from beside me. He’s pale but alert, his hand resting on the grip of his weapon. “Viktor’s not the type to make it quick.”
The warehouse complex is a maze of abandoned buildings and shipping containers, perfect for someone who wants privacy for unpleasant activities. We park three blocks away and approach on foot, using the shadows and industrial debris for cover.
“Heat signatures show activity in the central building,” Marcus whispers into his comm unit. “At least six bodies, possibly more.”
“Axel?” I ask.
“Impossible to tell at this distance.”
We split into two teams—Kieran and his men taking the east entrance while Dom, Marcus, and I approach from the west. Despite his injury, Dom moves with deadly grace, his military training evident in every careful step, but I see the subtle signs others might miss—the slight hitch in his stride, the hand he keeps near his side as if holding himself together by sheer willpower.
The building is eerily quiet as we slip inside. Emergency lighting casts everything in hellish red shadows, and the air smells of rust, motor oil, and something metallic. I hope to hell it’s not blood.
We find the first body twenty feet from the entrance.
The mercenary is sprawled against a support pillar, throat cut with surgical precision. No struggle, no defensive wounds—just quick, efficient death. Axel’s work.
“Two more here,” Dom’s voice crackles through the comm from across the building. “Same MO.”
We move deeper into the warehouse, following a trail of bodies that speaks to Axel’s particular brand of lethal artistry. Each kill is clean, professional, almost respectful in its efficiency. This isn’t mindless violence. It’s a hunter eliminating obstacles between himself and his real prey.
The sounds reach us before we see the source—grunts of effort, the solid impact of flesh on flesh, something heavy hitting concrete. We round a corner and find them.
Axel and Viktor Kozlov are locked in brutal, intimate combat in a cleared area surrounded by shipping containers. Both men are bloodied, moving with the deadly grace of apex predators who’ve found their match.
Viktor is larger, his reach longer, but Axel is faster and more fluid. As I watch, he slips inside Viktor’s guard and drives an elbow into the bigger man’s ribs with a crack I can hear from thirty feet away.
“Persistent little ghost,” Viktor rasps, his accent thick with Russian inflection. “I taught you better than this.”
“You taught me to survive,” Axel replies, dancing back from a vicious hook. Blood streams from a cut above his left eye, but his voice is steady, calm. “Everything else I learned on my own.”
Viktor lunges forward with a knife, and Axel barely twists away in time. The blade catches his shoulder, opening a red line across his skin, but he uses the momentum to drive his knee into Viktor’s solar plexus.
I start to move forward, but Dom’s hand catches my arm. “Wait,” he breathes. “This is his fight.”
“He’s bleeding—”
“He’s winning.”
Dom’s right. Even injured, even facing a larger, more experienced opponent, Axel is systematically dismantling Viktor Kozlov with the patient precision of someone settling a very old debt.
“You remember the games, don’t you?” Viktor taunts, circling like a predatory animal. “The tests? You were always my favorite, little ghost. So much potential. So much beautiful rage.”