Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
VIKTOR
Chaos erupts.
Men sprint to hidden armories. Panels slide open in fake walnut walls. Arsenal after arsenal revealed. Nikolai tosses me night-vision goggles. There’s a cacophony of voices. Russian. English. Orders barked like gunshots. The metallic clash of weapons loading. Gunpowder already thick in the air.
Time slows.
Every second stretches.
My senses sharpen to razor precision.
I sense everything. The whisper of tactical gear. The scent of sweat and adrenaline cutting through the air. Heavy boots vibrating along the floor.
I cock my gun as our soldiers start to file out. Formation perfect. Automatic weapons aimed through shattered windows. The house transforms into a fortress. Furniture scrapes across the floor. Tables are overturned. Barricades are formed.
Our men take aim. Pop! Pop! Pop! Sharp. Clean. Their scopes finding their marks.
There’s a distant cry and a confirmed hit. Deafening bangs fill the building. All-out firefight erupts.
My heart lodges in my throat. Pulse hammering, I fire rounds through the east window. Cover Nikolai. He adjusts his goggles as brass casings rain.
“Contact at two o’clock!” someone yells.
Stinging debris showers me. I duck automatically. It’s muscle memory from too many past firefights.
Nikolai flashes the thumbs-up. I nod. Swivel. My weapon aims at movement in the front yard. The night-vision goggles transform everything into an alien landscape. All I can see are the glowing heat signatures.
But it’s enough.
More gunfire erupts from multiple directions. Pops and bangs. I distinguish the sounds now.
Sharp sniper cracks.
Throaty shotgun roars.
Submachine gun buzz.
It’s orchestrated chaos.
And we don’t take a breath until we’ve eliminated them all.
“All clear?” Grigory finally barks into his phone.
“Perimeter clear.”
“Left wing clear.”
“Right wing clear.”
One by one, our men check in until we know the whole damn house is finally secure.
Grigory and I clamber to our feet and stand over the bodies of the men who tried to take us out. Grigory spits on the nearest corpse. “Get cleanup started,” he orders. “I want to know who tried to kill us.”
I nod and turn to leave. Even after all this chaos, everyone falls back into their roles like a well-oiled machine.
“Two of ours are dead,” Matvey tells me with a shake of his head as we pass in the hall.
“Get their names. I’ll inform their families.”
We slide past one another, and I take a sharp turn toward the safe room. I told Matvey to get Avelina, the kids, Babulya, and the other female staff in there as soon as the power went out. The eye scanner makes me wince before I punch in the code. The heavy door slides open.
Avelina jumps to her feet, Leon still tucked against her chest. Sofia sits at the small table, playing with a pack of cards.
“You guys can come out,” I say.
“Is the game over?” Sofia asks. “Baba said we’re playing hide and seek.” It hasn’t take long for the children to start calling my grandmother Baba just like I do.
I give Babulya a nod of gratitude. But it’s the silent question in Avelina’s wide, worried eyes that really matters.
I run a hand through my hair, still mussed from the goggles. “Yeah, it is.”
Relief softens Avelina’s face, a shaky breath leaving her. Sofia yawns, and Leon’s sleepy form in his mom’s arms tells me the kids are beyond exhausted.
“C’mon, Sofia. Bedtime,” Avelina says with a tremble in her voice as everyone starts to get up.
“Let’s use the back stairs tonight. It’s faster, and you won’t have to weave between…uh, there’s a lot of stuff the guys knocked over in the dark.”
Avelina understands that I mean broken windows and dead bodies, and she nods without protest and follows me, Sofia trailing beside her.
We climb the stairs in silence. Even as she nudges Sofia into the spare room beside mine, her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. Her gaze flicks restlessly around the room, her shoulders still tight with fear.
Sofia heads into the adjoining bathroom, calling, “That was fun!” before vanishing from sight.
“Avelina.”
She pauses and looks up at me. I meet her gaze because I need to read her. She’s shaken and scared—it’s written all over her face.
Seeing her so rattled twists my chest and stirs up that same furious heat I felt when Grigory first confronted her.
I want to protect her.
Sofia.
Leon.
Swallowing hard, I close my eyes and curl my fist tight. “You should rest, and we can talk tomorrow,” I tell her, knowing she’ll have questions about what just happened.
She nods, and I can tell she’s still in shock.
“Try to get some sleep, Avelina. I’ll be back in a while, and I’ll sleep just outside as usual in case you need anything.”
I back out of the room and close the door with a soft click.
As I go back downstairs, my gaze drops to the smears of blood on the polished hall floor.
My fist clenches tighter just as Nikolai’s head appears around the corner.
“Comms room, Viktor.” His smirk isn’t the usual easygoing one.
This one is dark and dangerous. It mirrors my own.
We have to figure out who was behind this—and how to retaliate.
Because this was personal.
Someone came for our family.