Chapter 23 - Rodion
The bar looked like nothing special from the outside.
A faded green awning, a neon shamrock flickering in the window, a wooden sign that read O'Malley's in peeling gold letters. The kind of place that had probably been a neighborhood institution once, before time and neglect and Cormac O'Shea had hollowed it out.
I sat in the back of the SUV, watching the entrance through tinted windows. Yegor was beside me, checking his weapon with the calm efficiency of a man who'd done this a hundred times before. Two more vehicles idled behind us, my men waiting for the signal.
Midnight in Queens. The street was empty, the windows of nearby buildings dark. Even the usual sounds of the city seemed muted here, as if the neighborhood itself knew what was coming and had decided to look away.
"Thermal shows eight heat signatures inside," Yegor said, studying the tablet in his hands. "Two near the front door, one at the back, five clustered in the main room. Cormac's in there—we've confirmed his vehicle in the alley."
"Civilians?"
"None. The locals cleared out an hour ago. Word travels fast in this neighborhood."
Good. I had no interest in collateral damage. This was personal, but it would be handled professionally. Clean. Efficient. Final.
I nodded, my eyes still fixed on the bar. Somewhere inside, Cormac O'Shea was drinking, laughing, planning his next move against the woman I'd married. He had no idea what was coming. No idea that his nephew-in-law was sitting fifty feet away, preparing to end his miserable existence.
"Teams in position?"
"Alpha at the front, Bravo at the back, Charlie covering the perimeter. On your signal."
I checked my own weapon—a Glock 19, familiar weight in my hand—and chambered a round. The sound was crisp in the silence of the vehicle. Beside me, Yegor did the same.
"Remember," I said. "Cormac is mine."
"Understood."
I took one last breath, letting the calm settle over me. The stillness before violence. The quiet before the storm.
"Let's go."
***
We moved like shadows.
Alpha team hit the front door first—a breaching charge that blew it off its hinges, followed by flashbangs that lit up the interior like lightning. I was through the door before the echo faded, my weapon up, my senses sharp.
The two men at the entrance went down before they could draw their guns. Clean shots, center mass. They crumpled without a sound, their bodies hitting the floor in tandem.
Behind me, my men fanned out, securing the room with practiced efficiency. Shouts erupted from deeper in the bar—Cormac's people scrambling to respond, too slow, too late.
I moved through the chaos like I was walking through water. Everything felt slowed down, crystalline. The smell of gunpowder and spilled beer. The crack of weapons fire. The thud of bodies hitting the floor.
A man came at me from the left—young, panicked, his gun hand shaking. I put two rounds in his chest before he could pull the trigger. He fell against a table, knocking over glasses that shattered on the floor.
Another one emerged from behind the bar, shotgun raised. Yegor dropped him with a single shot before I could react, the man's body spinning backward into the rows of bottles behind him.
"Clear!" someone shouted from the back.
"Clear!" Another voice, from the kitchen.
The main room was a slaughterhouse. Bodies sprawled across the floor, blood pooling on the worn wooden boards. My men moved among them, checking pulses, securing weapons. Professional. Thorough.
But I wasn't looking at them. I was looking at the man cowering behind the bar.
Cormac O'Shea.
He was older than I'd expected—late fifties, with thinning red hair gone mostly gray and a face mapped with broken capillaries.
The face of a man who'd drunk too much for too many years, who'd let his body go soft while his soul went rotten.
His eyes were wide, terrified, darting between me and the carnage around him.
"Wait," he said, his voice high and thin. "Wait, we can talk about this—"
"No." I walked toward him, my weapon steady. "We can't."
"You don't understand. The Petrovics—they'll come for you. They'll come for all of you. You think killing me solves anything?"
"It solves one thing."
He scrambled backward, knocking over bottles that crashed to the floor. The smell of whiskey filled the air, mixing with the copper tang of blood.
"I have money. Resources. I can give you information—"
"I don't want your money." I stepped around the bar, closing the distance between us. "I don't want your information."
"Then what do you want?" His voice cracked on the question, desperation bleeding through. "Just tell me what you want."
I thought about Keira. About the fear in her eyes when she talked about her childhood. About the mother who'd been beaten to death while this man stood by and did nothing. About the girl who'd been sold to traffickers by her own blood.
I thought about the baby growing inside her. The future we were building together. The life she'd fought so hard to create, only to have men like Cormac try to drag her back into the darkness.
"Justice," I said.
And I pulled the trigger.
The shot echoed in the sudden silence.
Cormac slumped against the back wall, a neat hole in his forehead, his eyes still open in an expression of permanent surprise. Blood trickled down his face, pooling beneath him on the floor.
I stood there for a moment, looking at the body of the man who'd haunted Keira's entire life. Her uncle. Her father's brother. The last living connection to a family that had never deserved her.
I felt nothing. No satisfaction, no relief, no triumph. Just the cold clarity of a job completed.
"Sir." Yegor appeared at my elbow, his voice low. "We need to move. Police will be here soon."
I holstered my weapon and turned away from the body. "Casualties?"
"Two wounded on our side, nothing serious. All hostiles down."
"Make sure nothing leads back to us."
"Already handled. Cleanup crew is en route."
We moved out through the back, stepping over bodies, leaving the bar to its ghosts. The night air was cold against my face, sharp with the smell of rain that hadn't fallen yet. I breathed deep, letting it clear the smoke from my lungs.
It was done. Cormac O'Shea was dead. The man who'd tried to sell my wife to traffickers, who'd followed her to New York, who'd spent weeks plotting to drag her back into a world she'd escaped—he would never threaten her again.
I should have felt relieved. Should have felt something.
Instead, I felt only the need to get home. To see Keira. To hold her and tell her it was over.
"Car's ready," Yegor said.
I was halfway to the vehicle when my phone rang.
The number on the screen made my stomach drop. Not Yegor's team, not Demyan, not Kirill. The penthouse. The secure line I'd set up specifically for emergencies.
I answered. "What is it?"
The voice on the other end wasn't Keira's. It was one of the security team I'd left behind—Dimitri, a solid man I'd trusted with her safety.
"Sir." His voice was strained, wrong in ways I couldn't immediately identify. "We have a situation."
"What kind of situation?"
"The Petrovics. They hit us about twenty minutes ago. Six men, heavily armed. They came through the service entrance—had codes, knew the layout."
The world tilted. I grabbed the side of the SUV to steady myself, my knuckles going white against the metal.
"Keira. Where's Keira?"
Silence on the other end. The kind of silence that told me everything I needed to know.
"Dimitri. Where is my wife?"
"They took her, sir." His voice cracked. "They came in fast, professional. We held them off as long as we could, but they had the numbers. Viktor's dead. Sasha's wounded. And they—" He stopped, took a breath. "They have her. They have Mrs. Rysev."
The phone felt like ice in my hand. Everything around me—the street, the vehicles, my men waiting for orders—faded to static. All I could see was Keira's face. All I could hear was her voice, asking me to come back to her.
I'd promised. I'd promised I would come back.
And while I was here, killing her uncle, the Petrovics had walked into my home and taken her.
"How long ago?"
"Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. They had a van waiting. We tried to follow, but—"
"Direction?"
"North. Toward the bridge, then the highway. Sir, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. We didn't—"
I ended the call. My hands were shaking. I couldn't remember the last time my hands had shaken.
"Rodion." Yegor's voice, sharp with concern. "What is it?"
"The Petrovics." The words came out flat, dead. "They took Keira."
Yegor's face went pale. "When?"
"Twenty minutes ago. They knew. They knew we'd be here, knew the penthouse would be vulnerable." I slammed my fist against the side of the SUV, the pain barely registering. "It was a setup. Cormac was bait."
"Or they were watching. Waiting for us to make a move."
It didn't matter. None of it mattered. What mattered was that Keira was gone—taken by the same men who'd tried to buy her, who'd allied with her uncle, who saw her as nothing more than a commodity to be owned.
And she was pregnant. Pregnant with my child. Alone and terrified and in the hands of people who would hurt her without hesitation.
"Get everyone to the vehicles," I said. "Now."
"Where are we going?"
"To get my wife back."
***
The drive felt endless.
I made calls—to Demyan, to Kirill, to every contact I had who might know where the Petrovics would take her. Information came in fragments, maddeningly slow.
"Branko Petrovic," Kirill's voice said through the phone, cold and precise. "He's been in New York for a week. Staying off our radar, waiting for his moment."
"Where would he take her?"
"Working on it. My people are pulling surveillance footage, tracking vehicles."
"Work faster."
"I'm doing what I can, Rodion. These things take—"
"She's pregnant." The words ripped out of me before I could stop them. "Keira is pregnant with my child. So whatever you're doing, do it faster."