Chapter 39
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Julia
I always knew I’d have to face my past someday, but I wanted it to be on my own terms, by my own choice, not like this. Not with my sisters’ lives hanging in the balance.
I run through every video, every detail in my mind, searching for something I might have missed. If he’s hurt them, if he’s even laid a finger on them, I honestly don’t know what I’ll do.
Consequences don’t matter. Prison doesn’t matter. I’ll make sure he chokes on every last bullet of my machine gun.
“They’ll be okay.” Max’s voice pulls me back.
He wants to comfort me, but I can see the tension in his jaw, the way every muscle is wound tight.
He understands better than anyone what those girls mean to me.
They’re the last piece of the Julia who first set foot in Russia, the only thread tying me to my parents, whose faces and voices I’m already starting to forget.
Guilt knots in my throat. I was supposed to keep them safe. It’s my job to make sure they have a peaceful life, far from all this poison.
All these years, I kept my distance, telling myself that staying on another continent was the only way to protect them.
Now, as the plane touches down in Mexico, a warmth spreads through my chest. The air smells like home, like the place where my parents met and fell in love, like slow-cooked tamales and comfort.
It’s the first time I’ve set foot on my own soil in more than a decade, and I have to swallow hard to keep the tears at bay.
I won’t cry. Not now, not when they need me. There’s only one reason that viper is here...
“I already put your uncle’s address in the GPS,” Max says.
I don’t answer, not because I’m angry, but because if I try to speak, it’ll come out as a sob.
Fear coils tightly around my heart, the thought of Aleksandr sending my sisters somewhere I’ll never find them, or worse, touching them, making my skin crawl.
The memory of Andrea, all those years ago, flashes through my mind: that monster cutting her while he raped her.
The house comes into view, a two-story, mustard-yellow place with red-flowered shrubs out front. If I remember right, they’re pineapple sage.
The car stops at the gate, and I try to steady my hands. Two more cars full of soldiers pull up behind us, but I don’t want a shoot-out here. This is a family neighborhood. I could never forgive myself if someone innocent got hurt.
Todo va a estar bien, Julia.
But I know it can’t be. Not when I’ve been a stranger to them for thirteen years. Not when, to them, I’m just a ghost.
A warm hand covers mine, steadying my tremble. Max’s scent—rosemary and pine—grounds me, just a little.
“They’ll understand you did everything to keep them safe,” he says softly, and I wish I could believe him.
But I’m not the Julia they remember, and they’re not the little girls with pigtails fighting over cotton candy anymore.
I take a deep breath, glance at Maksim, and open the car door. Two knocks on the gate, and I wait, rehearsing what I’ll say. I look enough like my mother that my uncle should recognize me, even after all these years.
A minute passes. No one comes. Panic claws at me. Without thinking, I pull the Kolibri from the back of my jeans and shove the gate open.
Inside, the TV is blaring, but the house is empty. Max follows closely behind as we search every room, one by one.
No one’s here.
That’s when I see it: red, splashed across the white tile in the kitchen. My uncle’s body lies sprawled on the floor, a pool of blood spread beneath him, his eyes still open and staring.
A strangled scream escapes my throat as I drop to my knees beside him. Cold blood soaks through my jeans, and finally, the tears I’d been holding back break free.
“?Por favor, perdóname!” I whisper, cradling his face in my hands.
Strands of gray hair fall across his forehead, but his expression is peaceful, almost as if he’s sleeping.
I don’t deserve forgiveness—not from anyone—but this man did nothing to warrant a death like this.
He didn’t deserve to die alone on a kitchen floor, to bleed out for minutes that must have felt like eternity.
“Julia, look—by his hand.”
My eyes, raw and red, follow Max’s voice. Through a blur of tears, I see it, written in blood on the tile: K02-BAJ.
A cry of pain rips from my lungs. With his last strength, my uncle wrote down the license plate of the car that took them and I couldn’t save him.
I don’t know how long I stay there, just existing beside his body, memories of family swirling in my mind.
My mother’s stories about how my grandmother was horrified when my uncle became a vegetarian and refused to cook tacos al pastor anymore.
How he learned to drive a truck at fifteen and ran out of gas in the middle of an intersection.
The way he cried when he first held the twins in his arms. All the little things that made him who he was.
“I found the car, Juls.”
Strong hands lift me from the floor. I’m limp in Max’s arms, jelly and grief, and for a moment I want to fight him, to stay with my uncle, to not leave him alone.
“Someone will come and take care of this. I promise he’ll have a proper burial, amor. But we have to go.” There’s so much compassion in his voice, and somehow, that hurts even more.
I wasn’t there when my parents were found or buried, and for me, that was a blessing.
My last memory of them is at dinner with Dad cracking jokes about the news anchor, Mom complaining about the gas bill.
My uncle is the first family member I’ve seen dead, and nothing could have prepared me for this much blood.
Maksim pulls me out of the house, already working to wipe every camera, every bit of footage from the area. Someone’s helping Aleksandr cover his tracks—there wasn’t a single alert about a car parked out front. If it hadn’t been for my uncle and his final message, we’d have nothing.
I’m still in shock when Max’s voice cuts through.
“I found them. The car’s parked by an old building outside the city.”
?
We regroup with our eight soldiers in the apartment we use as our local base here and start planning.
The layout of the abandoned building is open, with only a few rooms, and the biggest advantage is the isolation. No one will hear the screams or the gunfire. And there will be plenty of both.
Every cell in my body is vibrating, desperate to move, but I know we need a plan. We can’t go in blind, not when their lives are at stake.
“Julia and I will go in first. Jeremy, you take three men and cover the back. Daniel, you’re on the kitchen exit.”
I just nod. We’re armed, every soldier here has our trust, and they all know the girls are the priority.
After Ivan’s death, most of our U.S. soldiers were reassigned to help liberate more victims in other locations. We don’t have a big team, but it’s enough.
I don’t know what we’ll find in there, but all I can see in my mind are my sisters, trapped on a ship, waiting to be trafficked. Aleksandr still has the connections to make that happen.
The air is thick with anticipation, and the only thing that calms me is imagining all the ways I’ll make that snake scream.
“I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but you don’t have to go in. I can take the team and get them out myself.”
Of course he doesn’t want me going in there. But he knows as well as I do that there’s no universe where I’m sitting in the car, waiting for him to come back.
“Not a chance,” I say, and I’m proud of how steady my voice is.
“Julia…” My name is a warning.
“I’m not staying in the car, Maksim. I’m going in there, and I’m making sure they get out. If it comes down to it, you get them out first then you come back for me.”
His jaw tightens, and I can see he’s biting back a thousand arguments. But he gets it now, he knows what it means to be a sibling, how that bond doesn’t break just because you’ve spent years apart.
“If it were Victoria in there, what would you do?”
He understands. He knows the girls are innocent, that they shouldn’t have to pay for the bloody past we share with his “cousin.”
No more words. We load up and head for the building, hoping this is where we finally leave the past behind.
?
( I recommend listening to The smallest man who ever lived by Taylor Swift while reading this entire part )
We park two hundred yards out. The place looks like an abandoned colonial house, its scarlet walls faded and cracked.
Four more cars are parked nearby, plus an Audi with the license plate number my uncle wrote in blood.
That means Aleksandr has at least seven or eight more men than we do.
But our people are ex-military; they’ve seen hell in Iran and Afghanistan.
The odds aren’t in our favor, but I’m hoping we can get the girls out in time.
Gun in hand, I move toward the house, Max right behind me. There’s a guy at the entrance in cargo pants, beige T-shirt, sunglasses, glued to his phone.
Ay Diosito, thank you for making his soldiers as dumb as he is.
He never even looks up from his screen before I put a bullet between his eyes.
Gunfire cracks from the back of the house, a clear sign that Jeremy’s team has company. I can’t focus on that. All I care about is getting to my sisters, who are in this mess because of me.
A man jumps out and grabs for my gun, but Maksim is on him in a flash. A few punches, and his blade draws a vertical line across the man’s throat.
Voices drift from up ahead—not screams, but a conversation. As we get closer, I can make out a feminine voice and Aleksandr’s.
“If we’re going to take this chance, it has to be now,” says the snake’s anxious voice.
Who the hell is he talking to?
Maksim looks like he’s wondering the same thing, and then a woman’s voice, shaky but unmistakable, answers, “Isn’t there any other way?”
I don’t waste another second. I close the last twenty feet, gun raised, and step into the living room.