8. Dominik
DOMINIK
The man who owes me his life doesn’t make me wait, which tells me he knows exactly what it means that I’m calling. He knows I don’t call for nothing. He also knows picking up could pull him right back into a mess he wants to stay out of.
His name is Lev Antonov. Former Bratva logistics.
He used to move women, money, and documents through the cracks between jurisdictions, never asking what they were worth, only how fast they had to disappear.
Lev was never a killer and never a planner.
He was a carrier. He moved what others couldn’t risk touching.
Years ago, during a purge Markov ordered half drunk and fully angry, Lev froze at the wrong moment. A man came up behind him with a gun already raised. I saw it, stepped in, and put a bullet through the man aiming at his back and told Lev to run. He did. We never spoke again.
Until now.
He answers on the first ring.
“You shouldn’t be calling me,” he says.
“I shouldn’t be doing a lot of things,” I reply. “Where is she?”
Silence. I hear his breathing, paper shifting.
“She came in,” Lev says finally. “Six hours ago. Maybe less.” Then he lowers his voice. “I moved her. Where she stays isn’t my business.”
“Where?” I insist.
“Temporary,” he says quickly. “That matters.”
“Say it.”
He takes a breath, then he speaks fast. “South of the city… past the rail yards. The old estate. If you don’t know what it is, it looks like a boarding school.”
His voice drops, tight and rushed. “You’ll ruin me,” he says. “I don’t want this traced. I don’t want my name anywhere near—”
“Talk to me, what’s the window?” I ask.
“They won’t keep her long,” Lev says, and he sounds tired. “This place is for sorting. They check, they break, they decide. You know how it works.”
“And then what?” I ask, because I’m not here for his excuses.
“That depends on how she behaves. Marriage, or they keep her as a pressure point.”
He doesn’t mention execution. That tells me enough.
“Security?”
“Layered,” he replies. “Same as before. Cameras outside, interior monitored. Guards rotate every four hours. Men on the perimeter. Women inside.”
“How long before she moves?”
Lev exhales. “A day. Maybe less. Once they decide she’s… suitable.”
I don’t thank him.
“You paid your debt,” I say. “Disappear.”
The line goes dead.
I don’t bring anyone else in. This isn’t a team job, because teams talk and talking leaves trails. If I’m going to pull this off alone, I’ll need resources, money, access, and the kind of leverage that doesn’t ask questions.
The estate sits exactly where Lev said it would, past the city sprawl, past the point where anyone bothers to ask what a place like this is doing here. I park my car near a bend, three blocks out, and walk the rest.
Standing in the shadow of a huge oak, I lift the night optics and let the details resolve. Two guards man the entry. Good.
I know this place. I know high walls ring it, unbroken, except the thick iron gates at the front. There's no soft edge and no obvious weak point, nothing that would make them question their security.
I watch the building.
Silence and darkness wrap the structure. This place isn’t for living or pleasure. It’s for pressure. No music bleeds through walls. No laughter drifts into the night. No windows are lit for anyone passing by.
I’ve been in this building before. Not as a guest. As the man who controlled the door. I followed orders, checked IDs, and looked away when I was told to.
Women arrive here dressed for meetings they didn’t understand, leaning on the arms of powerful men who rented them for exactly one night. I’ve watched them leave smaller, walking alone, bitter that the men never even bothered to learn their names.
Other times, these houses don’t use fists. They use time. They keep people awake. They keep them waiting. They ask the same questions until the answers start to change.
Then they offer “choices” that aren’t choices at all. By the time the men in charge consider using force, it isn’t necessary anymore. The breaking has already happened.
I lift the optics and look for cameras on the gates and along the walls, then I note their angles from this spot.
I watch the sweep on the corners and along the gate posts until I can see where the lenses stop and restart.
The blind spot sits on the left side of the wall where the oak blocks one angle and the corner camera can’t quite reach. I wait until both guards turn their heads at the same time, one to light a cigarette and the other to check his phone.
The security is always clean and careless in council-approved places. They expect the name to do the work for them.
I cross the open stretch at a walk that doesn’t look like running, and I keep my body close to the wall so the cameras catch less of me if they catch anything at all.
I don’t touch the front gate because the gate is built to be watched, and I move along the wall until I reach the service side where the ground dips and the concrete has a maintenance ladder bolted into it.
I climb fast and controlled, I swing one leg over, and I drop into the grass on the inside without landing heavily.
Once I’m in, I stay low and move toward the back corner where the lights don’t reach. I see a camera above the rear door, and I can’t reach it from the ground, so I don’t waste time trying to be clever.
I take the long way around, behind the storage shed, and I find the small service entrance meant for staff and supplies.
The lock isn’t special, and I open it without noise, then I close it behind me and keep my hand on the handle for a second because I want to feel if anyone tries it from the other side.
I cut power to the east wing at the exterior box so it reads like a minor fault, not an attack, because a boring problem is less likely to get called in. One section drops and the estate stays lit everywhere else.
I wait long enough for the guards to go check it.
Then I pull up the camera feeds and go through them one by one, because guessing gets you killed.
Perimeter first, then the gate, then the drive, then the corners.
I don’t shut anything off. I freeze each feed on a clean frame and leave it running on a loop so anyone checking from a phone still thinks the world is normal.
When I step back out, I keep my pace steady, because rushing is what makes noise.
I’m close enough to the first guard to take him before he can speak.
The blade slides up under his jaw as I catch his weight and lower him before his body can hit the ground.
The second turns at the wrong moment and reaches for his radio, but my hand is already there, breaking his grip and his breath in the same motion.
The third sees me just long enough to understand what’s happening. His mouth opens to shout. I shoot him through it and let him fall where he stands.
It gets worse fast.
Two guards come at me from the hall, fast and sure of themselves.
The first never gets his weight under him.
He’s down before the step finishes. The second keeps moving out of habit, not hope, until the round catches him square and knocks the breath out of his body for good.
The corridor settles again, empty and silent.
I keep going and don’t stop to check signs or doors.
I don’t need to. My body knows where this wing is.
Left side. Always the same. This is where they put women they don’t trust yet.
No windows, doors built heavy, padded to swallow sound, and cameras point inward, tracking faces, posture, and compliance.
They’re not watching the hall because no one is supposed to come from there.
I pass closed doors, feel the pressure behind them without hearing a thing. This place is meant to keep people present and contained, not screaming. That’s the lie they sell themselves.
Then I hear a voice that doesn’t fit the rules here. I hear her before I see her.
Not screaming. Ana doesn’t scream. She’s arguing, cutting into someone who thought they had time to wear her down. She sounds like she’s still in charge, even with a locked door behind her. No begging. No pleading. Still Ana.
I breach the door.
She’s in the center of the room, feet planted like she refused the chair they offered her.
Her wrists are bound, but her chin is lifted, eyes bright with the kind of anger that doesn’t ask permission.
Two women in plain clothes stand a step back from her, frozen mid-sentence.
Not guards. Handlers, the kind sent in to talk first, to soften the ground before anyone lays a hand on her.
Ana’s eyes snap to mine.
There’s no shock. No relief spilling over her face. Just recognition, immediate and steady, like she knew I’d come.
“Move,” I tell her.
She does. No hesitation. No questions.
One of the women lunges for the wall. I fire once and take her arm out of the motion. She goes down hard, crying into the carpet. The other backs away, hands up, breath shaking. I close the distance and put her out with the butt of the gun before she can find her voice.
Ana flinches at the sound, then sets her jaw and stays where she is.
“You hurt?” I ask, already cutting toward her.
“No,” she says. “They talked too much.”
Figures.
I slice through the restraints and pull her in, firm and close, tight enough to anchor her.
Her breath is fast but steady against my chest, alive and unbroken.
I pull her in harder, one arm around her back, the other braced at her neck, and for half a second I forget the room, the bodies, the exits. Her forehead comes to mine.
My voice stays steady because if it doesn’t, it won’t come out right.
“I’ve got you.”
Her breath shudders once, then steadies again. She doesn’t cry. Her fingers twist into my jacket like she’s grounding herself through me, and I let her, even though it tightens something raw in my chest.
I press my brow to hers and hold it there. “We’re leaving,” I say.
She just nods.
We’re halfway down the corridor when I hear boots charging from the far end, and there are too many of them to be handlers. I shove Ana behind me and bring the SMG up.
The first man rounds the corner and I put a burst into his chest, and he drops hard and stays down. The second comes right after him, too close to stop, and I catch him with the next squeeze of the trigger, and he folds where he is.
The third one sprays the hall blindly, and rounds chew into the wall above our heads. I step into the angle, shift left, and put him down before he can get a clear line on us. The hallway stills, and I don’t wait for it to get loud again.
Ana waits until my hand hits her shoulder.
“Go,” I say.
She goes. I follow her. On the way out, I torch the server room. Pull drives. Smash cameras. Set charges where it matters. This place won’t be usable again. By the time we’re in the car, flames are licking the roof.
Ana stares straight ahead as I drive.
“They weren’t going to kill me,” she says.
“I know.”
“They wanted me agreeable.”
“I know.”
She doesn’t ask how I found her. She doesn’t thank me. That’s not who she is.
We clear the city before dawn, and I switch cars once, then again, because Maksim keeps a vehicle waiting at the location I gave him, parked and ready so I don’t have to circle or improvise.
The roads thin as we push north, and only then do I notice how tightly I’ve been holding myself since the rescue.
This won’t stay contained. The speed, the precision, the bodies—everything will tell. And someone will audit this. Someone will ask who had the training, the memory, the restraint to do it this way.
And when they do, my name will surface.