Chapter 44
DAMIEN
Smoke rolls as the doors give way and we pour through.
I’m first across the threshold. Alex is to my right.
Our men flood in behind us in two files, tight and controlled.
The first shots come from the shadows—short, panicked bursts that tattoo the wall to our left.
I return fire without hesitation. One man drops.
Another staggers and vanishes behind a stack of crates.
“Left hall,” Alex says. We move as one. He cuts the angle; I hold the long lane.
Our men fan out, pairs peeling from the spine and snapping to cover—pillar, doorframe, machine carcass, pallet stack.
Their discipline is clean. The sound is ugly.
Close-quarters gunfire always is. Concrete takes bullets and spits dust in your teeth. Metal screams when it’s hit. So do men.
I don’t allow myself to hear it. I keep Cassandra’s face in front of me. Bound. Gagged. That’s my ammunition. Every step I take is a promise. Every shot I fire is a vow.
We move methodically and fast. Alex clears corners like he was born to do it—gun up, wrist locked, eyes already moving to the next threat before the first one hits the ground.
I go through the center of rooms the way a storm goes through a field.
I don’t waste motion. I don’t waste rounds.
I step over a man who tries to grab my ankle, putting a round in the floor next to his ear. He’s not my problem anymore.
“Two more,” Orlov calls from rear-left.
“Mark,” I say. A red dot dances for a heartbeat on a door just ahead. The door catches two rounds and dies with the man behind it, hinges shearing, handle clanging across the floor.
The rafters rattle. Dust falls. The building trembles with us. I hear a voice in Russian—orders pitched high, panic bleeding through. Another voice answers from deeper in, low and certain. Ivan. I change direction toward that voice without looking at Alex. He changes with me without hesitation.
We reach a long corridor with a seam of light at the far end. The light is open space, not office. Warehouse floor. I hold up two fingers. Our men stack, reload, check. Alex touches my shoulder, ready. I nod. We break the corner hard, fast, and low.
Muzzle flashes flicker and fade. Sparks shower from a beam that takes a burst meant for us. We split, our line blooming into a kill fan. My men fire measured pairs and then move, just the way I taught them. I run for the left cover and slide in behind a forklift. Bullets ping all around us.
“Eyes up,” Alex shouts.
I look up and see her.
Cassandra stands pale on the catwalk; fingers locked on the rail.
She’s not gagged anymore, but her mouth is red and raw from the tape.
Her eyes find me. She’s alive. The relief hits so hard, I have to stop my hands from shaking.
I push forward and fire until the man shooting toward the catwalk folds backward.
Movement to my right. Ivan. Blood on his cheek. Rage in his face. He’s moving with intent, trying to draw us in. He slices between crates to my far right, and I adjust my angle, sending rounds to pen him in. He cuts left to avoid Orlov’s line. I move. Alex herds from the other side. The net closes.
Ivan misjudges which of us will reach him first. It isn’t me. It’s his brother.
They slam together, bodies heavy, blood against blood. The sound is meat and bone. Ivan fights like he always has—dirty and fast. Alex fights like he learned to survive men exactly like his brother. He also learned how to end them.
Alex takes a headbutt and answers with a short hook to the ribs that chops the breath out of Ivan.
Ivan reaches into his pocket and pulls out a knife, the blade glinting between them.
He pins Alex with his weight and drives with the blade.
Alex turns and traps Ivan’s wrist, nearly snapping his arm at the elbow. Ivan screams and kicks free.
I circle to position, dropping anyone who tries to help Ivan. I don’t break the ring. This is Alex’s fight. He needs to do this with his own hands, or it will fester like a wound that will never close.
Alex gets some space and sets his stance, gun raised. Ivan is on his knees, chest heaving, eyes bright with the kind of malice that would rather burn down a church than admit a sin. The moment is there. Alex sees it.
He hesitates.
“Alex,” I say.
Every muscle in him shakes with the resistance of not pulling the trigger.
Ivan doesn’t hesitate. He surges forward, hitting Alex low, the blade skittering across the floor.
Both men dive. Alex palms Ivan’s head and drives it into the concrete.
Ivan slams an elbow into Alex’s ribs so hard the sound cuts through the noise of the chaos.
Alex grunts, losing a breath and his gun.
That’s all Ivan needs. He lunges and reaches, his fingers closing on the weapon.
“Down!” I shout, following my own command.
Ivan doesn’t aim at Alex. He raises the gun and swings it past me and Orlov, pointing up at the catwalk.
Cassandra.
Her body goes still. Her eyes are the whole world for one second.
I launch without thinking.
The shot cracks the air. Heat tears my side open, white and angry. The force stuns me. I taste copper.
Despite the pain, I keep my gun up, putting the sight where it belongs. The world contracts to a dot and a breath.
I pull the trigger. Once. Twice. Again.
Ivan jerks. Red blooms across his chest. His face looks surprised in a stupid way. He drops the gun and follows it down, hitting the concrete hard. He doesn’t get up.
The warehouse quiets. There’s a ringing in my head as the last shots die out. Then I hear Cassandra scream my name, and everything else becomes background to that one note.
My legs give out and I drop the gun without meaning to. I fall to my knees. My hand goes to my side, feeling a warm wetness spreading there. Blood floods my coat and runs hot into my beltline. The pain pulses in waves. My breath is shallow and sharp, like my ribs have shrunk.
“Damien!” She’s already moving, a blur on the stairs, shoes hitting metal, hands on the rail. Suddenly, she’s on her knees in front of me. Her hands are everywhere—face, chest, wound—trying to do ten things at once. Her eyes are wild. Tears cut tracks through the grime on her face.
“I’m here,” I say, or try to. The words scrape raw. “I’m here.”
“I thought—” Her voice breaks. She pulls at my coat and presses down hard on the wound. “Stay with me. Stay.”
I take her wrist and pull her closer because I need to say this while I still can.
“I thought I lost you,” I tell her. Each word hurts, but I say them anyway.
“I thought you were gone and there was nothing left. I can’t—” The breath catches and snarls.
“I can’t do that again. Not again. I swear to you, Cassandra. This ends. This war ends.”
She puts her forehead to mine and sobs. “Don’t you dare leave me,” she says. The order is shaky, yet perfect. “Do you hear me? Don’t you dare. I need you. I love you.”
There are a thousand things I could say. I choose the only one that matters. “I love you,” I tell her. “I love you.”
Alex is there, gray and broken open, eyes crashing between Ivan’s body and mine.
For a heartbeat, he is simply a man who just lost a brother.
Then his training takes over. He is on his knees at my side, ripping cloth, wadding it, driving both palms against the hole in me with a pressure that makes my vision turn black at the edges.
“Hold him,” he says to Cassandra, voice sanded down. To me he says, “Stay awake. Do not close your eyes.”
“I’m not—” I start, but the room shifts on its axis. I clamp my jaw and fight the darkness that threatens.
“Orlov, doors!” Alex shouts over his shoulder. “Perimeter tight. Nobody in, nobody out. Call the alpha ambulance, now. Private channel.”
“On it,” Orlov calls from somewhere to my left, already speaking into a ghost phone, giving a grid no one else knows.
Cassandra’s hands are steady despite her shaking body. She places them over Alex’s, adding more weight to the pressure. She keeps talking. The words are simple, but they keep the dark from shrouding me.
“Stay with me. Look at me. Breathe. I love you. I love you.”
I look at Ivan because part of me needs proof that he’s still there in a heap of ruin, eyes open to a ceiling he doesn’t see. I think he was destined to die like that. The thought should give me satisfaction. It gives me nothing. There is only Cassandra’s voice and the ache in Alex’s silence.
Alex’s face is slick with sweat, dust, and grief, grief that doesn’t know its own shape yet. He does not look at Ivan again. He keeps his weight on the wound, his focus on me. He counts my breaths under his own.
“Pressure,” he says, and Cassandra nods. They press harder. Pain flares hot enough to paint the whole room white. I bite down on a sound and blow out a long breath.
Sirens, faint but close, fill my ears. The ones we pay for because we don’t want the questions that come with the others. Our men tighten the ring at the doors, rifles up, eyes alert.
Cassandra leans in so close I feel the tremble of her breath.
“Stay awake,” she whispers. “Stay with me. I need you. I love you, Damien. I love you.”
I keep my eyes on hers. I keep my mind where her voice is.
The edges of the room fuzz and darken, but the center is bright enough to hold.
I count with Alex. I breathe when Cassandra does.
I make a silent promise, and I mean it more than I’ve ever meant anything.
The blood keeps coming, slower now under the firm weight of their hands.
Medics file in and drop next to us with their equipment. “We’ve got him.” Alex won’t move until he has to. Cassandra won’t let go until they pry her fingers loose.
I watch her mouth form the words one more time.
I breathe them in.
I am not letting go.