CHAPTER 15
ROSE P.O.V.
The city was screaming. Not with sirens now, but with the visceral thud of distant explosions that rattled the very glass of the penthouse windows, a mournful chorus of concrete and steel being torn apart.
Liam’s voice, raw and hoarse, had been the last thing I heard before the comms went silent on his channel.
He’d gone, of course. My brutal, magnificent bastard, charging headfirst into the inferno we’d engineered.
My hands, slick with sweat, gripped the edge of the tactical table, the maps now useless, overtaken by the real-time chaos unfolding in the streets and, more ominously, in the isolated wilds of the Catskills.
Vasily and Sergei were a frantic blur, shouting into comms, barking orders into the void, their faces etched with grim fear that mirrored the knot in my own gut.
“Recon reports massive firefight at the Catskills fortress perimeter!” Sergei yelled, his voice strained. “Volkov’s men were waiting. Heavy casualties on Anton’s team!”
My blood ran cold. Casualties. More men. My mind flashed to the Red Hook warehouse, the two men already gone, their lives sacrificed. This was my plan. My strategy. And the price was blood.
“Liam’s channel is still down, Pakhan!” Vasily roared, his eyes wide with a desperate fear I rarely saw in the stoic enforcer. “He was with Anton’s vanguard! We’ve lost contact!”
My breath hitched, a cold, hard fist clenching around my heart. No. Not him. Not now.
“Get me a vehicle,” I snapped, my voice cutting through the pandemonium, sharper and steadier than I felt. Both men turned to me, their eyes wide with disbelief. “Now! I’m going there.”
Vasily stepped forward, his large frame blocking my path. “Rose, no. It’s a war zone. Pakhan Liam wouldn’t want you—”
“Pakhan Liam is in trouble, you idiot!” I snarled, shoving past him with a strength born of pure adrenaline.
“And if he’s hurt, I’m the only one here who knows his goddamn weaknesses.
Get me a car. Now. Or I swear to God, I’ll take one myself and leave you to explain why you let his moya roza get herself killed. ”
The unspoken threat, the sheer audacity of my command, made them falter. Sergei, ever the pragmatist, nodded, already reaching for keys. “A fast one. Not armored. Too slow.”
Minutes later, I was strapped into the passenger seat of a black, souped-up SUV, Vasily driving with a grim efficiency that suggested he was already preparing for my inevitable death.
The city lights blurred, replaced by the dark, winding roads leading north, the constant thrum of the engine a desperate heartbeat against the silence of our shared fear.
My mind raced, not with strategy now, but with frantic recollections of the old maps, the blueprints, the hidden trails. The old logging trails. The ones I’d pointed out, the ones Liam had used for the flank. They’d be rough, but potentially faster, less guarded.
“Vasily! Take the old logging trail off Route 17,” I barked, pointing to a barely visible turn-off in the gloom. “It’s a shortcut. Dangerous, but it might get us there faster.”
He glanced at me, a flicker of surprise in his eyes, but didn’t question.
The tires bit into the gravel, the SUV lurching and swaying as we plunged into the dense, dark woods.
Tree branches scraped against the windows, the only light the piercing beams of the headlights cutting through the oppressive darkness.
The sounds of the battle reached us long before we saw it. The staccato crack of automatic gunfire, the distant boom of grenades, the screams—primal, guttural, chilling. My stomach twisted, but I forced myself to breathe, to focus. Liam.
Vasily brought the SUV to a screeching halt at the edge of a clearing, the air thick with the smell of gunpowder, burning wood, and something else...
coppery and sweet. Blood. The scene was pure pandemonium.
Volkov’s men, a ragged mix of armed thugs, were clashing with Liam’s elite forces.
Bodies lay sprawled on the muddy ground, dark stains spreading beneath them.
And in the center of it all, near the crumbling remains of what looked like an old, reinforced bunker, I saw him.
Liam.
He was a whirlwind of lethal grace, his powerful body moving with a brutal efficiency that was terrifying to behold.
But something was wrong. His movements were slightly off, a visible tremor in his left arm.
He was fighting Volkov’s personal guard, a hulking brute twice his size, whose knife glinted wickedly in the faint moonlight.
Then it happened. The hulking guard, momentarily gaining the upper hand, plunged his knife forward. Liam parried, but not fast enough. The blade slid, tearing a gruesome gash across his side, just below his ribs. He grunted, a guttural sound of pain, his body faltering.
My scream tore through the chaos, a ragged, desperate sound. “LIAM!”
He stumbled, his knees buckling, but not before delivering a brutal elbow strike to the guard’s temple, sending him sprawling.
Liam swayed, clutching his bleeding side, his eyes, dark with pain and fury, locking onto mine across the battlefield.
The raw terror in his gaze, seeing me there, galvanized me. He was hit. Badly.
Vasily was out of the car, firing his weapon with deadly accuracy, creating a path. I was already running, ignoring the shouts, ignoring the danger, my eyes fixed on Liam. The ground was slick with mud and blood, littered with spent casings. I didn’t care. I needed to get to him.
I reached him as he slumped against the side of the bunker, his face pale, sweat beading on his brow despite the cold night air. His breath was ragged, shallow. The gash on his side was deep, a dark, crimson stain spreading rapidly across his expensive suit jacket.
“Rose,” he rasped, his voice barely a whisper, a mixture of rage and disbelief in his eyes. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Saving your stupid ass, you arrogant bastard,” I retorted, my hands already moving, tearing at his jacket, ignoring the searing pain in his gaze. I could feel the heat radiating from the wound, the sticky wetness of his blood. “Where’s the medic?!”
Vasily, now beside us, was laying down cover fire. “He’s with Anton’s team, still engaging the blockade on the highway. We’re cut off, Pakhan.”
“Fuck,” Liam choked out, his eyes closing for a moment, his body trembling. “Volkov... he anticipated everything.”
My training. My time in this brutal world.
I’d seen enough wounds, tended to enough scrapes and bruises on the men around the penthouse to know the basics.
More importantly, I’d learned how to stay calm when everything around me was screaming for panic.
I ripped off a strip of fabric from my torn robe, pressing it hard against his wound.
“It’s deep,” I muttered, my voice tight. “We need to get you out of here. Now.”
“Can’t,” he gasped, his hand gripping my wrist, his strength fading. “Volkov... he’s here. In the bunker. We need to secure the archives.”
“Fuck the archives!” I screamed, a raw, desperate sound that cut through the gunfire. “You’re bleeding out, Liam! What good is an empire if its Pakhan is dead?!”
He stared at me, his eyes wide, a flicker of something raw and vulnerable passing through them. “Get me to the old hunting cabin,” he whispered, his voice weak. “The one off the lower trail. It’s secure. Hidden. Volkov won’t know about it.”
“Vasily!” I yelled, pulling Liam’s arm over my shoulder, forcing his dead weight against my smaller frame. “The hunting cabin! Let’s go!”
It was a grueling, painful journey. Liam was a mountain of muscle, his body heavy, his steps faltering.
I supported him, half-carrying, half-dragging him through the dense undergrowth, Vasily covering our retreat.
The sounds of battle slowly faded behind us, replaced by Liam’s ragged breaths and the frantic thump of my own heart.
We reached the cabin—a small, dilapidated structure hidden deep within a secluded copse of trees—what felt like an eternity later. Vasily kicked in the door, swept the small room for threats, then helped me get Liam inside, gently lowering him onto a dusty, makeshift cot.
The cabin was cold, damp, smelling of old wood and earth. I tore off Liam’s blood-soaked suit jacket, then his expensive shirt. The wound was worse than I thought, a jagged, ugly line across his obliques, still oozing blood. He was pale, his lips blue, his body trembling with shock and pain.
“Rose,” he rasped, his eyes fixed on mine, a dangerous light still burning within them. “My men... they need me.”
“Your men need you alive, you stubborn fuck,” I retorted, my voice trembling, but firm. I stripped off my torn robe completely, revealing my bare body beneath, then began to rip the silk into long strips. “Lie still. I need to clean this.”
He watched me, his gaze intense, possessive, even in his pain. “You’re good at this,” he murmured, a faint, humorless smile touching his lips. “My little medic.”
“I learned a thing or two tending to your bruised and battered thugs,” I snapped, pouring what little antiseptic alcohol Vasily had found in an emergency kit onto the wound. Liam hissed, his body arching, but he didn’t fight me. His trust, even in this raw, vulnerable state, was absolute.
As I worked, cleaning the wound, bandaging it tightly, my fingers brushed against his warm, taut skin.
The rough hair on his chest, the defined muscles of his abdomen, the faint tremor that ran through him.
His vulnerability was a stark contrast to the dominant, unyielding man I knew, and it affected me profoundly.
The urgency of saving him, the fear of losing him, had stripped away all pretenses, all anger.
There was only us. This raw, brutal connection.
“Hold still, you idiot,” I whispered, my voice thick with unshed tears, as I pressed the last bandage. My body was still thrumming with adrenaline, with the lingering fear, but also with a strange, desperate tenderness.