Prologue – Maxim #2
“I know.” The rage was still there, burning cold in my chest like liquid nitrogen. “I’ll find them.”
“And when you do?”
“They’ll beg for death long before I give it to them.”
I walked to the window and stared out at the Prague skyline, all gothic spires and Soviet brutality reaching toward a sky that didn’t give a shit about any of us. The city was full of secrets, but mine were darker than most.
My photographic memory was already working, cataloguing faces and names and connections. Everyone who knew about tonight. Everyone who had access to the details. The list was short, but it was enough to start with.
Seven dead bodies in a warehouse. One deal blown to hell. Someone had tried to bury us tonight, and they’d nearly succeeded. Rafael was alive by inches, and I was breathing out of pure fucking spite.
But we were alive, and they were dead. That was what mattered.
I pulled out my phone and started making calls. First to our cleanup crew, efficient bastards who would make seven bodies disappear like they’d never existed. Then, to our Prague contacts, spreading the word that the Croatian pipeline was compromised and needed to be cauterized.
“What’s the plan?” Rafael asked from the couch, already looking better despite the hole in his gut.
“We find who set us up. We make them suffer. Then we rebuild the operation from the ground up.”
“And if they’re family?”
I turned from the window and met his eyes, letting him see the ice that had settled in my soul years ago. “Family bleeds just like everyone else.”
The truth was, trust was a luxury I couldn’t afford. Not anymore. Not after watching good men die because someone decided thirty pieces of silver were worth more than brotherhood. The Bratva demanded absolute loyalty, and betrayal was a sin that could only be washed clean with blood.
I walked back to Rafael and sat down across from him, my mind already working on the problem. Seven shooters, professional grade, positioned with insider knowledge. Someone had fed them everything: timing, location, personnel. Someone close enough to know our business.
“The Croatian contact,” I said. “He ever show?”
“Never fucking appeared.” Rafael winced as he shifted position. “Which means either he’s dead or he’s the one who sold us out.”
“Or both.” I stood up and started pacing, my mind racing through possibilities. “Someone uses him to set the meet, then kills him to cover the trail.”
“Smart.”
“Too fucking smart. This wasn’t street-level intelligence. This was someone who knows how we operate, how we think, how we plan.”
My face throbbed where something had caught me during the firefight, probably shrapnel or concrete chips. I touched the spot below my right eye, and my fingers came away bloody. Fresh scar to add to the collection.
I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
My parents’ faces flashed through my mind, the way they’d looked in their final moments. The guilt was always there, a constant companion that whispered about failure and inadequacy. I should have protected them. Should have seen the attack coming. Should have done more, been faster, been better.
But I couldn’t save the dead. I could only make sure the living paid for their crimes.
The warehouse job was supposed to be routine. Get in, make the trade, get out clean. Instead, it had become a bloodbath that painted a clear picture of how deep the rot had spread in our organization. Someone close to us, someone trusted, had decided we were expendable.
They were wrong.
“Six years,” I said, more to myself than to Rafael.
“What?”
“Give me six years. I’ll find who did this. I’ll make them pay for every drop of blood spilled tonight. And I’ll make sure nothing like this ever happens again.”
Rafael smiled, that cold expression that had made him one of the most feared men in the Russian underworld. “Six years is a long time to hold a grudge.”
I touched the fresh wound beneath my eye, feeling the blood still seeping from where shrapnel had caught me. “Long enough to remember every detail of tonight.”
The Prague job was over, but the war had just begun. Someone had tried to bury us in that warehouse tonight. Instead, they’d only succeeded in digging their own grave.
I would make sure they filled it.
The blood on my hands had dried, but the memory of it would stay fresh forever. Every detail catalogued, every face remembered, every betrayal documented in the perfect clarity of my photographic memory.
Six years to plan. Six years to prepare. Six years to turn revenge into an art form.
The warehouse had been their mistake. What came next would be their nightmare.
I looked at Rafael, wounded but alive, already planning our next moves despite the bullet hole in his gut. That was the difference between us and them. We didn’t stay down. We got back up, we adapted, and we came back stronger than before.
“The inner circle,” I said finally. “Someone in our inner circle sold us out tonight.”
“I know.” Rafael’s voice was quiet, but I could hear the fury underneath. “Question is, which one?”
I stared at the wall, my mind already working through the possibilities. Faces and names and loyalties, all of them suspect now. All of them potential targets.
Someone close enough to know our business. Someone trusted enough to have access to operational details. Someone who thought they could betray the Bratva and walk away clean.
They were about to learn how wrong they were.
The warehouse in Prague was just the beginning. What came next would be a masterclass in revenge, taught by two men who had stared death in the face and laughed.
Six years to find the traitor. Six years to plan their destruction. Six years to build something stronger from the ashes of tonight’s betrayal.
I cracked my knuckles and smiled, the expression cold enough to freeze blood. Someone was going to pay for Prague, and payment would be extracted with interest.
Compound fucking interest.