CHAPTER 1 #2
"Don't touch the wool, Vasily," I say, my voice dropping into a lethal, quiet register. "It's Vicu?a. You couldn't afford a square inch of it."
He freezes, his dirty, cracked fingernails hovering mere millimeters from my pant leg, his breath coming in ragged, hysterical gasps.
"Stay in the dirt where you belong," I command.
He collapses back onto his heels, sobbing openly, a grown man broken down into a pathetic, weeping child.
A wave of profound, exhausting boredom washes over me.
It physically weighs me down. I have seen this exact scene a hundred fucking times.
The same piss-poor yellow lighting, the same smell of old sweat and fear, the same desperate, useless promises that mean absolutely nothing.
I feel like a man sitting in a theater watching a movie he’s already memorized scene by scene, just waiting for the credits to finally roll so I can go get a fucking drink.
I sigh, the sound soft and deeply weary, and reach up to pinch the bridge of my nose.
"Blyad... the predictability is what kills me," I mutter. I drop my hand and look down at him one last time. "Are we done? I believe we've reached the end of your script."
I meet Yuri’s gaze across the dim expanse of the room.
I give him a single, sharp nod. The universal signal to finish the job.
There is no malice in my chest. No anger.
Just a profound desire to be sitting in a heated leather booth at the steakhouse.
I turn my head slightly to the side, anticipating the sound of the suppressed gunshot, slipping my hands casually into my trouser pockets, keeping my stance perfectly relaxed.
"Close the book, Yuri," I say softly.
Yuri steps out of the shadows.
"Make it clean," I add, my eyes fixed on the rusted wall ahead. "I'm wearing a light coat."
Yuri steps forward, his movements fluid, economical, and totally predatory.
He raises the matte black pistol. Vasily’s eyes go wide, the pupils dilating so fast they swallow the irises entirely, turning into black, bottomless pits of pure, primal realization.
He opens his mouth to scream, to bargain one last time, but the air just catches in his throat.
Yuri tilts his head a fraction of an inch to the side, lining up the perfect entry point at the base of the skull.
"Don't blink," Yuri says, his voice like grinding gravel.
Vasily inhales sharply.
"Nothing personal, Vasily," Yuri adds, his finger tightening on the trigger. "Just the way of the world."
The suppressed pistol coughs. It’s a dry, metallic thud that barely even disturbs the silence of the massive room.
Vasily’s head snaps forward violently, and his entire body jolts once, a vicious, rigid spasm as if he’s just been hit by a low-voltage electrical wire.
His nervous system shorts out instantly.
He collapses forward, his face hitting the freezing concrete floor with a sickening, wet, hollow crack that echoes off the tin ceiling.
Yuri reaches out with his left hand and seamlessly catches the hot brass casing in his gloved palm as it ejects from the chamber, closing his fist around it.
"Suka," Yuri mutters under his breath, looking down at the body. He lowers the weapon. "Target neutralized."
I stand perfectly still, my hands still in my pockets.
I watch the dark, thick pool of blood begin to fan out rapidly from beneath Vasily’s shattered head.
It moves sluggishly in the freezing temperature, creeping across the floor, seeking out the tiny cracks and divots in the concrete.
I track its progress with the absolute detachment of a lab scientist observing a minor chemical reaction in a petri dish.
I feel absolutely nothing. Not a single pulse of adrenaline in my veins.
Not a microscopic fraction of regret. Just the cold air on my face.
I tilt my head slightly, watching the way the creeping blood reflects the dirty yellow light from above.
"It looks like ink," I say aloud, the observation purely aesthetic.
Yuri doesn't reply.
"The human body holds a surprising amount of liquid," I note, my voice a dull monotone. I look up from the spreading pool. Yuri is standing over the corpse, his weapon pointed at the floor, his face an impenetrable blank mask. He is waiting for my next instruction. The silence in the room is heavy and absolute, broken only by the final, rattling exhalation of trapped air whistling out of Vasily’s collapsing lungs.
Yuri casually wipes a single, microscopic speck of gun oil off the side of the suppressor with his thumb.
"Check his pockets for the ledger," I order, my mind already transitioning back to the logistics of my evening. "We're done here."
I turn to leave.
And then I see it.
My eyes narrow sharply, locking onto a spot on the floor inches from my feet.
I freeze instantly. The casual indifference drains out of my body, replaced by a sudden, rigid tension.
For the first time all night, the carefully constructed mask of utter apathy slips, twisting into something infinitely sharper and infinitely more dangerous.
I lean forward slightly, my hands still buried in my pockets, my jaw locking so hard the muscle ticks against my cheek.
"Yuri," I say, my voice dropping into a lethal whisper. "Look at this."
Yuri pauses halfway through crouching down to check the body. "Boss?"
"Tell me that isn't what I think it is," I say, my eyes locked on the toe of my left shoe.
There it is. A single, tiny, perfectly round droplet of dark red blood.
It must have ricocheted off the concrete when the body fell, traveling through the air to land squarely on the toe box of my custom Milanese Oxford.
The leather is polished to a mirror-shine black, flawless and gleaming, and the crimson spot stands out against it like a glaring, screaming beacon of utter fucking failure.
I stare at the droplet, my eyes widening with genuine, unadulterated shock.
My chest tightens. The horror of taking a human life means absolutely nothing to me, but the ruining of a luxury item is a catastrophic breach of the order I demand from the universe.
I feel a sudden, sharp spike of white-hot rage flare behind my ribs.
"My shoes," I whisper, the anger vibrating in the syllables. I pull my hands out of my pockets, my fists clenching. "My fucking shoes, Yuri."
Yuri stands up slowly, his eyes darting to my foot.