Chapter 49 Marcello
Marcello
Semyon Sokolov was exactly as I remembered him. Smug. Arrogant. Wearing that thick, unearned confidence only truly stupid men ever managed to pull off. He strutted into the center of the warehouse like he owned the air, the concrete, and probably my last nerve too.
Eight men followed in his wake, all leather jackets, shaved heads, and dead-eyed grins—like a boy band for violent idiots.
For a man who had just lost two brothers, Semyon looked remarkably upbeat. No grief. No solemnity. Just that same lazy swagger, as if he’d merely misplaced a pair of socks instead of buried his bloodline.
Guess that’s what happens when you’re the black sheep of a monster family. You don’t mourn. You just step over the bodies and keep walking.
“You called a meeting?” Semyon asked Archie, his voice dipping in disdain, almost bored.
“Cute. I expected you on your knees.”
Archie didn’t even blink. He just rolled a shoulder and smoothed a palm down his immaculate jacket.
“Please. You know I don’t kneel. And I’m not ruining a perfectly good suit on your account.”
Gianni shifted to my right, shoulders rolling loose, expression carved into cold stone.
Raze prowled to my left, already crackling with the violent anticipation of a man two seconds from doing something spectacularly illegal.
My heart beat slow. Controlled. Like it was syncing itself to violence.
I stepped out from the shadows.
Semyon’s grin faltered. Not much, but it was enough.
“I heard you paid a visit to my family.”
He started laughing, but the sound was wrong — thin, ragged at the edges. My jaw tightened. My pulse stayed even. No matter how personal this was, I couldn’t lose my head and risk everything that was left. Not with this man.
“You made a mistake,” I told him.
“Oh?” He cocked his head, trying to hide the sudden twitch in his cheek. “Which one would that be?”
“You didn’t think to kill me, too.”
His smirk died.
I raised a single hand.
And that was when the world erupted.
Raze fired first — a sudden crack that echoed through the warehouse like a war drum. One of Semyon’s men dropped before he even knew he was dead.
Gianni moved next, gun steady, precision perfect. Two shots sent two bodies to the ground.
Chaos detonated.
Bullets screamed across the warehouse, ricocheting off steel beams and tearing through crates. Sparks rained from a blown light fixture overhead. The Russians roared with fury, spraying bullets blindly, but we were already moving — shadows weaving between shadows.
Raze barreled forward, a fucking wildfire in human form, diving behind a column, popping up just long enough to put another man down.
Gianni stayed near me, firing clean, deadly shots. Every shot of his was a promise that after today, the Sokolov family would cease to exist.
Archie fought like a man who’d been waiting years for the chance to take a crack at the Sokolovs. He was calculated, brutal, smiling as he put a bullet between the eyes of a man charging him with a machete.
The Russians went down one by one, screaming, choking, bleeding into the concrete.
Semyon tried to run. Because of course, that was what cowards always did.
Raze saw him and grinned — wide, wicked, feral. “I got him.”
He didn’t even run. Just walked. Calm. Unhurried. Semyon tripped over a corpse, scrambling backward until his spine hit a crate.
“No—no, wait—”
Raze put a bullet in his thigh. Another in his shoulder. Then one right between his pleading eyes.
“Meeting adjourned,” he muttered, and silence fell.
Smoke curled through the rafters. The floor was slick with blood and oil, bodies everywhere.
Gianni wiped his face with the back of his glove.
Archie checked the perimeter, stepping over corpses without looking down.
Raze was already kneeling by the detonator bag, humming under his breath. He was happy. Like a kid at fucking Christmas.
I turned in a slow circle, taking in the carnage — the ruin of the men who dared touch my family.
My brothers. Alessio. Atlas.
Justice, in my world, wasn’t a courtroom. It was a room without windows.
“All clear,” Gianni stated.
“Good,” Raze replied, hands flying over wires. “Let’s take out the trash.”
He armed the detonators — a half dozen of them hidden throughout the warehouse. Enough C4 to turn the whole building into a blazing crater.
We walked out together, boots crunching over glass. Behind us, the dead Russians lay scattered in the dark like broken chess pieces.
The night air hit my face as we stepped into the open. Cold. Clean. Free of their filthy stench.
Raze held up the trigger device, grinning like a lunatic.
“You boys ready?”
Gianni smirked. “Do it.”
Raze pressed the button.
The warehouse didn’t explode so much as detonate.
A thunderclap tore through the night, shaking the ground beneath our feet. Fire burst outward, swallowing windows, doors, steel beams. The roof lifted, then collapsed with a metallic howl.
Flames roared skyward, lighting up the whole block. Smoke billowed like a beast clawing its way free.
The Russians were buried in their own ruin. Trapped beneath the weight of the consequences they’d believed would never touch them.
I stared at the inferno and felt… not peace. But something close. A small slice of justice carved out of hell.
“For Alessio,” Gianni murmured.
“For all of us,” I answered.
Raze looked like a choirboy who’d found religion in destruction.
Gianni moved with precision, pulling us back toward the cars waiting in the hills.
Archie picked his way over the uneven ground like the earth personally offended him, probably terrified he was going to scuff his damn shoes. “This… was more impressive than I expected.”
I didn’t answer. My eyes stayed fixed on the flames consuming the heart of the warehouse. Fire exploded through the wreckage, devouring every scrap of evidence. Smoke billowed thick and black into the night sky like a funeral pyre built for devils.
The heat singed my skin. The smell burned my lungs. The destruction warmed my bones. But underneath all of it — beneath the victory — was Alessio’s face. Gone too soon.
Semyon’s death didn’t fix that. But it honored it.
Raze walked up beside me, soot smeared across his cheek. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
I didn’t answer.
He nudged me. “You feel better?”
“No,” I whispered. “But I feel… done.”
Raze grinned. “Now we find the girl?”
I nodded. “Now we find the girl.”