Chapter 19 Sofiya
Sofiya
SONG: LITTLE GIRL GONE BY CHINCHILLA
The mansion rises from the hill like the eyesore it is.
I stand at the edge of the tree line with Volk beside me, studying the structure that once housed everything I loved and everything I lost. The same imposing columns and oversized windows, which let morning light flood the breakfast room where Mamochka would brush my hair while I ate, and the same heavy doors that swung shut behind me the day I walked into Father's office and watched my world end.
Different guards, though. Father's paranoia has multiplied since Volk put those bullets in him.
The perimeter teams have doubled , and dogs patrol the fence line, their handlers keeping them on short leashes while they snarl and sniff the ground.
"Seventeen exterior guards," Volk murmurs beside me, his voice barely disturbing the night air. "Four teams of three plus the handlers. They rotate every twenty minutes."
"The gap?"
"Northwest corner. The camera has a blind spot where the oak tree blocks its view. Twelve seconds to cross from cover to the servant entrance."
Twelve seconds. An eternity when armed men are looking for any excuse to shoot.
I check my weapons one final time. The Sig sits comfortably in my thigh holster.
Two knives, one at my ankle and one strapped to my forearm.
The garrote wrapped around my thigh again like a macabre charm.
My body still aches from yesterday's injuries, ribs protesting every deep breath, knee throbbing with each step.
But pain is just information. I've learned to file it away and keep moving.
"Ready?" Volk asks.
The question carries weight beyond the single word. Am I ready to finish what started ten years ago? Am I ready to kill the man who murdered my mother? Am I ready to become whatever I'll be when this is over?
"Yes."
We move.
The first guard dies without sound. Volk appears behind him like smoke taking human form, one hand covering the man's mouth while the other draws a blade across his throat. The body folds silently into the bushes. I don't look back. Can't afford sentiment for men who chose to work for a monster.
The northwest gap materializes exactly where Volk promised. I count heartbeats as we sprint across open ground. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. The servant entrance looms and then we're through, swallowed by shadows that smell like industrial cleaner and old wood.
It’s clear that the servants have been sent away.
Father’s paranoia useful for once. The empty hallways twist through my memory like ghosts.
I know this place. I walked these floors as a child, played hide and seek with the cook's daughter in these very passages.
The familiarity makes everything worse. Makes the violence we're about to commit feel like desecration of something sacred.
But sacred things died here long before I returned.
Volk signals. I follow his line of sight and see two guards ahead, stationed at the junction that leads to the main house. I nod and slip into an alcove while he continues forward, his footsteps silent on the polished floor.
The first guard notices him too late. Volk's knife finds the soft spot beneath his jaw and the man crumples with a wet gurgle.
The second guard manages to turn, mouth opening to shout, but I'm already there.
My garrote loops around his throat and I pull, throwing my weight backward.
His fingers claw at the wire cutting into his flesh and severing his pinky fingers as I pull tighter and tighter.
His feet kick, and his body jerks with desperate, animalistic panic.
Then stillness.
I lower him to the ground carefully, avoiding the blood pooling beneath his ruined throat.
It would help no one if I started leaving a trail of blood through the house.
Volk catches my eye and nods once. Approval.
Acknowledgment. Something more complicated that we don't have time to examine. We keep moving.
The security hub sits on the second floor, buried in what used to be an old, oversized storage closet.
Father converted it years ago, replacing shelving with monitors and comfortable chairs with tactical stations.
Two technicians work the screens, their backs to the door, utterly unaware that death has just entered the room.
Volk takes the one on the left. I take the right.
My knife slides between ribs, directly into his lung with surgical precision.
The technician stiffens, tries to speak, but blood fills his mouth before words can form.
I ease him forward onto the console, his forehead resting against the keyboard like he's simply fallen asleep.
"Disabling cameras now," Volk says, fingers flying across controls. "We have maybe three minutes before someone notices the feeds are down."
Three minutes. I count them in heartbeats while he works. The screens flicker. Go dark. Come back showing nothing but static.
"Move."
We descend through passages I remember from childhood games.
The route to Father's office, to his private quarters, to the reinforced safe room he installed after the first attempt on his life fifteen years ago.
I know every turn because I mapped them obsessively during my years of planning.
Every corner, every potential ambush point, every place where guards might lurk.
Thor appears at the junction leading to the east wing.
I recognize him immediately. Big man, Nordic features, blond hair cropped military short.
He used to escort me on my errand runs to the mansion.
I see the moment he sees me too. Recognition flashes across his face, followed by confusion, followed by understanding that hardens into duty.
"Sofiya." His hand moves toward his weapon. "Don't do this."
"Step aside, Thor." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "This doesn't have to involve you."
"Can't do that." He draws his gun but doesn't aim it. Not yet. "You know I can't."
"Then I'm sorry." I move before he can react. Years of training compress into a single fluid motion: inside his guard, where our vast size difference can’t help him.
I keep my knife angled upward, blade finding the gap between his tactical vest and throat, slicing through his skin like a warm knife through butter.
Thor's eyes go wide. His gun clatters to the floor.
Blood pours over my hand, hot and impossibly red.
He gives one last bubbling exhale as he slides down the wall. His blood covers my forearm like a glove. His eyes stare at nothing, already glazing over.
Volk's hand closes on my shoulder. "We need to move. Now."
I pull the knife free, wiping it and my hands on Thor's jacket before I keep walking.
The east wing opens into the long corridor leading to Father's safe room. We're close now. So close I can almost taste the revenge I've dreamed about for a decade. My heart pounds against bruised ribs. My wounded knee screams with every step. But none of it matters.
Not until we round the final corner and find them waiting.
Ten men. Armed. Positioned in a tactical spread that covers every angle of approach. They've been expecting us. Cameras we didn't know about or informants we didn't suspect. It doesn't matter. What matters is the wall of guns pointed at our position.
"Drop your weapons." The voice belongs to a man I don’t recognize. Rage erupts through my system like wildfire. Hot and consuming and absolutely beyond rational thought. To be this close and have this man think he can stop me? I don’t think so.
"Fuck you." I fire before the words finish leaving my mouth. The shot takes the man on his left in the center of his forehead. He drops , and I'm already moving, diving behind a decorative pillar as return fire shreds the air where I stood.
Volk appears from somewhere I don't expect, flanking right, his shots precise and devastating. Two more guards fall. Three. The corridor fills with the deafening percussion of combat, muzzle flashes strobing the darkness like a nightmare disco.
A bullet grazes my shoulder, burning like fire, but it doesn't slow me down. I swing around the pillar and put two rounds into a guard trying to advance on my position. His body armor stops the first shot but the second finds his throat.
Their leader screams in Russian, ordering his remaining men forward. They come as a unit, five of them now, moving with the practiced coordination of soldiers who've trained together for years.
Volk intercepts two of them before they reach me.
His fighting style is brutal efficiency, no wasted movement, every strike designed to kill or incapacitate.
One man goes down with a shattered knee, then a broken neck when Volk follows him to the ground.
The second takes a knife to the eye and stops moving entirely.
Three left. Including the man who has become my sole focus.
The first one reaches me before I can bring my gun around.
His fist connects with my injured ribs, and I hear something crack and feel the sharp agony of bone grinding against bone.
I gasp as all the oxygen in my body flees.
I double over. His next blow aims for the back of my head but I'm already moving, letting my legs fold, dropping beneath the strike and coming up with my ankle knife buried in his groin.
He screams, falls and keeps screaming while I twist the blade.
Then the leader is there.
His hands close around my throat before I can defend myself. He's still strong, stronger than he should be for a man his age. The pressure against my windpipe is immediate and absolute. Stars explode across my vision, and my lungs burn for air that won't come.
"Little, Yelena," he hisses, using my real name like a curse. "Should have stayed dead in that desert."
I claw at his hands. Kick at his legs. Nothing works.
He's too big, too strong, and I'm too weakened from everything that came before.
The edges of my vision go dark. Sound becomes distant, muffled, like I'm hearing it through water.
Angel's face flashes through my mind. The blood on my hands.
The crack in my armor widening into a chasm.
Then the pressure releases.
His hands fall away from my throat, his body jerking once, twice, and then he's falling backward with Volk's knife buried in his spine. He hits the floor and twitches, not dead but paralyzed, staring at the ceiling with eyes full of terror.
"Finish it," Volk says, breathing hard. Blood runs down his arm from a wound I didn't see him take. "He's yours."
I don't make it quick. When it's finally over, my hands are covered in his blood and something dark and satisfied has settled into the hollow spaces of my chest.
The last guard is down. The corridor is silent except for the ringing in my ears and my own ragged breathing.
"The safe room," I manage. "Father's in the safe room."
Volk helps me stand. Steadies me when my knee threatens to give out. His face is grim but there's something else there too. Pride, maybe. Or something closer to love. I shake my head at myself for daring to think the word for the first time now.
"Can you walk?"
"I can do whatever I have to."
We step over bodies toward the reinforced door at the end of the hall.
My shoulder bleeds. My ribs are definitely broken in more than one place now.
Every part of me screams for rest, for medical attention, for anything other than more violence.
Volk is bleeding as well, but I think most of it isn’t his, although he clearly has some cuts on his arms and torso.
We're so close. After ten years of planning and bleeding and becoming something I barely recognize, we're finally here. Father waits behind that door.
And I intend to collect what I'm owed.