Chapter 45 Ace
ACE
Twelve hours. Twelve hours since they took her. Each minute stretches like an eternity, but I’ve channeled my rage into planning, calculating, and preparing.
Xavier’s team has arrived, six men in tactical gear, armed and ready. Professional enough not to ask questions when I laid out the assault plan.
“We move in three minutes,” I tell Cyrus, checking my weapon one last time.
He nods, eyes cold and focused. We haven’t spoken much since the call. We don’t need to. Fifteen years of operating as a single lethal unit means words are superfluous.
The abandoned steel plant looms ahead, a hulking shadow against the night sky. Through my night-vision scope, I count the guards—two at the main entrance, three patrolling the perimeter fence, two by the loading dock, one on the roof. Eight total. Felix’s intel was accurate.
I signal the team to take position. Cyrus moves to my right without prompting, falling into the familiar rhythm we perfected years ago.
“Keira first,” he whispers. “Everything else second.”
I nod once. “No survivors.”
The guard at the northwest corner dies first—my knife sliding between his ribs. His body makes no sound as I lower it to the ground. Twenty seconds later, Cyrus drops the second guard at the opposite corner.
Xavier’s men dispatch the rest of the perimeter guards with equal efficiency. Five down.
The rooftop guard turns at the wrong moment and catches a glimpse of me. I’m already in motion, my knife finding his throat before his hand reaches his radio. Six.
Blood stains my hands, but I feel nothing except the cold focus of the mission. Keira is inside. Nothing else matters.
The two remaining guards at the main entrance sense something’s wrong. One reaches for his radio while the other draws his weapon.
The alarm blares through the night, shattering our silent approach.
“Contact front,” I breathe into my comm. “Moving to phase two.”
Cyrus appears at my side, a ghost in the darkness. “Together.”
We breach through the main doors.
Inside is pure chaos. Gunfire erupts from three directions, a muzzle flashes, illuminating terrified faces. Men shouting in Russian.
I register eight hostiles immediately. Two to the left. Three straight ahead. Three more on the metal walkway above.
My body moves through the space with confidence. First target down with a double tap to the chest. Second with a headshot. I feel Cyrus at my side, our movements choreographed through years of operating as a single unit.
“Ten o’clock,” I call out, already shifting to provide cover fire as Cyrus dispatches the threat.
A burning impact slams into my chest—twice in rapid succession. The ceramic plates in my vest absorb the rounds, but my ribs scream in protest. I push the pain away, compartmentalizing it like I’ve done a thousand times before.
“On me,” Cyrus shouts.
I follow, watching his blind spot as he watches mine. Two more hostiles neutralized with mechanical efficiency.
A flash of movement, a guard lunges from the shadows, knife glinting in the emergency lighting. I’m a half-second too slow on the warning.
“Cyrus!”
The blade slices into my brother’s shoulder before I put two rounds through the attacker’s skull.
“Last door on the right,” he says.
Three more guards rush us from the corridor ahead. We move as one entity—I drop to one knee while Cyrus fires over my head. Perfect harmony. Professional brutality.
“Down!”
I grab Cyrus by his vest and yank him backward just as a bullet tears through the space where his head was a millisecond before. The momentum brings him crashing against me, our bodies pressed together. His back is against my chest. His blood is warm on my hands.
One heartbeat. Two. Three.
Time stretches strangely before Cyrus pushes away, resuming our advance without acknowledgment.
We’re forces of nature, and everyone in this warehouse is already dead. They just don’t know it yet.
The building’s layout matches Felix’s intel perfectly. We navigate through the maze of corridors, stepping over bodies and moving with purpose toward the northeast sector, where our thermal scan showed a single heat signature in a small room.
Felix’s voice crackles in my earpiece. “Target location twenty meters ahead. Last door on the right.”
We approach the final corridor. Six doors, three on each side.
My heartbeat doesn’t quicken—it steadies, finding the calm center I’ve cultivated through years of violence.
But beneath that practiced calm, something else pulses—raw fear for Keira that I’ve never experienced for any other living being.
“Three... two... one...” I whisper, covering Cyrus as he positions himself.
Cyrus doesn’t hesitate. He kicks the door inward with such force that it nearly tears from its hinges.
He enters first, weapon raised, his face a grisly mask of blood spatter—none of it his own.
I follow a half-second behind, scanning for threats, covering his blind spots in the practiced dance we’ve perfected since childhood.
The room is small, concrete, and dimly lit by a single bulb. Volkov is nowhere to be seen.
And then I see her. Keira. Bound to a metal chair in the center of the room, her face bruised, lip split open, but eyes defiant. Alive.
Something shifts in the atmosphere as Cyrus’s eyes lock with Keira’s.
The transformation is so profound, I feel it like a physical force—the killing machine that is my brother suddenly cracks open.
His face, always a careful mask of control during operations, fractures.
The relief that floods his features is so gutting, it’s almost unbearable to witness.
His gun lowers. “Keira,” he breathes.
I’ve never seen my brother vulnerable during an operation. Not once. The sight of it creates a strange ache in my chest as I move to secure the perimeter, giving him this moment while remaining vigilant.
I move in behind Cyrus, scanning for threats as I cross to Keira. Her wrists are bound with zip ties, cutting into her skin where she’s struggled against them. My knife is in my hand before I even register drawing it, the blade slicing through the plastic with surgical precision.
“Did they touch you?” The question tears from my throat, rough and desperate as my hands move over her body, cataloging injuries with clinical efficiency even as my heart hammers against my ribs.
A bruise is blooming on her cheekbone. Split lip.
Abrasions on her wrists. My fingers trace each mark, rage building with every discovery. “Did they—”
“No,” she gasps, eyes locking with mine. “No, I’m okay.”
The control I’ve maintained during the assault crumbles like ash. My hands aren’t steady anymore. They tremble against her skin in a way they never have during an operation.
Cyrus falls to his knees beside the chair, pulling Keira against his chest despite the knife wound in his shoulder. Blood seeps through his tactical gear, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care. His arms wrap around her from behind, his face buried in her hair.
I frame her face between my hands, feeling the warm proof of her life beneath my palms. We’re both shaking—Cyrus and I—our bodies betraying emotions we’ve been trained since childhood to suppress.
The fear of losing her has stripped away decades of conditioning, leaving us raw and exposed in a way I’ve never experienced during an operation.
“We thought—” The words catch in my throat, refusing to form.
I don’t need to finish. She knows. The hands that have ended countless lives without trembling now shake against her skin, telling her everything words cannot.
I pull Keira from the chair, my body moving on instinct rather than calculation. The three of us collapse to our knees on the concrete floor, a tangle of limbs and desperate touches.
My hands find Cyrus’s face, then Keira’s, then back to Cyrus—needing the tactile confirmation that they’re both here, both alive. Blood and sweat mingle on my palms, but I can’t tell whose is whose anymore. It doesn’t matter.
Keira’s fingers clutch at my tactical vest, her other hand gripping Cyrus’s arm with white-knuckled intensity. Her body trembles between us as we envelop her from both sides, creating a fortress of flesh and bone.
“I knew you’d come,” she whispers against my neck, her breath warm and alive. “I knew.”
Cyrus has one arm crushed around her waist while his other hand finds the back of my neck, squeezing.
His forehead presses against mine over Keira’s shoulder, our breath syncing as it has since our first kill.
But this is different—this isn’t the controlled rhythm of synchronized violence. This is ragged, desperate, human.
We’re pressed so tightly together I feel Keira’s heartbeat against my chest, Cyrus’s pulse through his grip on my neck. Three distinct rhythms gradually align, finding harmonious cadence.
My fingers trace the curve of Keira’s spine, up to tangle in her hair, confirming every inch of her is intact. I’m vaguely aware of leaving bloody fingerprints on her skin, but I can’t stop touching her, can’t stop the frantic inventory my hands need to take.
Cyrus’s wound is bleeding through his gear, staining Keira’s shirt, my hands, all of us marked with the same crimson proof of survival.
“I love you,” I murmur, not knowing or caring which of them I’m speaking to. The words encompass both. “I love you both.”