Chapter 27 Fyodor
FYODOR
Islide out of bed as carefully as I can manage, trying not to wake Noemi who's curled up on her side with her hair spread across the pillow, and I stand there for a minute just watching her sleep in what's left of the candlelight.
Most of them have burned down to nothing, just a few still flickering on the dresser and casting soft their soft glow across her face.
The rose petals are scattered everywhere, on the sheets and the floor and tangled in her hair, and she looks peaceful and beautiful.
I don't want to leave. I want to crawl back under the covers and wrap myself around her and stay there until the sun comes up and maybe longer than that. But I made a promise to Yuri that Marat would be dead by morning, and it's one promise I can't renege on. If I don't keep my word, I'm nothing.
I pull on my clothes in the dark, as quietly as I can, then lean down and press a kiss to her forehead.
She stirs but doesn't wake and settles deeper into the pillow.
I want to tell her I love her one more time, but that would mean waking her up and explaining where I'm going and why.
It's better to let her sleep for now. I can tell her when this is all over and we can celebrate together. At least, that's my plan.
I force myself to turn around and walk out the door before I change my mind about all of it.
Lazar and Vasili are waiting in the parking lot when I get outside, leaning against the car and smoking cigarettes like they've got all the time in the world.
The sky's still dark but there's a hint of gray on the horizon that tells me dawn isn't far off.
We need to move if we're going to catch Marat and his protectors before the shift change.
They straighten up when they see me coming and Lazar tosses his cigarette on the ground and crushes it under his boot.
"Ready?" he asks.
"Let's get this done."
We pile into the car the guys secured for us.
My SUV is parked blocks away from here now to hopefully keep Marat's men far away from this place while my family sleeps.
Lazar drives while I ride shotgun and Vasili takes the back seat.
Nobody talks much on the way over, but I'm not in the mood for conversation anyway.
My head is still back in that motel room with Noemi, remembering the way she looked sleeping in the candlelight and the words we said to each other before we fell asleep.
I have to keep pulling myself forward to focus on what we're about to do and not get distracted. It’s the one reason men in my business fail, because they're thinking instead of focusing. And it’s the one reason I'll be killed if I don't watch myself.
The safehouse is in a residential neighborhood on the other side of the city, a two-story place set back from the street with a small yard and a chain-link fence around the perimeter.
It looks like any other house on the block.
There's nothing special about it that would make anyone think it's state owned and that a witness is being housed in it.
Rurik's intel said there would be four guards, two stationed outside and two more inside, all assigned to keep Marat breathing until he can walk into a courtroom. But we're here to make sure that testimony never happens.
Lazar parks two blocks away from the target and we get out and split up to approach from different angles.
I take the front, Lazar circles around to cover the back entrance, Vasili positions himself on the side in case anyone tries to run.
It's as simple of a plan as they come and we've done this a dozen times, but my gut keeps clenching like something is wrong.
I can't shake the feeling that we're in the wrong place, that I should be back in that bed with the woman I love protecting her and my son.
I move down the street keeping close to the parked cars and staying out of the pools of light from the streetlamps.
There's a guard at the front door, young guy with a cigarette in his mouth and a bored expression on his face like he's been sitting there all night with nothing to do.
He's not paying attention to anything except the glow on his phone screen, and he doesn't even see me coming until I'm ten feet away and raising my weapon.
By then it's too late. I fire off two suppressed rounds to his chest and he drops, his cigarette rolling across the concrete as he falls and his phone clatters to the ground. I step over his body and press myself against the wall next to the door, listening for any reaction from inside.
But the house stays quiet and I don’t hear any movement behind the door.
But I do hear glass breaking somewhere around back, which means Lazar's making his move, so I kick in the front door and go in fast with my weapon up.
The entryway is dark and I clear it quickly, sweeping left and right, then move deeper into the house.
My body is a trained machine. I've done things like this enough to be able to keep my heart rate in check and my wits about me. It's almost mechanical the path I follow, ensuring the downstairs is empty, but I pause at the bottom of the steps.
A guy appears at the top of the stairs with a gun in his hand and I drop him before he can get a shot off.
Another one comes running from a side room shouting something I don't quite catch and I put two in his chest and keep moving without slowing down.
This is the easy part. I don't let myself think about anything except the next corner, the next doorway, the next target that needs to go down.
I find Lazar in the kitchen finishing off a guy who made the mistake of trying to fight back with a knife instead of running. He's got the man pinned to the floor with his boot on his throat, and I crouch down and grab the guy by the hair to lift his head up so I can see his face.
"Where's Marat?"
The man just gurgles, so I nod at Lazar and he eases up enough to let him talk.
"There's no one here by that name," the guy chokes out. "I don't know what you're talking about."
I put a bullet in his head and stand up. I'm not here to waste time torturing men who refuse to play my game. And something feels very wrong.
We've cleared most of the house and there's no sign of Marat anywhere, no witness cowering in a back room, no extra security detail protecting someone important.
It's too empty, too easy, and my gut is telling me we've walked into something bad.
This doesn't feel like a safehouse. It feels like bait.
"Check the bodies," I tell Lazar as I move to peek out one of the front windows. "Look at their IDs. Something about this doesn't feel right."
He goes back to one of the men I killed and crouches down to pull out his wallet. When he looks at what's inside the wallet, his face goes hard.
"These men aren't police, Boss. They're—"
"Koslov's men," I say, cutting him off. Now my blood is boiling.
"Has to be." Lazar stands and drops the wallet onto the dead man's chest.
The whole thing was a setup from the beginning.
Rurik's intel was garbage, deliberately fed to us to lead us here to this house to be ambushed while the real Marat sits somewhere else laughing at us.
Someone knew we were coming and they played us perfectly, and now we're standing in the middle of a trap that's about to spring shut.
"We need to go," I say, already moving toward the exit. "Right now."
We both dart toward the front door as fast as we can, but not quite fast enough. A soft beeping sound comes from under the floor, and every hair on my body stands on end faster than my mouth can process what my brain instinctively knows is true.
"GET OUT!"
I throw myself through the front door and hit the yard running as fast as my legs will carry me.
I've made it maybe twenty feet when the world goes white and a wall of heat slams into my back and sends me flying through the air.
I hit the ground hard and roll across the grass, my ears ringing and my vision swimming with spots.
When I manage to look back at the house, it's just gone. There's nothing left but fire and smoke and pieces of debris raining down from the sky all around me. The whole structure is engulfed in flames, walls collapsing inward and the roof caving in, and somewhere in that inferno is Vasili.
"Vasili!" I try to yell but my voice comes out as a croak. "VASILI!" I cough and cover my mouth, frantically looking around the side yard where he was supposed to enter the side door, but it's nothing but a heap of debris and smoke.
Lazar grabs me by the arm and hauls me to my feet. He's bleeding from a gash on his forehead and his jacket is singed and smoking in places, but he's alive.
"My God…" I breathe. "He was supposed to go in the side and—"
"He's gone," Lazar grunts, dragging me up harder.
I manage to get my feet under me as he says, "We have to move before the cops show up.
" Now he's dragging me away from the house into the darkness that cloaks the street.
There's no way this neighborhood sleeps through that explosion, and every second we stand here on this sidewalk watching that house burn is another chance for someone to see us and tell the authorities.
"Come on, dammit," Lazar snarls at me, but my ears are ringing so loudly now. I follow behind him as he takes off running. My legs feel weak from adrenaline surge, but I manage to stay upright until we dive into the car and take off.
"They set us up," I say when I can talk again without my voice cracking. "Wherever Rurik got that intel, Marat figured it out and led us straight here intending to kill us."
"Yeah, it looks that way," he says, checking the mirror as if he thinks someone might be following us. I glance over my shoulder to see the house engulfed and the flames licking the night sky. "What do we do now? You think Rurik set us up?"
"Hell no," I tell him, facing forward again. "He's loyal. He'd never do that to us. But Koslov has sources too, and we just have to be smarter than him."
Lazar pulls onto the highway and guns it, and I see a few cop cars going the other direction with lights flashing. We ride in silence for a few minutes as I try to make my head stop spinning. We were nearly blown to bits tonight over this whole thing, which only tells me how serious it is.
Koslov is fighting for his life when he could be using his manpower to vanish and never return to Moscow or St Petersburg again.
That means this isn't just about justice for the woman he loved.
This is retribution. He wants Yuri to feel what he feels, and the only way that works is if Inessa is imprisoned or put to death for murder.
"What's next, Boss?" Lazar asks, snapping through my thoughts, but now all I can think about is the woman I love.
Would Koslov go after her for that same reason? And what about my son?
I promised Yuri I'd finish this today, and I will. But before I go on a killing spree, I have to go back to that hotel and make sure my family is safe.
Then Koslov will get what's coming to him. No one kills one of my men and walks away free.