Chapter 25 Laszlo
Laszlo
Distraction.
Whoever is in this house is a distraction. I don’t stop to think about how they got in. That can be dealt with later. The main event was the shooter outside.
Aimed at my fucking wife.
The growl that escapes me is too loud in the silence of the downstairs. I cleared the top floor, and now Grisha is guarding the bottom of the stairs as if his fucking life depends on it.
It does.
He is pissed off to be relegated to guarding my wife, but it’s the most important fucking job there is.
I glance at Yuri and nod, gesturing that he go to the back of the house while I stay on course to my office.
Leonid left for the night, and the other men are patrolling the perimeter, attempting to get a sight on the shooter, but my guess is they are long gone.
My bare feet are silent on the marble, gun raised as I enter the dining room, gun levelled at the empty space. Nothing. I move through it fast, checking corners, the space behind the long table, under it. Clear.
I move into the hallway. The front door is closed. Intact. No damage to the frame, no scratches on the lock. I check the alarm panel beside it. Disarmed. Tracks. The alarm didn’t go off when whoever it was came in.
Someone with access did this. Someone who knew the system, or knew the man on it. And when I find out who, I will peel their skin off inch by fucking inch for putting my wife in danger.
The memory of her muffled shriek as the bullet hit the headboard centimetres from her head echoes in my ears. She was the target. Not me. Not the house. Not a warning shot through a window to send a message.
Her.
I will burn this fucking city to the ground.
I clear the study next. Empty. The window is latched from the inside.
Nothing disturbed. My desk is exactly as I left it, the blueprints still shoved into the drawer, laptop closed.
I check behind the door, behind the curtains, the gap between the bookcase and the wall where a slim body could press itself flat.
Nothing.
I move to the sitting room where, hours ago, I married her. Everything is exactly as we left it when I carried her upstairs and forgot the world existed for a few hours.
That forgetting nearly cost me everything.
I check every corner, every shadow, every place a body could hide, and find nothing.
The kitchen next. I push through the door with my gun arm extended and sweep the room. The back door is locked, deadbolt engaged. No sign of forced entry. No mud on the tiles. No draught. No scent of night air. Whoever came in didn’t use this door.
Which means they came through the front. Or a window. Or someone let them in.
That thought sits in my gut like a blade.
I move to the utility room and quietly kick the door open.
Clear.
Moving back through the house, I meet Yuri at the bottom of the stairs.
“Anything?”
He shakes his head. His jaw is tight enough to crack a tooth. He already knows this is bad.
“Alarm was disengaged.”
“Inside job,” Grisha growls, moving forward.
I shoot him a vicious stare, and he moves back into position with a grimace.
“Not you,” I say, glowering at him. “You wouldn’t dare.” I turn to Yuri and narrow my eyes. “You’re practically part of the furniture, and you know what I do to traitors.”
“So who?” Yuri says, turning to stare at the sliding doors.
“Let’s go find out,” I say and stride to the doors, pushing one open and stepping out into the dark night. No shots fire off, which also tracks. The shooter wouldn’t have stuck around after failing to hit his mark twice. He’s already in the wind.
The garden is dark, the security lights along the perimeter casting hard white pools across the lawn and the gravel path. Two of my men are moving in a sweep pattern along the rear wall. One of them turns when he hears us and lowers his weapon an inch.
I scan the garden, the high brick wall, and the neighbouring rooftops visible beyond it.
The shot came from an elevated position.
Not a rooftop. Too flat an angle. More likely a first or second floor window in one of the adjacent properties.
I stare at the dark windows along the side of the property where the bedroom overlooks. Could be any one of them.
“Assemble everyone,” I say to Yuri. I want to look them all in the eyes.
Yuri nods and moves off. I stay where I am, barefoot on cold stone, gun at my side, eyes moving across every shadow.
The air is sharp enough to bite. My breath clouds in front of me, and I don’t feel any of it because the only thing I can feel is the rage coiled so tight inside my chest it has nowhere left to go.
Yuri returns with the four guards, and I take my time looking at each of them.
Dmitri meets my stare. So does Sasha. Kolya’s pulse jumps once in his throat, but his face stays blank. Fear. Not guilt.
Petyr is last. He gives me exactly what he thinks I want to see: a steady gaze, squared shoulders, controlled breathing. Too controlled. A man innocent of this would still be running on instinct. Petyr looks rehearsed.
I let my mouth curve into the barest hint of a smile. “Where were you when the shots were fired?” The question comes out soft, almost conversational. Dmitri’s shoulders tense. Kolya’s eyes flick to Sasha for the briefest second. They know this tone. They’ve seen what follows.
No one speaks for a beat. Good. They know better than to fill silence around me.
Dmitri speaks first. “East perimeter. Heard the glass break and moved to the rear wall.”
Sasha. “West gate. Radioed Grisha immediately.”
Kolya. “Front of the house. Checked the street. Nothing moving.”
I look at Petyr. “And you?”
“South garden. Near the wall.” His voice is level. Rehearsed level.
“Near the wall,” I repeat. “Doing what?”
“Standard patrol.”
“Then you heard the second shot from the rear corner?”
“Yes.”
I let the silence sit. “Interesting.”
Petyr says nothing.
“Because the second shot came before anyone outside reached the rear wall.”
I look at Dmitri. “Did you see Petyr when you moved to the rear wall?”
Dmitri shakes his head once, slow this time. He knows where this is going and wishes he didn’t.
I look at Kolya. “Front of the house. Anyone pass you heading south?”
“No, sir.”
Now I turn back to Petyr. His jaw is set. The steadiness in his eyes hasn’t cracked, but something behind it has. Not fear. Calculation. He’s no longer trying to convince me. He’s trying to decide which lie keeps him alive longest.
I don’t give him the time.
“Yuri,” I say without looking away from Petyr.
For one suspended second, nobody moves. Then Petyr’s hand twitches toward his holster, and Yuri’s fist connects with his ribs before his fingers close on the grip.
Petyr drops to one knee. Not all the way down. He catches himself. Yuri grabs the gun free, tossing it to me.
I shove it in the back of my joggers and crouch down in front of Petyr and rest my forearms on my knees, my gun dangling loosely from my right hand.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I say quietly. “You’re going to tell me who sent you, how much they paid you to cause a distraction by creeping around the house in the dead of night with my wife sleeping upstairs.” Petyr’s gaze shoots to mine at the word wife and he pales.
That’s right fucker. Shit levelled up a notch.
“And you are going to do it before I lose my patience, which, given that someone just fired two rounds at my wife’s head, is already hanging by a thread so thin you couldn’t see it with a microscope.”
He says nothing.
I tilt my head. “That’s your plan? Say nothing?”
I glance at his broken arm and, after a beat, shake my head, and my mouth lifts at one side. “Oh, I see. This was all you, was it?” I press the muzzle of my gun against his kneecap. Not hard. Just enough for the cold metal to register. His breathing changes immediately.
“I’m going to count to three,” I say. “And then I’m going to shoot your knee apart, and you’re going to tell me anyway, except you’ll be doing it while screaming.
Your call. You set this up, didn’t you? You hired the shooter to kill my wife because you think she caused your humiliation in front of the other men.
If I’m wrong, you’ve got the next three seconds to give me a name that checks out. ”
He stays silent, defensive and stupid.
I don’t need another reason. I already know he did it. He snuck into the house, disabled the alarm and moved about, drawing my attention away from Galina, so the shooter could kill her in her sleep.
“Last chance,” I whisper, pressing the gun to the middle of his forehead.
He stares at me, breathing through his nose, silent to the end in the way weak men mistake for courage.
Then his expression turns to disgust. “Kill me, but this doesn’t stop,” he spits out. “She is marked.”
My fingertips go numb against the trigger. For a fraction of a second, the whole garden goes soundless. My face remains carved from marble as I press it and rise as Petyr slumps back to the stone.
The silence that follows is absolute. It’s the silence of recalibration. Every man here is reassessing what he knows, what he missed, and whether his own skin is next.
Blood pools dark against the pale stone. I don’t look at it.
I look at the three remaining guards. Dmitri. Sasha. Kolya. Their faces are blank in the way that trained men go blank when their commanding officer has just executed someone in front of them, and they want to make sure they don’t join him.
“The shooter,” I say, my voice flat. “Find out who. And I don’t need to tell you that I’d better have it before they turn up again to take another shot at my wife.”
Dmitri nods once. Sasha and Kolya don’t move, but I see the understanding settle behind their eyes.
I turn and walk back inside, already reaching for the only thing that matters now, to see Grisha standing, arms folded at the bottom of the stairs, his bulk blocking Galina from getting around him.
“Get back upstairs,” I say as calmly as I can while my heart is trying to kill me.
“You’re okay?” she asks, trying to peer around Grisha.
“Don’t ever worry about me, moya zhena. Get back upstairs, guest room on the street side.”
“Okay,” she says and to my relief, she goes, scampering back up the stairs, one of my spare guns dangling from her hand, making me smile despite my fear of losing her.