25. Nikolai
NIKOLAI
I'd been awake for thirty-one hours and I didn't feel a single one of them. After the twenty-four hour mark, I had tried to nap, but cold rage kept me too alert to nod off.
All of this had started with my trying to keep things as quiet as possible to avoid getting cops involved, but now I was planning to go in loud and proud. Markin would never see us coming.
Yakov laid the weapons out on the kitchen table of my safe house like a buffet.
Two Glocks, a Sig Sauer, his personal AK he'd pulled from the trunk, extra magazines, a combat knife he kept strapped to his ankle that I'd never once seen him without.
But Vlad was already geared up, checking the slide on his nine millimeter. All of his other weapons were strapped on. And none of us spoke much before a fight, though tonight, we were going over plans.
I pulled the plate carrier over my head and tightened the straps. My ribs ached from where I'd hit the floor during the blast, but pain was just information right now, reminding me to stay focused on my goal—removing Xavier Markin from this planet as painfully as possible.
"Port authority shift change is at eleven," Yakov said, slapping a magazine into place. "Markin's gonna move on those containers before midnight. He thinks we've got his product locked up in our storage units, and he's hemorrhaging cash every hour it sits there."
"How many men does he have left?" I asked. The intel about this strike had come in midday while I was with Dr. Keller and Kira, learning I would be a father soon.
It didn’t surprise me that Markin would try to storm the castle and get his blow back. He wasn't foolish. Without those drugs, he couldn’t pay off his debts and Salazar would come hunting.
"After the other night?" Vlad shrugged one shoulder. "Intel says he pulled in reinforcements from the west side, but we're looking at maybe fifteen, twenty guys, tops. Half of them are new muscle and probably not trained well."
"Good." I holstered the Glock at my hip and tucked my backup into my waistband at the small of my back. I wasn't running low on ammunition tonight. "We'll hit them at the port. Gregg's intel says Markin's gonna be there personally. He doesn't trust anyone else to handle this and he's desperate.
Yakov glowered at me, lowering his voice. "No mercy?"
"None," I said, and I meant it.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Kira's face covered in blood, limp in my arms while my house burned behind us.
Markin had signed his own death warrant the second he put charges outside my bedroom where his own daughter slept.
The man had no moral code at all. He was a sick son of a bitch who deserved everything that was coming for him tonight and beyond the grave.
Vlad tossed me a radio earpiece and I fitted it in. We'd done this a hundred times at least, maybe more. The choreography was muscle memory now, so familiar to all of us, we'd grown comfortable with killing.
Though, we lived by a code none of us would break. It was what set us apart from men like Markin who weren't worthy of the air they breathed.
"Niko?" I heard, and my eyes rose to see Kira standing in the doorway.
She was wearing one of my T-shirts that hung past her knees, and her face was still stained from blood, the gash at her hairline held together with butterfly strips the doc had put on. But what caught my attention was her arm.
She'd pulled the IV out. A spot of blood sat in the crook of her elbow where she'd ripped the tape off. After those first few hours, he'd decided to keep her on the IV another day or two, and she'd clearly had enough of it.
"What are you doing up?" I said. "Doc told you to stay in bed."
"Where are you going?" She ignored my question and gawked at the table full of guns, then at Yakov and Vlad in their gear. Her eyes were red-rimmed and glassy but sharp underneath. She wasn't stupid. She knew exactly what this was.
I looked down, frustrated that I felt I had to explain myself.
Her father was a man much like me who did similar things.
She had to know that I was going to go after him for what he'd done. He had almost killed her. I couldn’t let that slide.
"Go back to bed, Kira." My hands worked mechanically, sliding a knife in my boot, then shoving more free rounds into my pockets to reload if necessary.
"You're going after my father." She stepped into the kitchen, one hand bracing against the counter like she wasn't sure her legs would hold. Yakov eyed me with a glower.
Women didn't belong in these sorts of situations unless they'd been trained, and not only was Kira not trained, but she was also pregnant. No way in hell I was letting her be any part of this, not even the voice of reason.
"Niko, please." Her voice was a whimper, her eyes pleading with me. "Don't kill him."
"Kira—"
"I know what he did." She tiptoed in, watching me and ignoring my men.
I felt them tense but they both stayed quiet.
"I know he tried to kill you, and I know he would've killed me too and he probably wouldn't have lost sleep over it.
" She stopped a few feet from me. She was fighting her emotion back and I could see how much energy it took her to maintain control.
"But he's my father… And if you kill him tonight, I'm gonna have to look at you every day knowing you're the one who did it.
" Her throat worked as she swallowed. "I don’t think I can do that. "
The silence in the kitchen was heavy as a familiar tension settled between us. She wasn’t my enemy by any means, but it wasn't easy knowing how she felt. The man had almost killed her and would have if she hadn't been startled awake in the middle of the night, and she was still defending him.
"Men like your father don't stop. He'll come back," I told her. "And when he does, he will see that you're with me, openly choosing me. You’ll become his enemy too. Is that what you want?"
Kira shook her head, stepping forward until her thighs pressed on the table. I knew deep down that every child loved their parents more than they could ever admit.
It was how men like him had any family at all.
But she was better than this, and she had me.
She didn't need him anymore, or this strange loyalty that would only hurt her in the long run.
She knew it too, but she stuck to her guns.
"Then deal with him or cripple him. Take everything he has—I don't care." She took a step around the table and her hand found my arm, fingers curling around my bicep as she said, "Just don't be the one who puts him in the ground. Not today… Please."
I looked down at her hand on my arm.
Her knuckles were scraped and her skin was still pink from the burns and she was standing here barefoot and half broken asking me to show mercy to a man who deserved none.
"Kira, I can't promise you that someone won't pull a trigger someday that ends his life. That's the world he chose… It's the world we live in, and—"
"I know, she said, cutting me off. "As long as it's not you, okay? Because what will I tell our child when he or she grows up and learns her grandfather was murdered?" I watched her eyes well up with tears, but she blinked them back.
I clenched my jaw and heaved a sigh out my nostrils.
Everything in me screamed to finish this. Markin had tried to burn my life to the ground with the woman I loved inside it, and every instinct I had said to put a bullet between his eyes and be done with it.
He was a snake in the grass, a viper waiting to strike when I least expected it.
But when Kira let a single tear streak down her cheek, then swiped it away, I knew I would have to look in those eyes after this was finished.
And more than anything I wanted her to be able to look back at me without anger or pain there.
"You have my word," I said. "We'll take his operation apart piece by piece, but I won't kill him."
Her shoulders drooped and she sighed, leaning into me. She pressed her forehead against my chest, right above the plate carrier, and I cupped the back of her head carefully, avoiding the bump from her concussion. "Now get back in bed before the doc has my ass."
She looked up at me and almost smiled at that comment, but there was so much sadness in her eyes it was like she'd lost her ability to smile for now. "Thank you," she whispered, then pressed a kiss to my cheek and walked out.
I waited until she disappeared down the hallway before I turned back to Yakov and Vlad.
Neither of them said a word about what they'd just witnessed.
"Let's get out of here before she comes asking us to save a lost puppy too," Yakov grumbled. While I agreed with his sentiment, I couldn’t let myself get wrapped up in the emotion of it.
We had a job to do and we had to get it over with.
The port was quiet when we rolled up at a quarter past eleven.
Yakov killed the headlights two blocks out and we coasted into position behind a row of shipping containers stacked three high.
The salty air off the water was cold and cut through the smoke smell still clinging to my hair from last night.
We set up behind the wall of shipping containers and waited for Yakov to finish his recon. He came back about fifteen minutes later, crouching low with his AK slung across his chest, and he was slightly winded.
"Well?" Vlad asked, and I waited for the answer as well. We had ten men on standby, waiting to move in as called. Gregg led those teams set up on the opposite side of the yard, and they'd been given orders to move in when they heard the first shots fired.
"I counted fourteen men. Two black SUVs and a box truck backed up to our storage unit.
They've got bolt cutters on the lock but they haven't gotten in yet.
" He drew a rough layout in the dirt with a stick.
"Markin's standing right here, ten feet from the unit door, watching his guys work.
He's got men spread out along the access road but they're bunched up here" —he drew an X to mark the spot— "and here.
Most of them are facing inward toward the unit, not outward. "