Milo
I leave my sleeping beauty where she is, nestled beneath the covers that smell like us. It’s the best fucking smell now, right at the top of my list, the very first one still being her scent.
I close her bedroom door quietly, careful not to wake her.
I don’t run into anyone inside.
Outside, the guards stiffen the moment they spot me. Their hands go straight to their guns, their eyes filled with suspicion as they take me in.
One of them steps forward. “Who let you in?”
I grin. “It’s fine. Your boss knows I’m here.”
The boss definitely knows I’m here, seeing as I fucked her all night long.
He hesitates, clearly unconvinced, then laughs shortly and nods.
A fool. All of them.
Then it occurs to me, my woman is in that house.
And suddenly incompetence isn’t amusing anymore. They should be protecting her, and they should do better.
I close the distance and haul one of them by the collar just as the other raises his gun and points it at me.
I turn my eyes to the man holding the weapon and give him a bored smirk.
“Don’t even think about it,” I say quietly. “Because we both know that if you pull that trigger, I’ll walk away with nothing more than a surface wound, while your brains are splattered across this pristine pavement.”
Then I look down at the man clenched in my fist, his face flushed bright red with fury.
“Don’t push your luck.” I continue coldly. “Do your job properly. No one enters or leaves these premises without my knowledge, and every person is searched thoroughly while my woman is in this house.”
He gulps.
“Understood?” I snap.
“Yes,” he says, swallowing hard.
I let go.
“Now give me your phone.”
He does. I enter my number and hand it back.
“You will text me updates,” I say evenly. “Everything. I want to know where my woman is at all times. Have a maid relay it if necessary, I don’t care. If she is not in her bedroom, I want to know what she is doing. Every second of it.”
“Understood,” he says, still looking uncertain.
“Do not fail me, boy,” I add, a hint of amusement crossing my expression as he is clearly older than I am.
“If I have to return here because you failed to follow through, you will not be given the courtesy of an explanation before I empty my magazine into you.”
“I’ll do as you asked,” he says quickly.
“A pleasure doing business with you,” I reply, already turning away.
It pains me with every step I take away from the house. The more distance I put between us, the less it sits right with me. A pressure tightens in my chest, my heart is beating too hard and far too fast. My stomach flips unpleasantly.
I think I’m having that heart attack again.
I need to make her my wife and bring her under my roof.
Immediately.
Being apart, having no idea where she is every hour of the day, is wearing my patience thin.
My phone vibrates as I step away from the gates, a message coming through from my father with nothing but an address and a code. Not that I ever expected him to ask how I was.
It means he wants someone dead, someone who has sold behind his back or crossed him in some way, and tonight I am the tool he has chosen to deal with it.
I snort. I haven’t done jobs for that fucker in a long time, but I never managed to get rid of him for good.
I am working on that.
He still has control over me, in a way, mostly through my mother. She is in that house, and whenever I refuse to jump at his command, it always ends the same way, with a threat to kill her.
At this point she is half dead already, so he might as well finish it.
I am a heartless motherfucker, but I still pity her, which is why I do the jobs when he asks.
She was never a mother to me, so I don’t feel anything beyond a trace of pity, if even that.
I am supposed to love her because she gave birth to me?
Funny, that, because for most of my life, I wished she hadn’t. I wished I had never existed at all, especially not with that cunt of a father.
She knew what was happening in that house. Again, I don’t blame her, what could she have done?
But at the time, the child in me wanted more. I wanted her to at least pretend she cared about her own son, to try to do something, anything. That was how my mind worked back then, frightened and small, wishing for the safety of a parent who never materialised.
Either way, she gave birth to me, and that is the full extent of it.
She was lost to drugs long before she became pregnant. My father made sure she stayed clean while she carried me, he wanted an heir.
After I was born, she never once held me.
I was raised by nannies and then sent to Britain for a boarding nursery soon after.
Every interaction I have ever had with her has been brief, but it was enough. I could see the hatred in her eyes, the disgust, and I understand it. I am part of the man she was forced to marry, the fucker who ruined her life.
Her own father sold her to him, and knowing the cunt my sperm donor is, I can only imagine the hell she was made to live through.
I pity her for that. I really do. But I can’t shake the anger either, because she never tried. She never even attempted to escape. I am not asking that she should have taken me with her, only that she might have saved herself.
I know for a fact she never ran, never did anything more than disappear into drugs, and that, to me, is the most fucked up way of surviving.
Because she is not really living.
She has been high for most of her life, moving through the world as though wrapped in fog.
I have to escape them both and never set foot in that damn country again. I have no business in Russia. They are not my family. Isaak is the future Pakhan, and I am glad for it.
I am not made to rule. I am too volatile, too unpredictable, and too fucked in the head to sit at the top and pretend to be diplomatic.
I despise that family and that country, and if it were not for Kira, my mother, I would have severed every connection by now.
Even then, I know my sneaky father would find a way to blackmail me regardless. Until he is dead, he will never let go of me.
Perhaps I should simply kill him already.
I am working on it, but it’s not easy. Isaak’s father, the current Pakhan, is just as sick as his younger brother, and he would never allow me to touch his precious cunt of a sibling.
It is all a mess.
For the most part, he leaves me alone now. Still, every so often, my father manages to push through a request.
A hit, or two.
I look back at the house once more, at the darkened windows concealing my entire world inside. It only strengthens my resolve to get rid of my father for good.
Because if he so much as sniffs around my girl, if he ever tries to touch her just to prove he can…
I stop the thought before it finishes forming. I am already too close to snapping.
I pocket my phone and walk towards the waiting car.
***
The plane is waiting. I board, and soon we are in the air. My mind stays on my girl.
The problem is not that I left. The problem is that I know I can’t go back to her.
At least not yet.
I grit my teeth and take another sip of vodka.
The flight lasts a few hours, and then we land.
Russia.
Fucking Russia.
My home.
Supposedly.
The moment I step outside, my skin starts itching.
I hate it.
The cold settles deep in my bones. Russia in winter is no joke.
This country never really lets you go. You can flee, burn passports, change names, but it never fully leaves you.
I have been back for minutes and already I can’t wait to leave.
A car is waiting for me on the tarmac, its engine idling.
No driver. Exactly as it should be. I am here for a job, and I don’t need anyone around to fuck it up.
Once inside, I open the compartment and find what I need, a Makarov and one of my Ferrum Syndicate masks.
I don’t need to cover my face, not really. The people I am after never get the chance to speak, let alone breathe my name to anyone else. Still, fear works better when it doesn’t know what is coming.
The drive through the city is quiet. With the time difference, the sun is beginning to rise, while snow gathers along the sides of the road.
By the time I reach the gates of my target’s house, my pulse is even. I am calm, focused, exactly where I need to be.
The security is laughable. Two men, poorly placed and barely alert. I am past them before either realises they have stopped breathing, leaving no noise behind… no disruption at all.
Inside, the house is warm, the lights low, the air still. During the flight, I studied his file closely and learned that he works nights and sleeps through most of the morning. I move through the rooms without hurry.
I leave the bedroom for last.
He wakes with my blade pressed to his throat, his eyes flying open as he manages a single word.
“Ferrum…”
I push the blade in deeper, cutting off anything else he might have said, until the only sounds left are his coughing and the wet spill of blood.
I finish it with a few bullets for good measure, and the room falls back into silence.
I return to the car and set the timer before pulling away. Once I have put enough distance between us, I press the button without looking back.
The explosion blooms behind me, reflected briefly in the rear view mirror, and that is that.
The job is done, and I can only hope it buys me a few months of silence.
I don’t even consider going home.
I drive straight for the airport, towards the only place that matters to me now.