Chapter 19
KONSTANTIN
I drive the Ferrari like I'm trying to outrun my own sins.
The speedometer flickers past one-sixty. The world outside is a smear of asphalt and industrial steel, blurring into a tunnel of motion.
The engine screams behind my head, a twelve-cylinder choir vibrating through the frame and into my spine.
But I can't hear it.
The only sound is the blood rushing in my ears. Louder than the wind. Louder than the engine. It’s the frantic rhythm of a man who is watching his world dissolve.
I didn't take an SUV. I didn't wait for a convoy. I didn't wait for Lev to check in, because Lev isn't answering.
I took the fastest machine I own because every second the GPS tracker on the Sentinel stays static is a second I'm losing her.
The distress beacon hit my phone minutes ago. It wasn't a text or a call. A digital death knell sent directly from the car's computer to mine.
CRITICAL HULL FAILURE. G-FORCE IMPACT > 50G. AIRBAG DEPLOYMENT. HULL INTEGRITY ZERO.
I knew what it meant before the car even stopped moving on the map.
The Sentinel is a tank. It's built to withstand landmines. To shrug off sniper fire. For the hull integrity to be zero, something godlike had to happen.
The city blurs. I weave through the midday traffic, cutting off trucks, forcing sedans onto the shoulder. I don't care. I’m a King, and today, the laws of the road are just another thing to break.
My grip on the leather steering wheel tightens until it groans.
Please, I think. Please let it be a false alarm. Please let her be safe inside the shell.
I tear onto the Narrows Bridge.
The smell hits me instantly, penetrating the cabin filtration of the Ferrari. Acrid, melting plastic, scorching leather, the copper tang of coolant boiling on the asphalt.
I slam the brakes. The tires lock and screech, leaving black scars on the roadway as I skid to a halt ten yards from the wreckage. The car is still rocking when I'm out of the door.
"Helena!"
My voice tears the silence.
I sprint toward the wreck. The heat hits me in a wave, singeing the hair on my arms, drying my eyes.
"Helena!"
No one answers. Only the crackle of fire and the hiss of steam.
I reach the vehicle. The Sentinel, the fortress I promised would keep the world out, is lying on its side, crushed against the concrete median like a discarded soda can.
I stop cold. Air leaves my lungs.
The violence is impossible to comprehend. The front end is obliterated. The passenger side, her side, is caved in. Reinforced steel pillars, thick as a man's arm, are snapped like wet cardboard. A massive loader blocks the road, its steel bucket resting near the wreck like a tombstone.
"No," I whisper.
I scramble up the chassis, my boots slipping on the slick metal. I burn my hands on the hot steel, but I don't feel it.
I grab the frame of the shattered window and pull myself up.
"Helena!"
The rear door has been kicked open from the inside. It hangs off its hinges.
I look into the smoldering cabin.
The interior is a ruin. Airbags hang like deflated lungs. The rear cabin is scorched and covered in debris. Ash floats like black snow.
I scan the footwell. The ceiling. I look for a body. I look for the broken shape of the woman who slept in my arms last night.
No one.
My heart hammers against my ribs.
Empty.
Empty means she wasn't crushed. Empty means she got out.
It means she was taken.
I drop to the asphalt, my boots hitting the ground hard. I spin around, scanning the girders, hand going to my gun.
The shooters are gone. They hit the target and vanished.
"Helena!" I roar.
I check the perimeter, my eyes darting over the debris field. Shattered glass glitters in the soot. A glint of blue near the median reflects the firelight, catching my eye.
I walk toward it, legs impossibly heavy, like I'm walking through deep water. I reach down and pick it up.
It's her ring.
The sapphire. The ring of the Morozov Queens. The ring I forced onto her finger to mark her as mine. It’s cold, heavy, and smeared with oil.
It must have been torn from her hand in the struggle.
I stare at it, remembering the moment I put it on her. The weight of her hand in mine. Seeing it discarded in the dirt feels more violent than the crash. My protection, lying in the mud.
It’s a message. You can’t keep her.
"Helena," I whisper. I clench the ring until the metal bites into my palm, cutting the skin. I welcome the pain as fuel.
I look down the road, and bile rises in my throat.
Andrei lies twenty feet away. My head of security. A man who has been with me for five years. A giant.
He's lying on his back in the center of the road. Still. His tactical vest is pockmarked with gray smudges where he took rounds and kept standing. But the vest couldn't save him from the kill shot.
A jagged wound tears through his throat, just above the Kevlar. The story is written in his blood: he didn't run. He stood in the open, forcing a precision shot. He died shielding my wife.
His eyes are open, staring at the sky.
Beyond him, the young guard—Misha—is slumped over the guardrail, weapon still gripped in his dead hand. Half his head is missing. The angle of the spray suggests a high-velocity round from the towers. Sniper fire.
My best men. Slaughtered like cattle.
"Boss..."
A wet, gurgling rattle. It’s so faint I almost miss it over the crackle of the fire.
I spin around.
Lev.
He’s propped against the barrier, hidden in the shadow of the wreck.
I run to him, sliding on my knees in the oil and grit.
"Lev!"
He looks like he went through a meat grinder. Face gray as ash. Blood masks the left side of his head. But that isn't what kills me.
It's his leg.
His thigh is soaked in dark arterial blood. Shrapnel or a stray round tore through the meat of his leg. The blood is pumping, pushing out with every beat of his heart.
"Lev! Look at me!"
I grab his vest, pulling him upright. His head lolls back.
"Stay with me," I command. "That’s an order. Stay with me!"
His eyelids flutter as he tries to focus on my face. His lips move, but only a bubble of blood escapes.
"H... He..."
"Don't speak," I snap, ripping off my tie. I wrap it around his thigh, yanking it tight. "Save your breath."
He lets out a long, ragged exhale. His hand fumbles for my wrist. "Sorry," he wheezes. "Sorry... Boss."
"Shut up," I snarl. "You did your job. You held the line."
"Failed," he gasps. Tears mix with blood. "Taking... her..."
"They won't keep her," I promise. "I’ll burn them for this. Now breathe, Lev. Breathe!"
Sirens wail in the distance. Blue lights flash against the girders. A reminder that the window for a quiet cleanup is closing. I have no time for the paperwork of a massacre.
I have to get Lev off this bridge. He can still survive this.
I pull out my phone. My fingers are trembling, slick with his blood. It smears across the screen as I dial Ivan.
"Get the cleanup crew to the Narrows. Now."
"Status?" Ivan asks.
"The Sentinel is destroyed," I say, devoid of emotion. If I feel anything right now, I’ll break. "Helena is gone. The team is dead. Lev is down—femoral artery. He's bleeding out."
"I'm dispatching the med-team to St. Jude's—"
"No hospital," I shout, rage cracking the ice. "The police will ask questions that the Doc won't. I don't have time to buy silence today. Get him to the clinic. Now."
"The vet?" Ivan hesitates. "Konstantin, the vet is for patches. If it's the artery, he needs a sterile operating room. A vascular surgeon."
"Then tell the vet to scrub up, or I burn his clinic down with him inside!" I roar. "Get a van to the east ramp. Get Lev off this bridge. If he dies, the Doctor dies. Understand?"
"Understood," Ivan says. "Five minutes."
I hang up and check his pulse.
"Don't die," I whisper, leaning my head against his vest. "I can't lose both of you in one day."
I sit for a moment beside him, muttering prayers.
Then, my phone rings.
I stare at it.
Unknown Number.
The world stops. I know who is on the other end.
The police are still minutes out. No EMS reports. If she isn’t in an ambulance, she’s in a trunk.
Only the architect of this slaughter would call now.
I answer instantly. I press the phone to my ear, hand shaking with the need to reach through the device and crush the throat of the man on the line.
"Speak."
"Konstantin," Moretti purrs. The voice of a man who thinks he's won. "It seems we need to update our files. Your wife was just telling me that her thumbprint is obsolete."
My vision blurs red. "If you’ve touched her..."
"She’s fine," Moretti interrupts. "For now. But she was eager to tell us about the tablet, Konstantin. She screamed about it to save her skin. Your little pet isn’t as loyal as you thought."
The words hit me like a precision strike.
"If she bleeds, Moretti," I snarl, "There’s no hole deep enough for you to hide in. I’ll burn the world to find you."
"Then bring the tablet," Moretti snaps. "The tablet for her. The Old Foundry. Midnight. Come alone. If I see a sniper, if I smell a trap... I’ll finish what I started, and I’ll mail her to you, piece by piece."
He hangs up. My hand tightens until the screen fractures, glass biting into my palm.
"She told him," I whisper.
She told him the tablet is the only way to unlock the shipment. She gave him the leverage he needed. Now he wants the tablet for her life. Twenty years of my life for her.
The realization is poison. She gave up the vengeance I spent twenty years building. She traded my family's justice to keep breathing.
I thought I found a Queen. Instead, I found a civilian who broke the moment she felt the heat.
Tires screech at the end of the bridge as the cleanup van arrives. Men in black scrubs sprint with a stretcher. They’ll have Lev stabilized in seconds. I stand up, turning to the burning wreckage and pulling back my fist.
I punch the twisted metal of the door frame, hard enough to snap bone.
The steel bites into my knuckles. Blood flows, hot and fast, mixing with the soot. The pain grounds me.