Chapter 28 #2
He toyed with a razor-sharp folding knife, his smile twisted and swollen with arrogance. He strutted up to Hailey like a king handing down a verdict and stared me down.
"Look at this," Matthew cackled. "The tyrant who supposedly runs New York's underworld." He tapped Hailey's cheek with the flat of the blade. "So why do you show up like a kicked dog, all alone, ready to die?"
My gaze turned glacial. I didn't move.
"Cat got your tongue, Mr. Ivanov?" Matthew got louder, high on himself.
"You think money lets you control everything?
A sick bastard with blood on his hands thinks he deserves Hailey?
I'm the winner. I planned all of this. I paid people off.
I lost your shadows. And I'm going to take her—and the baby—right in front of you.
I'm going to raise your bastard as my son, and you're going to die like a dog in this stinking slaughterhouse—"
He kept ranting, drool flying, drunk on his fantasy.
"Shut up," a voice cut in from deeper darkness behind him—bored, disgusted, ice-cold.
Matthew froze mid-grin and whipped around. "Yuri? What the hell, I wasn't finished—"
Thump.
A muffled gunshot—suppressed—cut him off like a blade.
Matthew's chest blossomed red. His eyes went huge, disbelief locked in. A wet, choking sound crawled out of his throat. The folding knife clanged to the floor. He didn't get another full word out before he toppled into his own blood like a sack of trash.
Yuri stepped out of the shadows with a smoking pistol. He didn't even look at Matthew's twitching body. He stepped over it like it was mud.
"Sorry, Pakhan." Yuri sneered as he moved behind Hailey, grabbed a fistful of her hair, and jammed the gun to her temple.
"This self-important civilian idiot was slow in the head.
He really thought doing me a couple favors meant he got a cut of this?
But his stupidity did exactly what I needed—it pulled your eyes. "
Yuri lifted his gaze, ambition and madness burning in it.
"Now the rats are cleared out. Let's talk business, Viktor."
I stood there, hands loose at my sides. Under the gloves, my knuckles had gone white. My face stayed blank.
"What do you want, Yuri?" I said, calm like we were discussing shipping numbers.
"My seat!" Yuri roared, years of jealousy finally detonating.
"I took bullets for you. I built half this empire for you.
And you broke rules, pissed off allies, for some woman.
I won't take it. Give me the Pakhan seal.
Read out the Swiss authorization code. Sign the transfer, and maybe I'll let her live. "
He pressed the barrel hard enough into Hailey's forehead to leave a red mark.
"Fine," I said, steady. "But I want Hailey outside the door first. Safe."
"You don't get to bargain with me!" Yuri snapped. "This is my ground. My men are outside. You're not flying out of here."
Right as he barked it, the phone in my suit pocket vibrated—perfect timing.
Dmitri's signal.
"Your ground?" I let out a short laugh. Slowly, I pulled out the encrypted phone and hit speaker. "Then you should listen to where this really is."
The call connected.
A woman's scream—shrill, terror-soaked—ripped through the slaughterhouse.
"Yuri? Help! Yuri, they broke in! Don't touch my baby!"
Then a six-year-old girl's wail followed, shredded and desperate.
"Daddy! I'm scared! Daddy, where are you?"
The slaughterhouse went dead silent. Only the phone carried their sobbing.
I looked up at Yuri.
I watched the confidence on his face crack—inch by inch—then collapse. He jerked his head toward my phone, staring like he couldn't breathe. His throat bobbed hard.
"Katya... Anna..." His voice shook. "Viktor. You monster. What did you do to them?"
"Brighton Beach. Thirty-Fourth Street. That apartment," I said, lifting the phone closer so the crying cut sharper. "Good locks. Too bad my 'Phantom' knows locks better than your locksmith."
The lazy edge left my face.
"You know me too well, Yuri. You know Hailey can be used against me." I spoke slowly. "But you forgot one thing—I've sat in this chair a long damn time. And I'm best at finding everyone's weak spot. Including yours."
Yuri's breathing turned rough. The hand on Hailey's shoulder trembled with rage.
"Don't touch them! They have nothing to do with this!"
"Whether I touch them depends on you," I said, eyes locked on his. "Now our leverage matches. Let Hailey go, and you get your wife and kid back. This is the one chance I'm giving you to walk away whole."
The room held its breath.
Yuri stared me down, chest heaving. I could see him calculating, weighing it fast. He knew I wasn't bluffing. He also knew we were both holding the other man's throat.
On the line, Katya's choking sobs and Anna's screaming echoed through the empty building like a dull saw.
Yuri's face twitched. His eyes bounced between Hailey and my phone.
But power had already rotted him out from the inside.
A few seconds later, the last shred of struggle in his gaze died. What replaced it was terrifying—grief and cold.
"Sorry, Katya. Anna." Yuri's voice went flat. "You're the people I love most. I'll buy you the best graves."
His words froze the air.
On the phone, there was a beat of dead silence—then Katya exploded into curses, and Anna screamed like she was being torn apart.
"You sick bastard! Demon! I hope you rot—!" Katya's sobs mixed with the little girl's shrieking "Daddy" over and over, needles stabbing the whole building.
Yuri's jaw clenched so hard it jumped. Even after choosing, his wife and daughter's screams still cut. Veins bulged across the back of his gun hand as he screamed at the phone, feral. "Shut up! Shut the fuck up!"
Now.
In that split second—when rage and guilt yanked his focus and the muzzle drifted a hair off Hailey's temple—
I drew, racked, and fired in one blur.
The round shattered Yuri's right kneecap.
He screamed like a pig being gutted. Pain stole his balance. His gun clattered to the floor, and he crashed down hard on his knees at Hailey's feet.
I stormed in, kicked the gun skidding ten yards away, then drove my dress shoe down onto his ruined leg and ground it in—crushing him like the stray mutt he was.
I lifted the phone and spoke coldly to the screen. "Dmitri. Get them to a safe house. Don't let this animal's dirty blood stain their eyes."
Yuri clutched his knee, twisting in the puddle of his own red. When he heard Katya's last curse before the line cut, something finally broke in his eyes—real regret, real fear.
"Hand him to the family's 'Cleaners,'" I ordered into the channel, my voice arctic. "I want him alive for every tool in the box. Nail him to the family's shame post. Make him pay for this choice every second he breathes."
Then I holstered my gun and moved—fast, straight for Hailey. I pulled a tactical knife and sliced through the coarse rope binding her wrists.
"Hailey."
The instant the rope gave, her body sagged forward. I caught her and hauled her into my arms, crushing her against me like I could fuse her to my bones.
"Viktor, Viktor..." She grabbed my shirtfront, buried her face in my chest, and sobbed loud. Her hot tears soaked through my dress shirt in seconds.
"It's over, princess. You're safe. I'm here." My voice came out wrecked. I kissed the top of her head again and again. With the leather-gloved hand, I rubbed her back, feeling her heartbeat—real, alive, right there.
It ended. It was done.
I started to lift her, to carry her out of that filthy hell—
And a sound I'd missed slipped into my ear. Faint. Wrong. A tiny, steady beeping that raised the hair on my neck.
I snapped my head.
Matthew lay in his blood. Under his blood-smeared left palm, his fingers had been twisted tight around something I hadn't noticed.
A small black remote.
My breath stopped.
Instinct took over—bone-deep, savage.
I clamped Hailey to me with everything I had, locked her into my chest, turned my back, my body, into a shield between her and the blast that was about to tear the world apart.
Heat slammed into my spine.
Shrapnel punched into my flesh.
Pain swallowed me whole.
I didn't let go. I wrapped around the woman in my arms and took the force as it threw us, hard, into the cold floor.
Right before the dark took me, the last thing I heard was Hailey—screaming my name like it was the only thing keeping her alive.