Chapter 21
The Girl, the Gun, the Grave
—Maksym—
The messages hit my phone in the middle of Pakhan’s job.
My stomach turned to lead. My hands—hands that had just broken a man’s knee without hesitation—started shaking. Not from adrenaline, not from the fight. From fear. The real kind. The kind I thought I’d burned out of myself years ago.
I left the lowlife facedown on the concrete, blood pooling under his cheek, and I ran.
The car came alive under my hands before I even registered sliding into the seat.
Engine snarling, I tore out of the lot. Red lights blurred past; I didn’t slow.
Horns screamed behind me. A delivery truck swerved into my lane—I cut left, tires howling, and kept going.
Every second felt like it was bleeding away from her.
The tracker app glowed on the dash. Elevation reading: seventy-two to eighty-two feet. Seventh floor, maybe eighth. Lower if the developer got fancy with stupidly high ceilings—God knows. No room number. No hallway. Just height—and a prayer the signal wasn’t lagging.
I pictured her trapped in that room—Felix closing in, her clinging to every second, praying I’d show up. If I had the floor wrong... if he’d moved her... if I was already too fucking late. I’d never forgive myself.
The hotel entrance looked like a summit of predators.
Politicians with shadows. Fixers with spotless suits.
I recognized enough faces to know this wasn’t coincidence.
The girls clinging to their arms were dressed well, trained well.
One couldn’t have been older than seventeen.
My jaw tightened, but I didn’t slow down.
Inside, the lobby still hummed with the tail end of whatever event they’d been hosting.
More men. More girls. Security positioned like decoration.
I glanced up automatically at the cameras mounted in the corners—the small red lights were dark.
Every single one of them. No recordings.
No evidence. Just criminals, minors, and money moving quietly through marble halls.
It clicked into place fast. This wasn’t a party.
It was a marketplace. I forced myself to keep moving. Kira came first.
Dead quiet greeted me as the seventh-floor doors opened. I moved fast, scanning door numbers, listening hard. No voices. No movement. Just the artificial brightness and the scent of recently cleaned carpet. Wrong floor. My pulse knew it before my head caught up.
I reversed, slammed through the stairwell door, and climbed. Eighth floor. I cracked the door an inch, scanned the hallway—same endless white walls, same numbered doors—and then I saw him.
At the far end, one of Felix’s men. Black suit, broad shoulders, sliding a keycard into the reader. Green light blinked. The handle turned. The door began to swing inward.
I sprinted.
The corridor stretched forever. Carpet swallowed the sound of my boots, but my pulse roared in my ears, drowning everything else. Sixty feet. Fifty. Thirty. I could hear it now—faint, filtered through distance and my own ragged breathing—a woman’s sharp gasp. Kira.
The guard stepped across the threshold. The door started to close behind him.
Fifteen feet.
He began to turn, sensing the rush of air at his back.
Too late.
My hands clamped around his skull—one under the jaw, the other pressing hard against the crown.
One violent twist. Bone gave with a dry crack that echoed in the quiet hall.
He folded sideways and dropped like a sack of meat.
The keycard skittered across the carpet.
I stepped over him and pushed the door shut behind me.
Kira stood frozen in the center of the room.
Her dress was in ruins—one strap torn clean away, the hem ripped high on one thigh, fabric hanging in strips, one breast exposed to the cold air.
Her mascara had run from crying, dark streaks smudged beneath her eyes, and a red mark burned across her cheek—where Felix must have struck her.
Her lips parted, eyes wide with shock. She stared down at the guard’s body for a single heartbeat, then her gaze lifted and locked on mine.
Blood pounded in my ears, drowning out thought. He did this. To her. Suddenly, all I wanted was to peel the soul from his bones.
“You did good, Kira,” I said, keeping my rage for him and my calm for her. “Now let me handle it.”
Felix was crouched like a coward. One hand pressed to his shoulder where a blade was buried, blood blooming through his shirt.
He straightened, hissing through the pain, registering the room in pieces—the closed door, the body on the floor. Fear flickered, quick and ugly, before he masked it with indignation.
“What the hell are you doing here?“ he demanded, reaching for his phone.
I crossed the room in three steps.
The phone skittered across the floor and shattered against the wall.
My fist followed. Bone cracked under my knuckles.
He staggered back, swore, swung at me. But he was slow—off-balance, pain dampening his reflexes.
I shoved him against the wall, and grabbed the hilt of the knife still lodged in his shoulder.
He froze.
“If you bleed out now, I don’t get to have my fun,” I muttered. “So stay alive, fucker.”
I twisted the blade.
His howl bounced off the walls. It made my jaw tighten—but not from pity.
He swung at me with his good hand, a wild, clumsy arc that glanced off my cheek. A lesser man might’ve stumbled. I just smiled.
That seemed to break something in him.
“You touched her,” I said, and then I hit him again.
He tried to talk. Tried to bargain. Spat blood and bile and nonsense.
“This bitch—”
I broke his sentence with my elbow.
When he finally hit the floor he stayed there, gasping, folding in on himself like a thing that had learned too late it was prey.
I pulled his tie free, wrapped it around his mouth, knotted it tight.
His belt followed, wrists cinched behind his back until he let out a low, choked noise—half pain, half fury.
Then I unbuckled my own belt, slid it free in one slow motion, and bound his legs at the ankles, pulling the leather tight enough to make sure he wouldn’t be going anywhere.
I stood there a moment, breathing hard, the room ringing in my ears.
Then I turned.
Kira sat curled on the bed, knees to her chest, arms hugging tight around herself like she was trying to hold everything in. She looked so damn small, it hurt to see.
She stood, revealing the torn neckline of her dress, the fabric gaping open near her chest. Her arms were crossed tightly, trying to keep it in place, fingers clutching what little cover she had left.
She crossed the room and collided with me, hands fisting in my jacket, her face pressed to my throat. “You came,” she whispered. “You came.”
I pulled her into me, arms locking around her like I was afraid she might disappear if I let go. My face buried in her hair for a second, breathing her in.
“Fuck,” I muttered into her hair, my arms tightening around her. “I was too damn late. He never should’ve had the chance to touch you.”
She pulled back just long enough to look at me. “You weren’t,” she said fiercely. “You were right on time.”
Seeing her like this made something deep and vicious in me crack open again. I wanted to turn around, go back to Felix, and crush every bone in his ribcage for daring to touch my girl.
But this wasn’t about me. Not this time.
If anyone deserved to break him, it was her.
I wrapped my jacket around her, zipped it to her throat, then pulled the knife from the pocket and placed it carefully in her hand.
I guided her toward Felix, who was still writhing like something pathetic.
“He put his hands on you. You can slice his dick off, if that helps.” He let out a strangled sound and I silenced him with a sharp kick to the ribs.
“Or kill him. I won’t stop you.” Felix let out a pitiful, high-pitched squeal, somewhere between fear and pain, and I drove my boot into his ribs again—harder this time, just to shut him up.
She looked down at the knife in her hand, then up at me. Her expression shifted—something unreadable flickering across her face. Slowly, she held the knife out to me. “There’s something I’ve fantasized about doing for a long time,” she said.
I frowned, unsure of what she meant, but took the knife back. She turned and walked toward the phone on the nightstand, dialed quickly, and waited.
“Yes, room service? Can I get two glasses of cold milk? That’s all. Thank you.”
When she hung up, I stared at her. “Milk?”
With a cool glance over her shoulder, she gave a slow smile. “Since he likes milk so much,” she said, “I thought I’d make sure he gets his fill.”
Then she walked to me, slow and deliberate, and reached up to kiss me. It started soft—just lips, just breath—but then it deepened. Her fingers threaded into my hair, her mouth urgent, like she was burning through the remnants of fear with each second that passed.
It threw me. One minute she’d been trembling in my arms, barely able to breathe. Now this. Confidence rising from the wreckage like a flare. My hands slid instinctively to her waist, anchoring her as I kissed her back, still dazed.
A knock came at the door. She stilled but didn’t flinch.
Instead, she turned, walked over, and cracked it open just enough to slip her hands through.
She took the two glasses from the tray without a word, then nudged the door shut with the side of her hip, sealing off the hallway and whoever stood behind it.
She held one glass in each hand, turned to me, and smiled.
The show was about to begin.
She walked toward him without hesitation.
Felix lay slumped on the floor beside the armchair, his arms bound tightly behind his back. Blood dried in cracked lines along his mouth, and the knife still jutted grotesquely from his shoulder. His eyes were glassy, unfocused—but conscious enough to understand what was coming.