Chapter 12 #3
“I still think we’re wasting time,” Nikolai muttered, eyes narrowing as we approached the warehouse. “Shipment should’ve been handled tomorrow, not at fucking one in the morning.”
Yuri chuckled. “Don’t be such a romantic, Kolya. Midnight deals are how legends are born.”
“You’re the kind of legend mothers warn their daughters about,” Nikolai said, exhaling smoke.
Yuri smirked. “They’re not warning them hard enough.”
I let their banter fade into the background, my eyes locked on the building up ahead. The warehouse loomed, lights casting long shadows across the cracked pavement. Two men were stationed at the entrance, both armed but relaxed, just nodding as we approached.
I didn’t return the gesture. Something was…off. But I said nothing. Not yet.
The car rolled to a stop, and I stepped out, gravel crunching beneath my shoes. My boots hit the ground with a weight that echoed louder than it should have. The air here was different. Still. Expectant.
Nikolai stepped up beside me, flicking his cigarette onto the ground. “What’s the count?”
“Two guards. No movement at the side entrances,” I murmured, scanning the shadows. “Where the fuck is everyone?”
Yuri was already pacing forward, arms loose at his sides, eyes gleaming in the dark. “Maybe everyone’s asleep and we’re the only idiots pulling overtime.”
Nikolai drew in a slow breath. “Feels wrong.”
I nodded once. “We check it anyway.”
The guards didn’t say a word as we passed them. Just another sign. I could feel it in my bones now—the silence wasn’t the kind that comes from peace. It was the kind that comes before blood.
Yuri glanced at me from the corner of his eye, smirk dropping. “This better be worth the drive.”
“Won’t be,” I muttered, pushing the heavy steel door open.
The scent hit me first—dust, stale air, rusted iron. Only one crate sat in the center of the otherwise empty warehouse floor. Just one.
My pulse ticked up. And I smiled—cold and slow. Because now, it all made sense.
The echo of the steel door clanging shut behind us was too sharp—too final. Like the clang of a coffin lid.
I didn’t turn right away. I just looked at Nikolai and Yuri, each of us catching the shift in the air like wolves scenting blood on the wind.
Nikolai’s jaw clenched as his hand slid inside his jacket, gripping his gun. He didn’t speak, but I didn’t need him to. I was already doing the same.
Yuri’s humor faded. The knife he always had somewhere on him was suddenly in his hand, casual, quiet. His posture didn’t change, but his gaze swept the dark like he was waiting to see a ghost.
We weren’t alone.
“I’m going to shoot Damyen in the knee for this,” Yuri muttered under his breath.
“You’re assuming he’ll still be breathing by the time I’m done with him,” I said coldly.
“Still think this was worth the drive?” Nikolai murmured, eyes flicking toward the far end of the warehouse.
I ignored him. Instead, I stepped toward the crate in the center, every muscle coiled. Each footfall echoed like a gunshot in the silence, and still… nothing.
Too empty. Too neat.
No scuff marks around the crate. No trail of movement. No dust disturbed. Not the kind of mess you expect from smugglers moving shipments in and out of Cartagena under cover of darkness.
This was staged.
“Trap,” I said.
Nikolai’s voice was clipped. “Yeah.”
Yuri chuckled. “Finally, something fun.”
Then—Click.
The sound sliced through the quiet. Metallic. From behind us. The fucking door.
My head turned slowly. Locked. Of course. My jaw tightened. The grip on my gun was like steel now.
I exchanged a look with Nikolai. He was already stepping sideways, angling himself toward the wall. Classic flanking position. Old instincts kicking in.
Yuri spun the knife in his hand again, his grin a mask now. “So how many do we think are watching?”
“Enough,” I muttered, backing slightly toward the nearest column, eyes scanning the shadowed corners above.
And that’s when I saw it. The red dot.
A laser, small but steady. It flickered onto my chest—right over my heart. I didn’t breathe. I didn’t flinch. I just stared down at it and let the silence press in around me.
It was never about the shipment. This was a message. No… A fucking setup. And we’d walked straight into it.
The red dot held steady on my chest, right over my heart. The bastard didn’t even bother with movement. Just held it there. Waiting. Watching.
This wasn’t a warning. It was a promise.
I didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe. My lungs were tight, like they already knew what was coming. If I so much as twitched, I’d be hit. And I wasn’t arrogant enough to think it would be clean.
A million calculations ran through my head—angles, distance, structure. I’d mapped out the building hours before I ever stepped inside it. But none of that mattered now. The instant I moved, I was getting shot.
I shifted just my eyes, barely tilting my head, enough to glimpse Nikolai and Yuri in my peripheral vision. They were frozen, eyes on me. I could read the tension in Nikolai’s shoulders, the warning in the way Yuri’s hand flexed tighter around his blade.
“Don’t move,” Nikolai said, voice low, sharp.
“You’ve got a dot,” Yuri added. “Chest. Heartline. Precision.”
I nodded once. “I know.”
There was a beat of silence. Then I muttered, keeping my body still, “Whatever I do, I’m getting hit.”
Yuri clenched his jaw. “You move, you bleed. That’s what they want.”
“Better me than all three of us standing here like fucking statues,” I said quietly. “They’ll come in. That’s the next play.”
“We can wait. Call the team,” Nikolai said.
“They locked us in. Jammed signals. You think they won’t flood this place in under sixty seconds?” I snapped, still calm, still cold. “I move, take the hit, you two use the distraction.”
“I can throw something,” Yuri offered, voice tight. “Knife, phone, anything.”
“They’ll shoot anyway,” I murmured. “They want chaos. They want blood.”
“And you want to give it to them?” Nikolai said harshly.
I let out a slow breath, then turned my head just enough to look at both of them. “We move. On three.”
“No,” Nikolai hissed.
“Raf,” Yuri warned. “Don’t be a fucking idiot?—”
“One.” I stared forward.
“Rafael—”
“Two.” I tightened my grip on the gun.
“Goddamn it?—”
“Three.”
I shifted left and—Crack.
The sound sliced through the air like thunder. Pain tore through my arm, white-hot and brutal. The force of it snapped my shoulder back as the bullet grazed straight through the upper meat of my arm, missing bone but burning like fire.
I didn’t stop. I ducked and rolled toward the stacked crates as the warehouse erupted.
Yuri’s blade whizzed past me, embedding into the leg of the man charging in through the shadows.
Nikolai fired, the echo deafening in the enclosed space.
Footsteps thundered. Voices shouted. And all around me—Chaos. Blood hit the concrete. Sparks lit up from ricochets. They were in.
And now… They were mine.
I didn’t have time to check the wound. The pain was secondary. The smell of gunpowder, smoke, and adrenaline hit harder than anything.
Everything was noise.
Boots pounded concrete. Gunfire rang out, too close and too fast. Shells clinked across the floor like hail.
Yuri’s blade caught someone in the throat beside me. Blood sprayed like a snapped vein.
I didn’t stop moving. My vision blurred for a split second from the sting in my arm, but I blinked through it. I crouched behind one of the crates, gripping the edge with my good hand. My fingers were slick with blood, and I didn’t know if it was mine or someone else’s.
“This is a fucking setup,” I muttered, voice low and sharp.
“No shit,” Yuri bit out from across the shadows. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
Another wave of men poured in from the far end—six, maybe seven—dressed in black, moving like they’d trained for this. Professional.
“This was never about the shipment,” Nikolai growled beside me, back pressed to a metal post.
“They wanted us,” I said, cold and certain.
“Then they’re about to get more than they asked for.” Yuri was already moving.
I looked across the crate to him. “Blow them the hell open. Rig the east side. I want chaos.”
Yuri gave me a savage grin and dipped into the shadows, disappearing behind stacked cargo like he was born for this. The bastard didn’t hesitate, didn’t ask how or when. He was already pulling wires, already prepping fire.
He thrived in blood. In war. And tonight, we were in it.
I turned to Nikolai. “Get ready to move.”
He looked down at my arm, then back at my face. “You’re turning pale.”
“I’m pissed off,” I growled. “Don’t confuse the two.”
The ground trembled suddenly— A blast went off on the far end of the warehouse. Flames curled into the air. Screams followed. Yuri’s distraction worked.
“Now!” I barked, and Nikolai and I surged forward, sprinting through the smoke. My legs moved on instinct, adrenaline taking over, but every second sent another bolt of pain through my arm. I didn’t know how bad it was, only that it was wet, hot, and getting harder to hold my gun.
We rounded the stacks, and I could see the emergency door— A way out. We were close.
Then I saw him. Damyen. Standing near the far wall. Untouched. Calm. His hands were at his sides, but he wasn’t reaching for a weapon. He wasn’t panicking like the others.
He was watching. Like he knew exactly what would happen.
My feet slowed. Just for a second. That was all it took.
I stared at him through the haze of smoke and blood, a thousand calculations slamming into my skull.
Traitor .
But before I could raise my weapon, Nikolai grabbed my good arm and yanked me forward. “Rafael—move!”
“Let me go,” I snarled.
“Not now,” Nikolai snapped. “You’re bleeding out, and we’re outnumbered. We move. Now.”
I turned, eyes still on Damyen. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. Just tilted his head like he was studying me.
The bastard had set the whole thing up.
“Let me go,” I said again, but this time my voice was colder. Quieter.