37. Chapter 37
Sasha
It had almost been too easy to track down their location. Addy hadn’t even been gone for a full hour when one of our informants came through with information. By the time we reached the warehouse, I had already calculated exactly how many men I was willing to bury over this.
It was not a small number. The realization settled somewhere deep in my chest with cold, terrifying clarity.
There was no hesitation attached to it — no moral debate, no internal negotiation — only the quiet understanding that if she’d been harmed, whatever happened next would simply be the natural consequence of a very poor decision made by the wrong men.
The drive passed in a strange, distorted blur. The city slid past the windows in streaks of red lights and concrete while I spoke into my phone. To someone who didn’t know me well enough to hear the violence coiled underneath it, the calm in my voice would have almost sounded relaxed.
Orders were given in clipped Russian, positions were shifted, and cars were mobilized. By the time we reached the docks, there were already enough men moving quietly through the surrounding streets to turn the entire district into a war zone at my command.
Kyrill glanced at me every few seconds from the passenger seat, monitoring me as though I were an unstable explosive.
“You’re very quiet,” he observed at one point.
I shot him a flat look. “Yes.”
“Alright, alright. Gonna keep my mouth shut.”
Under different circumstances, I might have responded to him with a dry remark to ease the tension that had been building in the car since the call came through. But right now, my mind was consumed by a relentless series of images my mind conjured of the worst-case scenario.
A few minutes later, we pulled up outside the warehouse, a rusted metal structure sitting quietly against the edge of the docks like any other abandoned industrial building. For a brief moment, the stillness of it felt almost insulting, considering the storm currently tearing through my chest.
Kyrill cut the engine and glanced toward the building.
“Well,” he drawled, “let’s hope this won’t turn into a massacre.”
I opened the car door. “No promises.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t say that.” He sighed and flicked the butt of his cigarette away.
We stepped out into the dense salty air. Behind us, I could already hear the quiet movements of our men taking up positions in the surrounding streets. A silent perimeter was forming around the building as we walked towards the entrance.
“Are we sure she’s alive?” Kyrill asked quietly as we reached the sliding door.
“Yes,” I ground out. She fucking had to be.
He studied my face for a moment. “You know I’ve got your back, no matter what happens … but do me a favor and think before you act, okay?”
“I’ll try.”
It was a lie, and we both knew it. Adrenaline was pounding through my veins, making me almost jittery. The strap of my rifle was slung across my shoulders, my finger on the trigger, single-mindedly focused on one thing:
Getting my girl back.
The first man dropped before he had fully registered my presence. The shot was clean and efficient as it tore through his center of mass, and his body folded in on itself as though it had been abruptly unplugged from life.
The second one turned at the sound — too slow, always too slow — and I pulled the trigger again without hesitation. The recoil was familiar and grounding.
By the time the heavy, grating warehouse door had finished opening, both bodies were already collapsing to the concrete, the dull thud of impact echoing faintly beneath the screech of the door.
A voice crackled in my ear, low and amused.
“Two down already,” Kyrill murmured through the comms. “In a generous mood today, huh?”
I didn’t answer.
I was already on the move, scanning the area, my vision narrowing to focus on precise and lethal details as I assessed the space in terms of angles, movement, distance and potential threats.
When I caught sight of Addy, the relief hitting me was anything but gentle. It hit me like a blow to the chest — sharp and disorientating — immediately followed by something colder, darker and far less forgiving.
Rage.
She was alive but her temple was pressed against the cold barrel of a gun, yet she stubbornly tilted her chin up, despite seeing her lips trembling.
The man — the walking fucking corpse — who was threatening her barked out a furious, incoherent stream of vitriol, his words tumbling over each other in his blind rage.
The emotions swirling inside me were impossible to untangle. It was a vicious mix of crippling fear and anxiety mingled with a pang of relief and a surge of raw, feral rage.
In a fraction of a second, they all clawed at my chest, sharp and quick, before twisting violently and finally settling into an unrelenting fury. The blood was pounding in my ears.
I didn’t think.
I didn’t hesitate.
My hands moved of their own accord, the rifle rising with a familiar, deadly efficiency.
My finger rested against the trigger, but I didn’t fire. Not yet.
“Take the fucking gun off her.” My voice was low and even, carrying across the warehouse without effort, without strain.
He instinctively froze and his head snapped toward me, eyes wide, breath coming too fast, like his body had already understood something his brain hadn’t caught up to yet.
“That’s the fucking Russian!” Someone hissed behind him, his hands raised in surrender.
The idiot’s grip tightened anyway, fingers twisting in Addy’s shirt as if holding her closer might save him.
It wouldn’t.
I took a slow and deliberate step forward. The scrape of my boot against concrete echoed louder than it should have, or maybe everything else had just gone quiet.
“Listen carefully,” I continued, my gaze locked on his, unblinking and unwavering, “because I’m only going to say this once.”
He laughed, sharp and unstable; the sound cracked and almost manic.
“You think I won’t fucking do it?” he barked, jamming the gun harder into her temple, forcing her head slightly to the side.
My jaw tightened and the world narrowed further. Drops of sweat were rolling down the side of my neck and my shirt was sticking to my back.
“You won’t.”
He couldn’t. Addy was not dying today. She’d come home with me, I’d finally put a goddamn ring on her finger and she’d stay right at my fucking side for the rest of our lives, where she belonged.
I took another step, precise and calculated.
“You don’t have the nerve,” I went on, quieter now, forcing him to listen, forcing him to focus on me so he wouldn’t have time to consider anything dangerous, “and even if you did, you wouldn’t get the chance to pull the trigger.”
Addy shifted slightly at that, and I felt it like a current running straight through my chest.
She’s alive, I reminded myself. Still alive.
The man swallowed hard, but he didn’t lower the gun. Wrong fucking choice.
“Last chance,” I bit out, my voice dropping just enough to turn it into something dangerous, something personal. “Let her go.”
For a second it looked like he might but then his expression twisted, fear curdling into something uglier, something desperate.
“Fuck you!” he snapped, jerking the gun harder against her head and I was done.
I pulled the trigger.
The shot tore through the warehouse like a clap of thunder, the recoil snapping clean through my shoulder as the bullet tore through him. His body dropped instantly, the grip on her releasing as if the life had been cut clean out of him mid-thought.
He hit the ground hard and didn’t move again.
Do svidaniya, motherfucker.
Addy flinched, a sharp sound catching in her throat, and her reaction burned through me worse than anything else in the room.
Fuck! He had been too fucking close.
The entire warehouse erupted into motion.
Shouts overlapped, boots scraped against concrete, and weapons were drawn in jerky, uncertain movements as chaos rippled outward from that single moment.
“Left side. Two more,” Kyrill’s voice cut in smoothly through the comms, calm and surgical. “One behind the crate. Don’t miss him.”
A shot rang out and the man behind the crate dropped before he could fully rise.
“Got him,” Kyrill added gleefully.
My men flooded in behind me, moving quickly and in a disciplined manner. Weapons raised and steady, they formed a perimeter in seconds, every movement controlled and every position deliberate.
Efficient, organized, and deadly. Exactly how it was supposed to be.
“You’re here.” Addy blinked at me like she was reorienting. “Hi. You’re … yeah. Okay. Okay, that’s good.”
Something in my chest snapped clean in half.
“I’m here,” I choked out.
I covered the distance between us in seconds.
Without so much as a glance, I stepped over the man I’d just dropped, his blood slowly seeping into the concrete.
Bringing my hand up to her face, I turned it slightly and checked for any signs of damage or marks, any proof of someone daring to hurt her.
“I’m really glad you are.” Brown eyes stared up at me in a daze. “Because I feel like I’ve hit my limit on near-death experiences for today.”
I swallowed hard. “Are you hurt?”
“No?” she answered, like it might require clarification.
My jaw tightened at that, something sharp and vicious coiling low in my chest at the casual uncertainty in her voice, like she hadn’t even had the time to process what had just almost happened.
I grabbed her wrists and snapped the zip tie binding them together.
Addy shook out her hands, and I inspected the marks left on her skin.
Fury set my chest ablaze once more. My hand slid to the back of her neck and I pulled her into me hard enough to feel the impact, her body fitting against mine in a way that grounded something violently unstable inside me.
She was real and alive. I exhaled sharply against her hair, the breath catching halfway out, my lungs finally remembering how to work after what felt like an eternity of suffocation.
“I’m okay,” she murmured.