Chapter 14 – Kirill
The control room on Timur’s second floor was a cathedral of technology.
Wall-to-wall monitors flickered with constant data streams—security camera feeds from a dozen Bratva properties, heat maps of known cartel territories, satellite imagery of Chicago’s South Side updated in real-time, surveillance footage cycling through in silent rotation.
The room hummed with the low thrum of servers and cooling systems, the air sharp with the ozone smell of electronics running hot.
I stood at the edge of the tactical table, jaw tight, fingers flying across the touchscreen as I scrolled through location pins.
Each red dot represented a known or suspected Los Zetas operation.
Each yellow dot was a location that needed confirmation.
The map was lighting up like a Christmas tree, clusters of activity spreading through neighborhoods like an infection.
Behind me, Timur stood with his arms crossed, his dark eyes reflecting the monitor glow. He looked like a general surveying a battlefield before the first shot was fired, patient, and absolutely certain of victory. The kind of man who didn’t just win wars. He ended them.
“I want every Los Zetas spot flagged,” he said, his voice carrying the weight of an order that would be obeyed without question. “Shops, bars, warehouses. Doesn’t matter if they’re fronting as laundromats or taco trucks. If they breathe Zetas’ air, Bratva listens.”
I nodded, pulling up another layer of data. Financial transactions. Shell companies. Properties purchased through intermediaries. The digital footprints people thought they’d hidden but hadn’t buried deep enough.
“I’m narrowing the spots based on money laundering activity,” I said, highlighting several clusters on the South Side. “These three locations here—” I tapped the screen, “—show consistent patterns. Cash-heavy businesses with revenues that don’t match foot traffic. Classic fronts.”
“And these?” Timur pointed to a different cluster near the docks.
“Storage facilities. Officially rented by logistics companies that don’t exist outside of paperwork. My guess? Weapons. Drugs. Maybe both.” I zoomed in on one building in particular. “This one had a spike in electrical usage last month. Someone’s running serious equipment inside.”
Andrei looked up from his tablet, his gray eyes sharp with focus.
“We should wiretap a few of their key members,” he suggested, his fingers never stopping their typing.
“The Sinaloa connections are using burner phones, rotating them every few days. But there’s still a chance if their lieutenants use voice channels for coordination. ”
“Especially if the factions don’t trust each other,” I added, pulling up communication intercepts we’d already gathered. “Internal division means they’ll need more frequent communication. More check-ins. More opportunities to listen.”
Timur moved closer to the table, studying the map with the kind of intensity that made lesser men nervous. “How long to get surveillance on these locations?”
“Active surveillance? Two days if we move fast.” I started marking priority targets. “Passive monitoring through existing city infrastructure? I can have that running in six hours.”
“Do both.” Timur’s tone left no room for negotiation. “I want to know every breath they take. Every move they make. Every—”
My phone buzzed in my jacket.
The vibration cut through my concentration. I almost ignored it; we were in the middle of planning a war, and phone calls could wait. But something made me reach for it anyway. Some instinct that bypassed logic and went straight to my gut.
The screen showed Barbara’s name.
My heart slammed against my ribs, suddenly pounding so hard I could hear it over the electronics hum. She never called. We hadn’t spoken since that night in her bedroom, since I’d walked away cursing in Russian while her stepbrother’s name flashed on her screen.
Why was she calling now?
I pressed the phone to my ear, already moving away from the table. “Barbara?”
“I’m dying.”
Two words. Just two words in a voice so weak, so broken, I almost didn’t recognize it as hers.
The world stopped.
Everything just ceased to exist. There was only her voice, barely a whisper, carrying words that made my blood turn to ice.
“What?” I was already moving toward the door, my other hand reaching for my jacket. “Where are you? Barbara!”
Silence. Then a distant sound—maybe a gasp, maybe a sob, maybe her last breath. I couldn’t tell.
“Barbara! Stay with me. Tell me where you are!”
More silence. Then a soft sound. A phone hitting concrete. The line still connected, but no voice on the other end. Just ambient noise. Wind. Maybe traffic in the distance.
She’d dropped the phone.
“Fuck!” The curse exploded out of me as I fumbled with my own phone, nearly dropping it in my haste. “Fuck, fuck, fuck….”
“Kirill?” Timur’s voice cut through my panic. “What’s wrong?”
But I wasn’t listening. Couldn’t listen. My fingers were already flying across my phone screen, pulling up an app I’d installed weeks ago. A tracker. GPS monitoring software that I’d secretly installed on Barbara’s phone the day I’d started working on her mansion’s security system.
I’d told myself it was just professional caution. Just keeping tabs on a client in a potentially dangerous situation. Just making sure I could find her if….
If this exact scenario happened.
My fingers found her contact, and I activated the tracker.
Come on. Come on. Work, you bastard….
The screen flickered. Then a map appeared, zooming in on a location outside the city limits. An abandoned industrial area. A place where bad things happened, and no one asked questions.
The kind of place you went to die.
“I’ve got a location.” I was already halfway to the door. “I need to go. Now.”
“Wait.” Timur was moving with me, his hand on my shoulder stopping me just long enough to make me look at him. “What’s happening?”
“Barbara Davis.” Her name came out strangled. “She called. Said she’s dying. Dropped the phone. I have her location, but it’s fifteen minutes out and—”
“We’re coming with you.” Not a question. Not an offer. A statement of fact.
Andrei was already grabbing his jacket, his tablet forgotten on the table. “My car’s fastest. We’ll take mine.”
I should’ve argued. Should’ve said this wasn’t Bratva business, that this was personal, that they didn’t need to get involved in my mess.
But the words wouldn’t come. Because all I could think about was Barbara’s voice—I’m dying—and the sound of her phone hitting concrete and the seconds ticking away while we stood here talking.
“Let’s go.” Timur was already out the door, moving with the kind of controlled urgency that came from years of combat experience.
We took the stairs instead of the elevator—it was faster—and burst into the garage where Andrei’s black Mercedes sat gleaming under fluorescent lights.
A six-figure car that could probably outrun most police cruisers if needed.
Right now, I didn’t care what it cost. I only cared about how fast it could get me to Barbara.
Andrei drove. Timur took shotgun. I sat in the back, my phone clutched in white-knuckled hands, watching the GPS dot that represented Barbara. It wasn’t moving. Hadn’t moved since I’d activated the tracker.
Please be alive. Please be alive. Please be alive.
The prayer repeated in my head with every heartbeat, every breath, every second that stretched into eternity.
Andrei didn’t obey a single traffic law. Blew through red lights, took corners at speeds that made the tires scream, wove through traffic like we were in a video game instead of reality. Fifteen minutes became twelve. Twelve became eight.
“Talk to me,” Timur said, his voice cutting through my spiraling thoughts. “What are we walking into?”
“I don’t know.” My voice sounded foreign to my own ears. “Could be Sebastian. Could be Los Zetas. Could be….” I couldn’t finish. Couldn’t voice all the horrible possibilities.
“Sebastian Davis?” Timur turned in his seat to look at me. “Andrew’s son? The one with cartel connections?”
“Yeah.” I forced myself to focus, to think tactically instead of emotionally. “He’s been blackmailing Barbara for years. Terrorizing her. I think—” The words stuck in my throat. “I think he might’ve finally snapped.”
Timur’s expression went cold. “If he killed her—”
“He didn’t.” I said it with more conviction than I felt. “She called me. She’s alive. We’re going to get there in time.”
We had to get there in time.
The city gave way to industrial wasteland—abandoned factories and rusted warehouses, empty lots filled with debris and forgotten dreams. The kind of area where the city pretended not to see what happened after dark.
“There.” I pointed to a structure ahead—more ruin than building, its walls partially collapsed, roof caved in on one side. The GPS showed Barbara’s phone somewhere inside.
Andrei didn’t slow down. Just aimed the Mercedes at the building and hit the brakes at the last possible second, gravel spraying as we skidded to a stop yards from a gap in the wall.
We were out of the car before the engine fully died.
I hit the gap in the wall at a dead run, Timur and Andrei flanking me with weapons drawn.
The building’s interior was worse than the exterior—concrete crumbling, metal beams exposed and rusted, broken glass crunching under our boots.
Late afternoon sunlight filtered through holes in the roof, painting everything in shades of gray and gold.
And red.
So much red.
“There!” Andrei’s voice cut through the pounding in my ears.
I saw her.
A crumpled figure near the back wall, lying in a pool of blood that looked black in the dim light. Too much blood. Too still.
“Barbara!” Her name ripped from my throat as I ran to her, dropping to my knees beside her body. My hands hovered over her, afraid to touch, afraid that touching would confirm what my eyes were already telling me.