Chapter 19
Rafa
The warehouse district in Brooklyn feels like the end of the world, abandoned buildings stretching along the waterfront like broken teeth, their windows dark, and their purposes long forgotten by legitimate society.
It is a perfect place for criminals to conduct business away from prying eyes.
Less perfect for two people trying to spy on those criminals.
"Third conduit from the left," I mutter, balancing on the fire escape outside the target building while trying to splice into the telecommunications junction box. "Should give us access to both cellular and hardline communications."
"Should?" Kira's voice carries skeptical amusement from her position, watching the street below. "That doesn't inspire confidence in your technical abilities, Rosso."
"My technical abilities are flawless," I reply, carefully stripping insulation from the fiber optic cable. "It's the forty-year-old infrastructure I'm worried about."
"If your abilities were truly flawless, you wouldn't need to worry about infrastructure limitations."
I glance down at her, noting how she's positioned herself to have clear sightlines in all directions while maintaining cover behind a concrete barrier. She looks elegant even in field gear—black tactical pants, dark hoodie, hair pulled back under a baseball cap.
"Are you seriously questioning my methods while I'm hanging three stories up with live electrical cables?" I ask.
"I'm providing constructive feedback on your technique. There's a difference."
"The difference being?"
"Constructive feedback helps you improve. Questioning your methods implies you might be incompetent." She tilts her head, considering. "Though given your current approach, either interpretation could be valid."
Despite the danger of our situation, I find myself fighting a smile. "You know, most people would offer encouragement in a situation like this."
"Most people haven't watched you work. I have higher standards."
"Higher standards, or trust issues?"
"Both, probably."
The fiber optic splice finally takes, and I begin connecting our monitoring device—a piece of hardware Gio designed that's roughly the size of a cigarette pack but capable of intercepting and recording every electronic communication within a quarter-mile radius.
"Got it," I announce, securing the device and beginning my descent. "Give it thirty seconds to sync, and we'll have access to everything—calls, texts, security feeds, internet traffic."
"Impressive," Kira admits, though her attention remains focused on the street. "How long before—"
The words die in her throat as the unmistakable sound of automatic weapons fire erupts from inside the warehouse. Not gunshots aimed at us, but violence happening within the building we're monitoring.
"Shit," I whisper, dropping the last few feet to ground level. "That's not part of any plan."
"Multiple shooters," Kira observes. Her training is evident in how quickly she's assessed the audio patterns. "At least three different weapons, probably more."
"We need to—"
The warehouse's side door explodes outward as men in tactical gear pour into the alley, weapons raised, scanning for threats. Not police—their equipment is too mismatched, their movements too aggressive—private security, or worse.
"Move," I hiss, grabbing Kira's arm and pulling her toward the maze of containers and abandoned vehicles that litter the area.
We make it maybe twenty yards before the shout goes up behind us.
"Контакт! Движущиеся цели!"
Russian. Of course it's fucking Russian.
"They've seen us," Kira translates unnecessarily, her voice tight with controlled fear.
The first shots shatter the air around us, not aimed fire but suppressive bursts designed to keep us pinned while the shooters close the distance. I push Kira behind a shipping container just as bullets spark off the metal above our heads.
"How many?" I ask, checking the Glock 19 I'd insisted we both carry despite Kira's protests that she was perfectly capable of handling herself without firearms.
"Six, maybe seven," she replies, but her voice sounds strange—distant, disconnected.
I risk a glance at her and see something I never expected: Kira Petrov, the ice queen of the Bratva, is freezing up. Her hands shake slightly as she grips her weapon, breathing rapidly and shallowly.
"Kira," I say sharply. "Talk to me."
"I..." She stares at the gun in her hands as if she's never seen one before. "I've never... in the field, I mean. I've never..."
Never been shot at. Never been in actual combat. All her training, all her preparation, and she's never faced live fire from someone actively trying to kill her.
The realization hits me hard. I've brought a brilliant but essentially civilian woman into a gunfight with professional killers.
More shouting in Russian, closer now. They're coordinating, flanking us. In maybe thirty seconds, they'll have us surrounded.
"Stay down," I order, checking my ammunition. Seventeen rounds plus one in the chamber. Not enough for sustained fire, but enough to create an opening if I'm smart about it.
"Rafa," Kira says. Her voice is small, vulnerable in a way I've never heard before. "I'm sorry. I thought I could—"
"Don't." I lean over and cup her face with my free hand, forcing her to meet my eyes. "You're brilliant and brave and stronger than any of them. But this isn't your world, and that's not a weakness."
"It is if it gets us both killed."
"It won't." I press a quick, fierce kiss to her forehead. "Because I won't let it."
The sound of boots on gravel tells me we're out of time. I rise from cover just as the first shooter rounds the corner of our container.
Training takes over—not the kind designed to end lives, but the kind Gio drilled into me when he explained that a man who can't walk can't chase you. I fire low, catching the shooter in the upper thigh. He goes down hard with a shout, weapon clattering away from him across the asphalt.
The second man appears before the first stops screaming.
I shift position fast, placing a round through his shoulder—the joint rather than center mass, deliberately calculated.
The impact spins him sideways into the container wall and he slides down it, arm useless, cursing in Russian but very much alive.
Someone screams—high-pitched, terrified. It takes me a moment to realize it's coming from behind me, from Kira, who's watching me work with the same wide-eyed focus she brings to solving code problems, except that nothing about her expression right now resembles calm.
"Rafa!" Her warning shout snaps me back just as a third shooter appears, already in position, weapon trained directly on me.
Time slows the way it does in moments of absolute crisis. I see the man's finger tightening on the trigger, can calculate that I'm too far out of position to reach cover in time, can understand with perfect clarity what's about to happen.
Instead, I throw myself sideways—not toward safety, but toward Kira.
The bullet tears through the air where I'd been standing, but I'm already moving, already between them and her, already accepting that absorbing what's coming is a choice I don't even have to think about.
The round catches me across the left side, a burning graze that knocks the breath from my lungs and spins me partially around—not a kill shot, not even close, but enough to feel like I've been hit with a length of rebar.
I hit the ground hard, rolling through the pain, bringing my weapon up on instinct. The third shooter is already adjusting his aim. I fire from the ground, catching him in the knee. He buckles forward with a sound that I'll hear later, in quieter moments, for longer than I'd like.
Silence settles over the alley like smoke, broken only by the ragged breathing of three men who'll walk with a limp for the rest of their lives—and ours, rougher and faster than I'd prefer.
And the distant wail of sirens.
"Are you hit?" Kira's hands are on me immediately, running over my arms and torso with clinical efficiency that only barely masks their trembling. When she reaches my left side, her breath catches.
"Graze," I manage, though the burning has sharpened into something more demanding of attention. "Feels worse than it is."
"It's bleeding."
"Most grazes do."
"That is not reassuring." But her hands are already moving, tearing a strip from the hem of her hoodie with a practicality that surprises me. She presses it against my side, firm and sure despite everything she's just witnessed. "Hold that."
I do. She looks at me then with an expression I can't fully decipher—part gratitude, part shock, part something deeper and more complicated than either.
"You stepped in front of it," she says quietly. "You put yourself—"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
The question hangs between us over the sounds of distant sirens and closer groaning. Why did I throw myself between her and the bullet instead of seeking cover? Why does the thought of her being hurt feel worse than the reality of the burning in my side?
"Because," I say, the answer rising from somewhere deeper than conscious thought, "I couldn't watch you die."
Her breath catches. For a long moment, we just look at each other.
"We need to move," I say finally, forcing practicality to override the weight of what just happened. "Police response time in this neighborhood is shit, but even shit response eventually arrives."
She nods, pulling me to my feet with more strength than I'd have credited her. Her legs are unsteady, shock setting in now that the immediate danger has passed—but she doesn't let go of my arm.
"The monitoring device," she remembers. "Did we get anything useful?"
I check my phone with my free hand, genuinely surprised to find the system worked through all of it. "Full audio and video of whatever happened inside. Plus communication logs from the past hour."
"Then this wasn't completely pointless."
"No," I agree, guiding her toward the street where our car waits, her hand still pressed against my side. "Just terrifying and traumatic and life-altering."
She almost smiles at that. "Is that your professional assessment?"
"That's my assessment as someone who just realized how much he has to lose."
The admission slips out before I can stop it, hanging in the air between us as we walk away from the wreckage of the last hour.
I've been in fights before—not often, and never without cost—but I've never taken a bullet, even a glancing one, for someone outside my family. Never felt the primal, overwhelming certainty that shielding a person with my own body wasn't a choice at all, but simply the only possible thing to do.
And Kira has seen the reality of our world now. Not the sanitized version she experiences from behind screens and in boardrooms. She's seen what I'm capable of when someone threatens what I care about—and she's seen me bleed for it.
The question is whether that revelation will pull us closer or break something between us that was only just beginning to form.
As we reach the car and I lower myself carefully into the driver's seat, her hand catches mine before I can reach for the ignition.
"Thank you," she says quietly. "For protecting me. For not letting me..."
"Always," I reply, and mean it in ways that scare me. "I'll always protect you."
Because somewhere in that alley, between the gunfire and the fear and the split-second decision to put her life before my own, I've crossed a line I didn't even know existed.
I've stopped pretending this is just an arrangement of convenience.
And God help us both, I think she has too.