Chapter 29
Rafa
The warehouse falls silent except for my breathing—ragged, controlled, but carrying the unmistakable edge of adrenaline aftermath. Yegor Durov slumps in the chair before me, neck twisted at an angle that leaves no doubt about his condition.
Dead. I killed him. It wasn’t the plan.
Reality hits in waves. First, the physical sensation—my hands still tingling with the memory of applied pressure, the precise moment when resistance ceased and life fled. Then, the emotional impact—shock, revulsion, and something darker that I don’t want to examine too closely.
I’ve never taken a life before.
Oh, I’ve been trained for it. I spent countless hours with Gio learning anatomy and technique, studying the mechanics of killing with the same analytical precision I bring to code. But training and reality are vastly different things.
Training doesn’t prepare you for how quiet death actually is. How anticlimactic. How the absence of life creates a vacuum that seems to suck sound and warmth from the surrounding space.
Training doesn’t prepare you for the way killing changes you—not dramatically, not with fanfare, but with the simple, irrevocable knowledge that you’re now someone who has crossed that final line but will do anything to protect those you love.
“Fuck,” Luca whispers, breaking the silence. “Rafa, are you—”
“I’m fine,” I interrupt, though I’m not sure that’s true. My voice sounds strange, distant, like it’s coming from someone else.
“You just killed a man with your bare hands,” Gio observes with characteristic bluntness. “That’s not usually considered ‘fine’ by normal standards.”
“He threatened her.” The words come out flat, matter-of-fact. “He described what he planned to do to her. Detailed, specific threats against...” I stop, not trusting my voice to remain steady.
I turn to look at Kira, and her expression sends another wave of emotion crashing through me. She’s staring at me with something that might be awe, horror, or recognition—I can’t tell which, and the uncertainty worsens everything.
I turn to look at Kira.
She's staring at me with something that might be awe, horror, or recognition—I can't tell which, and the uncertainty makes everything worse. Her eyes move from Durov to my hands and back again, like she's trying to reconcile what she just witnessed with the version of me she thought she knew.
I should say something. Explain myself. Apologize, maybe, or at least perform the kind of remorse that would make this easier for her to absorb.
But I'm not sorry.
That's the part I'm still sitting with as Gio and Luca move quietly around the edges of the room, already calculating what needs to happen next.
I'm not sorry Durov is dead. I'm not sorry I'm the one who did it.
The only thing I feel, beneath the adrenaline and the strange cottony distance that follows violence, is a fierce, inarticulate relief that she's still breathing.
That's what scares me.
Not what I did. Not what it makes me.
But how easily I'd do it again.