Chapter 19 #2
We enter together, Kon flanking me to the left, both of us with weapons drawn. The interior is exactly what I expected from an industrial space. High ceilings lost in shadow. Concrete floors stained with decades of oil and rust. Stacks of crates creating a maze that could hide a small army.
Jonah stands in the center of the open space, his hands raised in a gesture of surrender.
Behind him, a figure slumps in a metal chair, wrists bound, head hanging forward.
Sergei Markov. I recognize the boxer's build, the scarred face, the particular posture of a man who has been beaten into submission.
And the tail of a dragon inked down his forearm is a dead giveaway.
"You came." Relief floods Jonah's voice. "I wasn't sure you would."
"Show me what you have."
He reaches slowly into his jacket, mindful of the gun I have trained on his chest. His hand emerges holding a manila folder, which he extends toward me like an offering.
"Everything. Markov's connections to Victor. The shipping routes they've been using to move product through your docks. Names, dates, account numbers. Enough to dismantle their entire operation."
I do not move to take the folder. Something is wrong. The warehouse is too quiet. Markov is too still. And Jonah's eyes keep flicking toward the shadows behind the crates, tracking something I cannot see.
My jaw tightens at the implications of everything in front of me. "How did you get this information?"
Jonah’s expression sharpens. "I've been working on my own angles since our… issues. People talk when they think you want to take down the mighty Drake Moses." His smile is thin, brittle. "Turns out my reputation as a fuckup has its uses."
The explanation is plausible. Jonah has always been better at charm than combat, at manipulation than direct confrontation. If he wanted to use our fall out to gather intelligence it would be a logical approach.
But the wrongness in the air keeps building. The hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention. My finger tightens on the trigger.
"Kon. Check Markov."
Kon moves toward the bound figure, his steps silent despite his size. He reaches out and lifts the man's head by the hair, exposing his face to the dim light.
It is not Sergei Markov.
The face is similar. The build is close enough. But the man in the chair is a stranger, his features slack with unconsciousness or death, his body serving as nothing more than a prop in whatever play Jonah has staged.
"Drake." Kon's voice carries a warning I do not need. He has seen it too. He holds a hand up covered in ink. No, paint.
The shadows behind the crates erupt with movement.
Men pour from hiding places I failed to identify, a small army emerging from the darkness with weapons drawn.
Ten of them. Fifteen. More than I can count in the chaos of the first seconds.
They wear tactical gear and carry assault rifles, their movements coordinated with the precision of professionals.
Jonah's expression transforms. The humble brother disappears, replaced by something cold and triumphant and utterly devoid of the humanity I once believed existed in him. “It’s amazing what you can do with a little paint.”
My chest tightens with the betrayal. Didn’t I expect this? And yet I held hope that my brother would come around. Fuck me once shame on you and all that shit.
"Did you really think I'd roll over and let you take everything from me?" His voice rings through the warehouse, amplified by the metal walls. "The business. The respect. And now Katriana too? No, brother. You don't get to win this time."
Kon moves first, his massive body interposing itself between me and the nearest gunmen. His weapon barks twice, and two men crumple to the concrete. But more replace them, an endless tide of violence converging on our position.
I fire into the mass of bodies, dropping one attacker, then another. The air fills with the crack of gunfire and the screams of wounded men. Blood sprays across the concrete. Cordite burns my nostrils. The world narrows to targets and triggers and the desperate mathematics of survival.
Kon takes a round to the shoulder but keeps fighting, his good arm swinging a metal pipe he snatched from the floor. The sound of it connecting with skulls punctuates the gunfire like a drumbeat of destruction.
I lose track of how many men I kill. Three. Five. More. Bodies pile around us, but more keep coming, and I feel the tide turning against us with every passing second.
A blow from behind sends me staggering. I spin and fire point blank into the chest of a man I barely see, then take an elbow to the jaw that makes stars explode behind my eyes. Blood fills my mouth. Pain screams through my ribs where someone's boot connects with devastating force.
Jonah's voice cuts through the chaos, clear and cruel.
"You should have just let me have her, Drake. She wasn't worth all this. She was just a toy I wanted to play with and break and then you had to go in and take what I left behind. It’s your fault I was triggered."
I find him through the smoke and blood, standing at the edge of the melee with his arms crossed, watching his hired army tear us apart. The satisfaction on his face makes the last thread of hope and brotherly love unravel inside my chest.
"What did you do?" The words rip from my throat, raw with a fury that transcends the physical pain wracking my body. "What did you do, Jonah?"
He splays his arms wide as if daring the Universe to try and strike him dead. "I made a deal." His smile widens. "Victor was very interested when I told him I knew how to get Katriana back for him. Very interested, indeed."
My world stops.
Victor. Katriana. The trip to New York.
"Where is she?"
"By now?" Jonah checks his watch with theatrical casualness.
"Victor's men intercepted her at the airport about forty minutes ago.
Your guards are dead. And Katriana..." He savors the name like poison on his tongue.
"Katriana is exactly where Victor always wanted her. Paying her debt the way he intended from the beginning. I’m not the only one who likes to play with toys, big brother. "
No.
The denial roars through me, drowning out the gunfire and the pain and everything else. Not her. Not Katriana. Not the woman who trusted me to keep her safe.
"I'll kill you." The promise comes out quiet, calm, utterly certain. "I'll kill you, and then I'll kill every man who touched her, and then I'll burn Victor's entire world to ash."
"You'll have to survive first." Jonah gestures to his men. "Finish them. We have shipments to get out and I can’t have more cargo die on me. The Society only pays for living, breathing sellable bodies, people. Let’s hustle."
Cargo. The Society. Does he mean Society 69? No fucking way. He’s been trafficking people out of my own port under my damn nose. The webs of lies start to tether together. He’s the one behind the women in the containers. And Sergei’s most likely working for Jonah.
Bullets whiz by my head and I leave the gut-wrenching disgust gripping my gut to deal with later.
Shadows move along my peripheral. Jonah’s men converge on us with renewed fury.
Kon goes down under a pile of bodies, his roar of defiance cut short by blows I cannot see. I fight with everything I have, fists and elbows and the gun that clicks empty in my hand. A knife appears from somewhere, and I slash and stab until the blade breaks on someone's body armor.
They are going to kill us. The math is clear. Too many of them, not enough of us, and the tide has turned beyond any hope of reversal.
But I refuse to die without taking my brother with me.
I bull through the mass of bodies, taking hits that would drop a lesser man, driven by a fury that transcends pain. Jonah sees me coming. For the first time, fear flickers across his face. He stumbles backward, reaching for a weapon he does not have.
My hands close around his throat.
"You sold her to a monster." The words grind out through clenched teeth. "Your own obsession with destroying me led you to feed an innocent woman to a human trafficker."
"She was never innocent." Jonah chokes against my grip. "She played us both. Used us both. You're just too stupid to see it."
I squeeze harder. Feel the cartilage flex beneath my palms. Watch his eyes bulge, his face darken, his lips turn blue around gasping breaths that do not come.
"Drake!"
Kon's voice breaks through the red haze. He is on his feet again, bloodied but breathing, a stolen rifle in his hands. Bodies surround him like fallen soldiers in his wake.
"We need to move. Now." He’s cut up badly, but doesn’t show the level of pain he’s in. I’m not fairing much better, but I don’t care about either one of us right now.
I look down at my brother. At the boy I raised, the man I tried to save, the monster he chose to become. Everything in me screams to finish it. To crush his throat and feel him die beneath my hands.
But Katriana needs me and if I take the dark turn down death’s path, I’ll want to savor it with time I don’t have.
I release Jonah and watch him crumple to the concrete, gasping for air. Then I drive my boot into his temple with enough force to ensure he will not be getting up anytime soon.
"He lives for now. I want him to watch me destroy everything he built before I end him."
Kon nods grimly. We fight our way toward the exit, two men against the remnants of an army, and somehow we make it through.
The afternoon light hits my face like a slap.
I am covered in blood, most of it not my own.
Pain radiates from a dozen wounds I cannot catalogue.
My ribs are cracked or broken. My knuckles are split to the bone.
None of it matters.
I pull out my phone and dial Katriana's number.
No answer.
I dial her guards.
No answer.
My hands shake as I call Rafael, leaving bloody smears across the screen.
"Drake?" His voice is tight with concern. "What happened? We got reports of gunfire at the docks."
"Victor has Katriana." The words taste like ash. "Jonah set us up. Her guards are dead. I need every man we have. Now."
The silence on the other end stretches for exactly one heartbeat.
"Where do you need them?"
"I don't know yet. Have Luca pull everything. Security feeds, traffic cameras, anything that shows where they took her. Rafael..." My voice breaks on his name, something I have not allowed since the day my mother died. "I cannot lose her."
"You won't." The certainty in his voice is absolute. "We're mobilizing now. We'll find her, Drake."
I end the call and brace myself against the car, blood dripping from my fingertips onto the pavement. Kon stands guard, scanning for threats, his own wounds seeping through makeshift bandages he’s made out of parts of his shirt.
Katriana is out there somewhere. Alone. Terrified. In the hands of a monster who has spent years dreaming of exactly this moment.
I failed her.
The thought cuts deeper than any blade. I promised to protect her. I promised she would never have to fear Victor Kedrov again.
Five minutes pass before Luca is on the phone with me, confirming my worst fears. Victor has her.
Luca gives me details, leaving the emotion out.
“Two SUVs boxed in her town car at the airport departure lane. Six men in tactical gear. Her guards went down in the first thirty seconds. And then the camera captured her being dragged, struggling, screaming, into the back of a van that disappeared into traffic.”
“Fuck!” I roar into the cabin of my car.
“She fought back and caught a couple of the men in the balls, but she was nothing against six men.”
Of course she fought. My little rose has always had thorns.
But they took her anyway.
I stare at the frozen image of her face, captured in the moment before the van doors closed. Brown eyes wide behind her glasses. Her sweet mouth is hinged open in a scream no camera could hear. She reaches toward the guards who could no longer protect her.
Reaching, I realize with a pain that threatens to split me open, toward me. Toward the safety I promised and failed to give her.
"We have a location." Luca's voice cuts through the grief threatening to drown me. "Industrial basement. Old meatpacking facility on the south side. Victor's been using it as a safe house for months."
I push off the car just as Rafael and the others pull up.
They step out and I meet the eyes of my brothers.
Kon, his shoulder bandaged but his expression murderous.
Rafael, calm and deadly in a way that reminds me why he leads us.
Luca with his screens and his surveillance, already coordinating approach routes.
Massimo and Rowan ready to burn the world if I give the word.
My brothers. My family. The men who will follow me into hell and help me drag Katriana back out.
"Victor Kedrov dies tonight." I check the fresh weapons Kon pressed into my hands, the weight of them settling into my palms like extensions of my own rage. "Anyone who stands between us and Katriana dies with him. No mercy. No survivors. No one who touched her walks out of that building alive."
I turn to Massimo. “Call the men of Genesis. I left my brother in there half dead.” I jut my chin in the direction of the warehouse where I left Jonah. “I want him secured in their basement. I’ll deal with him later. Tell Harlon I’ll pay whatever price tag he puts on the service.”
Massimo nods and takes out his phone. “I’ll stay behind and get it taken care of.”
“I owe you.” With that, I slide into the car that will take me to her.
Hold on, little rose. I am coming.
And God help anyone who tries to stop me.