The warehouse door burst open with enough force to crack against the wall. One of Chenkov's men rushed in, face flushed with panic, words tumbling out in rapid Russian that I couldn't follow but understood the tone of. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
Chenkov's head snapped toward his soldier, the knife pulling away from my face. "What do you mean vehicles approaching? How many?"
"Eight, maybe ten," the man gasped in accented English, probably for Dmitry's benefit or maybe just panic making him forget to speak Russian. "Coming from multiple directions. They'll be here in minutes."
The temperature in the warehouse dropped ten degrees. Chenkov's face went from satisfied predator to cornered animal in the space between heartbeats. The gun pressed against my temple hard enough to hurt, his finger moving to the trigger.
"You brought them here," he snarled at Dmitry. "You lying fuck, you're all dead. All of you."
But Dmitry smiled then. Not his gentle smile from our mornings together, not the proud smile when I'd been brave at the compound. This was the smile I'd seen him give Marcus before Ivan started his work—the expression of a predator who'd just watched prey walk into a trap of its own making.
"Just me and you knew I was coming," he said, voice conversational despite the gun at my head. "I didn't tell my brothers where I was going. Didn't call for backup. Came alone, just like you demanded." He paused, letting the implications sink in. "So if they're here, one of your men talked. One of your trusted soldiers sold you out for Volkov money."
The psychological warfare was perfect. I watched Chenkov's face cycle through emotions—rage, disbelief, and then the poison that Dmitry had intended: suspicion. His eyes moved across his men, seeing potential traitors instead of loyal soldiers.
"Who?" he demanded, the gun pulling away from my temple to wave at his own people. "Which one of you—"
"Boss, we need to move," another guard said urgently. "If it's the Volkovs—"
"Shut up!" The gun swung toward the speaker. "How did you know they were Volkovs? I didn't say Volkovs."
"The vehicles, the approach pattern—"
"Or because you told them where to come!"
The paranoia spread like wildfire. Guards looked at each other with sudden suspicion. Hands moved to weapons, not aimed outward anymore but ready to turn inward. The cohesive unit that had seemed so professional, so disciplined, fractured in seconds under the weight of Chenkov's paranoia and Dmitry's perfectly placed seeds of doubt.
I risked looking at Dmitry and saw something that made my breath catch. His hands were free. The zip-ties that had bound his wrists lay on the floor behind him, cut so cleanly the guards hadn't even heard them fall. The ceramic knife from his belt buckle was palmed in his right hand, invisible unless you knew to look for it.
He caught me looking and gave the tiniest shake of his head. Not yet. The timing wasn't right, the angles still wrong. But soon. Very soon.
Another guard burst in. "They're here! Surrounding the building!"
Chaos erupted in overlapping shouts, everyone talking at once, and in that beautiful confusion, I saw Dmitry's boot move again. A wire came free, thin as fishing line but strong enough to cut through a throat like butter. He gathered it in his left hand with movements so small they looked like nervous fidgeting.
Chenkov spun back toward us, gun raised, face twisted with rage and fear. "If I'm dying, you're both dying first."
The gun swung between us, his finger on the trigger, and I knew with absolute certainty that we had maybe three seconds before he decided which one of us to shoot first. Three seconds before Dmitry had to act, ready or not. Three seconds that felt like three hours as I watched the man I loved prepare to paint this warehouse with blood.
"Hey, Chenkov," I said, my voice steadier than I'd expected. "Your collector in Prague? He's actually Volkov. Has been for years."
It was a lie, pulled from nowhere, but it made Chenkov's head snap toward me. The gun followed, that black barrel looking enormous from this angle, and I closed my eyes.
The next second lasted forever.
The ceramic knife left Dmitry's hand like a promise of violence, spinning through air that suddenly felt electric with impending carnage. It found the throat of the guard nearest to me with a wet sound that would haunt me forever—not the impact but what came after, the desperate gurgling as the man tried to breathe through blood.
Before anyone could process what was happening, Dmitry was already moving. He rolled left, coming up with the wire wrapped around another guard's neck, using the man's own body weight against him. The guard's eyes bulged, hands clawing at the wire that had already disappeared into flesh, cutting through skin like it wasn't there.
Gunfire exploded through the warehouse, so loud my ears immediately started ringing. Muzzle flashes lit up the space in strobing bursts that made everything look like a horror movie filmed one frame at a time. I threw myself sideways, chair and all, hitting the concrete hard enough to knock the wind from my lungs. Bullets passed through the space where my head had been, close enough that I felt the heat of them, the displaced air ruffling my hair.
The chair cracked when I hit the ground but didn't break, leaving me trapped on my side like a turtle flipped on its shell. My shoulder screamed from the impact, but pain was secondary to survival. I could see boots running past—guards trying to get clear shots, trying to figure out what was happening, trying to stay alive as their orderly world dissolved into chaos.
Chenkov's voice rose above the gunfire, screaming orders in Russian and English, but his men weren't listening anymore. They were shooting at shadows, at each other, at anything that moved. The paranoia Dmitry had planted bloomed into full panic. In their confusion, they'd become more dangerous—wild shots going everywhere, no discipline, no control.
Then the smoke grenades started.
They came through windows I hadn't even known existed, high up near the ceiling. Glass shattered, raining down like deadly snow, and white smoke billowed out in thick clouds that turned the warehouse into a ghost world. Within seconds, visibility dropped to maybe five feet. The gunfire became sporadic, then stopped entirely as men realized they couldn't see what they were shooting at.
