"Addresses."
He gave them, sobbing between numbers. I memorized them without writing anything down. Writing left evidence. Memory didn't.
"Please," he begged. "That's everything. I told you everything."
He probably had. Men at his level rarely knew more than they needed to. But I couldn't let him go, and we both knew it. He'd seen my face. He knew where he was. The calculation was simple.
I set down the hammer. His relief lasted exactly as long as it took me to ball my fist.
One precise blow to his temple. Not hard enough to kill—I wasn't authorized for that—but hard enough to put him under for hours. His body went limp in the chains.
I walked to the utility sink in the corner, turned on the water. It ran pink, then clear as I scrubbed the blood from my hands. The cracked mirror above the sink showed me what I already knew—gray eyes dead as winter, face that made children cry, scars that mapped a lifetime of violence.
Seven months ago, I'd stood in Nikolai's wedding as best man. Pregnant Sophie had looked like something out of a fairy tale in her white dress, and when she'd turned to hand me her bouquet before the vows, she'd whispered, "Thank you for being here, Uncle Kostya."
Uncle Kostya. Like I was someone safe. Someone a baby could grow up around.
After the ceremony, she'd hugged me, and I'd stood there frozen, terrified that my hands—the same hands that had just broken Alexandr's face—would somehow contaminate her happiness.
But she'd just smiled up at me and said, "We're family now. Real family."
I shut off the water. In the mirror, my reflection hadn't changed. I was still the same monster who'd spent two hoursmethodically destroying a man for information. The same beast who fed on violence like others fed on bread.
Upstairs, Sophie was probably curled up in Nikolai's office, seven months pregnant, working on intelligence reports and drinking that disgusting herbal tea she'd switched to for the baby. She'd light up when she saw me, call me Uncle Kostya, and I'd have to pretend that I hadn't just washed someone's blood down a drain.
This was what I was. Not an uncle. Not family. Just a thing that broke other things until they gave up their secrets.
The monster in my chest settled back down, satisfied with its meal of violence. Until next time. There was always a next time.
Themetaldoorslammedbehind me as I stepped into the alley, air hitting my lungs like broken glass. Two in the morning, and Brighton Beach had that particular kind of cold that came off the Atlantic—wet and mean, cutting through leather and skin like they were nothing.
I needed air that didn't smell like blood and fear. Needed to be somewhere that wasn't underground, wasn't concrete and chains and the echo of a man's sobbing. The alley behind the compound wasn't much—just a strip of cracked asphalt between our building and the loading dock, dumpsters lined up like soldiers, the endless maze of fire escapes climbing into darkness. But it was outside. It was real air.
I leaned against the brick wall, let the cold seep into my back through my shirt—the one with Alexandr's blood on it. The salt-smell of the ocean mixed with garbage and motor oil, but even that was better than the copper stench in my nose. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed. This city never shut up, neverstopped moving. Even at two in the morning, New York had a pulse.
That's when I heard it. Tiny. Desperate. A sound so small I almost missed it under the hum of the industrial AC units.
Mewing.
I pushed off the wall, followed the sound toward the dumpster near the loading dock. There—behind the massive green bin, wedged between it and the wall—a cardboard box. The Jameson whiskey logo on the side was barely visible anymore, the cardboard dissolving in the persistent damp that November brought.
Inside, two kittens. Maybe six weeks old, if that.
The orange tabby saw me first. Despite being no bigger than my fist, despite shivering so hard I could see it from three feet away, the little thing arched its back and hissed. All fury and no bite, claws the size of pin heads extended like it could take me in a fight. White paws planted firm in the soggy cardboard, ready to defend its territory.
The grey one just stared at me with eyes too big for its head. Green eyes, the color of old glass. It was pressed against the orange one, and I could see its ribs with each shaky breath.
"Fuck," I muttered. Someone had dumped them here. Probably figured an alley in Brighton Beach was as good as a death sentence, which it was. Cats didn't last long here. Too many cars, too many dogs, too many people who saw them as pests.
The orange one hissed again when I reached down. All that fight in something so small it could fit in my palm. The same hands that had just broken a man's face reached into that box with a gentleness I forgot I had.
The orange one tried to bite me. Its teeth barely broke skin.
"Okay, little fighter," I said in Russian, scooping them both up. The grey one weighed nothing. The orange one kept squeakingbut didn't have the strength to struggle. "You're done being cold."
They fit in the crook of one arm, both of them together. I could feel their hearts racing against my forearm, quick as hummingbird wings. The grey one had given up, gone limp. The orange one kept those green eyes on my face, suspicious and fierce.
The compound's kitchen was industrial-sized, meant to feed twenty people when necessary. At two in the morning, it was empty, just the hum of the massive refrigerators and the tick of the cooling ovens. I set the kittens on the steel counter, and they huddled together immediately. The orange one tried to stand guard, but its legs shook.
