Behind me, Maksim's breathing remains even and rhythmic, as if he's listening to a radio broadcast rather than sitting in the center of a kill box.
Lorenzo's eyes shift. He looks at Maksim again, this time studying him longer, as if the story he's heard and the man he's seeing are finally aligning in his mind.
"Your uncle offered us a great deal," Lorenzo says slowly. "Territory. Access. A seat at tables we've been kept away from for a decade."
"And in exchange?"
Lorenzo shrugs slightly, elegant even now. "Pressure. At critical moments. Nothing direct. Nothing with a clean line back to us." He raises his brows. "A car that runs a red light. A gas leak in the wrong building. The sort of accidents that happen in a city like this."
The safehouse. The hit shipment. The convoy being guided into emptier streets.
It all fits without needing a diagram.
"All of that ends," I say. "Whatever Boris promised you dies with his little plan. If you want business with the Baranovs, you do it through me."
Lorenzo opens his mouth to respond?—
And the lights go out.
Not a gentle dimming, but a hard cut, as if someone had taken a fist to the building's throat.
I don't move because I don't have to.
Maksim's hand clamps down on my shoulder and drives me under the table in one clean, violent shove. My chair scrapes against the hardwood, and my knee bangs against the floor. I hear the first gunshot before my body finishes dropping—a deafening crack in the enclosed space.
Glass shatters.
The candles still burn, scattered points of light transforming the room into a kaleidoscope of shadows and fragments.
One of Lorenzo's guards jerks backward, a dark spray hitting the wall behind him. The other lunges toward Lorenzo but goes down in a heap before he can reach him.
Shapes slam into each other. Muzzle flashes punch brief white holes into the dark, illuminating snapshots of chaos. Lorenzo's men fire toward the entrance, where more bodies pour in through a door that should have stayed locked.
Somewhere near the kitchen, the manager drops out of sight—either flat on the floor or gone through whatever back door he was paid to keep quiet about.
Then I see Maksim.
He moves into the violence as if it belongs to him. His gun is in his hand without any dramatic reach, and the first attacker folds before my brain processes the sound. Another figure swings a weapon toward him?—
The gun vanishes.
The knife appears.
Close enough now that bullets feel clumsy.
Maksim's blade opens a throat, and the candlelight catches the spray for a moment, a glittering arc of red before the body hits the floor. Maksim is already shifting, pivoting on his heel toward the next threat.
I should be crawling away. I should be finding cover, an exit, anything.
Instead, I'm crouched under the table, staring, unable to tear my eyes away from him.
He takes a hit to the ribs—a heavy, dull impact from a rifle butt that would drop most men. His body absorbs it and turns with the momentum. He doesn't stumble. He drives the knife into the gap under the attacker's arm where the armor doesn't cover. He twists once and pulls free.
Men are down all over the room. The attackers regroup near the kitchen entrance. One raises an automatic weapon toward the shadow moving between overturned tables.
Maksim doesn't slow.
He snatches a heavy oak chair and hurls it—not to harm, but to break the rhythm, to make the shooter flinch. The muzzle shiftsjust enough. The burst of fire goes wide, chewing up the ceiling plaster.
