No visible blood spray from explosives.
No scorch marks.
No shattered bones from violent combat.
Just foam crusted at the corners of their mouths.
Eyes open.
Glasslike.
Limbs frozen in unnatural positions—the way bodies fall when life is stripped away suddenly and silently.
It looked peaceful from a distance.
But up close, it was disturbing.
Wrong.
“How...?” My voice barely escaped my throat.
Ruslan kept one hand steady around my waist as he guided me down the final steps, carefully steering me around another corpse so my bare feet wouldn’t brush against dried blood.
“We didn’t give them the war they expected.”
His tone was calm.
Almost clinical.
“No loud shootouts. No bombs detonating through the walls. No bribed informants betraying us at the wrong moment.”
He nudged my shoulder gently, directing me past a soldier collapsed face-down near the stair landing.
“We compromised their chefs.”
My brows knit together.
“Chefs?”
“Simple access. Easy infiltration.”
He continued guiding me through the carnage.
“A tasteless neurotoxin—colorless, odorless—slipped into every meal prepared inside this house over the last forty-eight hours.”
My stomach flipped.
“Forty-eight—?”
“Slow onset,” he said matter-of-factly. “Symptoms started with dizziness. Numbness. Then weakness. By the time they realized something was wrong, half of them were already too impaired to lift their weapons.”
He glanced down at a man sprawled beside the hallway fountain.
“The rest died quietly.”
His jaw tightened slightly. “Peacefully, even.”
My throat went dry.
