Oksana’s voice replays in my skull, ice-calm:HQ breached. Call Grigori. She said it like a grocery list and meant it like a will. The image knifes in, her alone in a cheap room, bright bulb making a halo of someone who doesn’t believe in God, rifles pointed center mass. The thought makes my vision blur around the edges.
The men are quiet—they’ve seen captains break before. I won’t give them that. I look out at the road, at the way the night is a long throat swallowing us whole. The map pings steadily in my hand; the dot doesn’t move.
"Seven minutes to the highway," the driver says. "Forty to the turnoff if we don’t meet friends."
"We will," I say. "But they won’t like us."
I thumb my phone again and send a single text to the number that just threatened to invent a new hell for me.
Me:
En route. One hour. Move if you can get there sooner.
Grigori:
I don't have men in Mexico. Yet.
The threat is clear and makes me chuckle.
I send another text to Ettoro.
Me:
Vitals?
Ettoro:
BP 92/58. HR 118. He’s holding.
I exhale a breath I didn’t know I was holding until it hurts.
The Hummer bucks over a culvert. Stars skid across the windshield. The engine note settles into a hunting purr. I can taste the warehouse already: the taste of cold metal and old dust and cheap cigarette smoke. I can see the kind of men who think a woman is a toy until she names herself a weapon. I can see her, alive because the universe won't like what I do if she isn't.
"Boss?" the backseat says softly. "We hit hard?"
"We hit like we’re owed," I say. "We hit like a motherfucking tornado."
The road unspools. My heart is a fist that won’t unclench. I run a hand through my hair again and feelgrit and sweat and the night’s ash on my scalp. I force my jaw to unlock.
"Hold it together," I tell myself, quiet enough only I can hear. "Get in. Get her. Get out."
I rack the rifle once more, feel the spring answer. Ahead, the world narrows to a red dot and the sound of my pulse. My brother breathes in a metal bird I can’t see. My wife—God help me, yes,mywife—waits in a room I will tear down to studs if I have to.
"Ten out from the highway," the driver announces.
"Faster," I tell him, and the pedal goes down. The night leans forward with us.
"Strip."The man orders in a voice as flat as the butt of a gun. The moment hangs. Everyone in the room knows the meaning of that word in this context, but they still play out the theater as if they believe themselves to be actors and not meat waiting to be carved. I let my shoulders go brittle and hitch like a girl about to cry, then I twist so they get a full view of my wrists zip-tied behind me. "I— I can’t," I whisper, keeping my voice barely above the hum of the old space heater in the corner. "They’re zip-tied."
Pockmark, the one who wants me to strip, grins at his buddies like he just scored a goal. "Tied or free to fight?"
The muscle—six-three, two hundred pounds of sheer muscle stuffed into a tracksuit—shows his teeth. "Let her fight."
Pockmark pulls a knife from his pocket. Cheap steel, half-serrated with the kind of logo you see in dollar stores. He flicks it open with a theatrical little snap and steps around behind me, knife aimed at the plastic ring digging into my skin. He thinks he’s about to own the moment, the little king with his plastic throne.
He doesn’t.
The second the tie pops, I roll my wrist, catch his knife hand with the heel of my palm. It’s a move my brother drilled into me as a child: trap, rotate, wrench. The surprise in his eyes is a full second long, an eternity at this range. The blade flips into my palm. I pivot in the space he gives me, move inside his reach, and before I spear him like a pig, I give him my name. "My name is Oksana Arsenyev. They call me Metelitsa."
