One.
"Go."
The door went down.
Kostya's boot connected with the handle, and the wood splintered inward with a sound like a gunshot. Our men flooded through the breach—tactical, controlled, the particular choreography of a team that had trained for exactly this. Flashlights swept the darkness. Voices called out positions.
"Clear left!"
"Clear right!"
"Moving to back room!"
I followed through the doorway, weapon drawn, every nerve singing with adrenaline. The gallery smelled like dust and fresh paint—the particular scent of a space that had been recently set up, recently prepared. For us. The thought flickered and disappeared.
"Back room clear!"
"Storage clear!"
"Fucking nothing here!"
The silence landed like a physical weight.
No extraction team. No Deshnev soldiers waiting in the shadows. No ambush, no confrontation, no enemy to capture and interrogate.
Just empty rooms. Bare walls. The particular stillness of a space that had never been intended to hold anything at all.
Wrong.
The word pulsed through my mind with growing urgency. Wrong, wrong, wrong. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. Anton's people should have been here. Should have walked into our counter-trap the way we'd planned.
Unless—
My phone buzzed.
The sound was obscene in the silence. A cheerful vibration against my thigh, the particular tone I'd set for unknown numbers. My hand moved automatically—pulling the phone free, looking at the screen.
Unknown number.
I answered.
"Did you really think I didn't know you'd trace Elena?"
Anton Belyaev's voice slithered through the speaker like something venomous. Smooth. Amused. The particular satisfaction of someone who had already won and was simply enjoying the aftermath.
"I was counting on it, Maksim. Counting on your clever little fox brain to figure it out and set your counter-trap."
Ice flooded my veins.
Not metaphorical ice. Real cold, the kind that came from blood draining toward vital organs, from the body recognizing mortal danger before the mind caught up. I felt it spread through my chest, down my arms, into fingers that had gone numb around the phone.
"While you and your brothers play soldiers in Chelsea—" Anton's voice was silk over broken glass. "I've been at your compound."
No.
The word was soundless. A scream that never made it past my throat.
"Well—not anymore." A pause. Theatrical. The bastard was enjoying this. "I've left. But I took something of yours with me."
