“Good,” I reply. “Because this ends tonight.” I hang up and turn to Sylvester. “Call every available soldier. Full artillery. Full teams. We’re burning that shipyard down.”
His jaw tightens with grim determination. “Yes.”
War is coming.
Not the careful, calculated kind I’ve danced with for years, but the old kind. The kind that forged me. The kind that breaks men.
I holster my gun, grab the second one from the safe, and pull on my jacket.
The Rusnak empire has been hunted long enough.
Tonight, we hunt back.
***
The storm breaks over the docks like the sky itself wants war.
Rain slaps my face, cold and merciless, mixing with gunpowder and the metallic sting of blood. Thunder rolls as if echoing the gunfire ripping through the shipyard. Shadows sprint between rusted containers, muzzle flashes carving them into brief, dying silhouettes.
I move through it all like I was born here, in the dark, in the violence, in the unrelenting hunger to end every threat to what’s mine.
Sylvester fights at my side, a silent butcher of the night. Every shot he fires lands; every man who charges at us falls with a wet thud.
A grenade explodes behind us, rattling the earth.
Men scream.
Metal shrieks.
The storm rages.
We push forward.
One by one, the Kovals fall.
Until only one remains.
I corner their lieutenant behind a collapsed shipping crate, his leg mangled, blood leaking fast. He tries to lift his gun, but I kick it out of his grasp and plant my boot on his chest, pinning him to the wet concrete.
He laughs—hoarse, delirious, broken.
Red mixes with rainwater and pools around him.
“You think you’ve won?” he rasps. “Deveraux was nothing. We have roots everywhere. Every deal you’ve made, every empire you’ve built—tainted. You’ll never wash the blood off your name.”
I raise my gun.
He grins wider, almost ecstatic. “Go on. Kill me. It won’t change a damn thing.”
My voice is calm. Cold. Final. “I don’t need clean hands. I just need them off my family.”
One shot.
Straight through his skull.
The echo is swallowed by thunder.
I step back, the rain soaking into my clothes, washing nothing—because nothing needs washing. I’ve made my choice.
