Not violently. Not dramatically. Just… melts. Like smoke. Like it was never there at all.
I'm left kneeling on the floor, hand still raised, gripping nothing. Blood drips from my neck onto the carpet. My breath comes in ragged gasps, foggy in the freezing air. The windows are still cracked, frost patterns glittering in the dim light.
But the room is quiet.
For the first time in days—maybe weeks—the room is quiet.
I lower my hand slowly. Touch my neck. My fingers come away red.
I stare at the blood.
Then I laugh.
Not the broken, hysterical laugh from before. This one is different. Sharper. Harder.
Dangerous.
"Enough," I whisper again, to the shadows, to the ghosts, to myself.
And for the first time since Drogo left, I feel like I might actually survive this.
Not because he's coming back.
But because I'm done waiting for him to save me.
25
DROGO
The black SUV idled outside the penthouse lobby like a patient predator. Tinted windows, no plates I could read without looking suspicious. The driver never spoke—just nodded once when I stepped out of the elevator, flanked by the same two silent guards who'd been my shadows since the tattoo. I slid into the back seat. Leather, cold, smelling faintly of cigarettes and gun oil. No phone. No wallet. No weapon. Just me, my bruises, and the fresh Bratva star burning under my shirt like a brand.
The guards took the seats beside me—one on each side—like bookends making sure the story didn't jump off the page. We pulled away from the curb and Manhattan traffic swallowed us whole. I watched the city blur past and started counting. Not buildings. Not minutes. People. Who mattered. Who didn't. Who could be turned.
• • •
First stop was an "office" that looked like the back room of a construction supply company in Queens—legitimate on paper, Bratva veins underneath. Concrete floors, metal desks, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead like dying insects. Four mid-level lieutenants waited, all in cheap suits that didn't hide the prison ink on their knuckles or the bulges under their jackets. But there was a fifth man I almost missed at first—younger, maybe thirty, sitting off to the sidewith a laptop open. No suit. Just jeans and a black hoodie. Tattoos on his forearms but faded, old. Prison ink that had seen years of freedom since.
The lieutenants greeted me with handshakes that lingered too long—testing grip strength, eye contact, whether I'd flinch. I didn't. Klaus wasn't here, but I felt his eyes anyway. The hacker—if that's what he was—didn't stand. Just watched. Quiet. Assessing.
We sat around a scarred table. Coffee in paper cups. Spreadsheets and ledgers open like bibles. They talked money flows—how clean cash moved through legitimate businesses, shell companies layered like matryoshka dolls. One name came up more than once: my architecture firm. "Good cover," one lieutenant said, tapping a column of numbers with a thick finger. "Big projects. International transfers. Easy to hide a few million." He looked at me like he expected gratitude.
I stayed quiet. Listened. Nodded when it felt right. Klaus was testing—would I speak out of turn? Defend my company? Act like I still owned anything? I didn't give him the satisfaction. But I was cataloguing. The lieutenant on my left—Sergei, they called him—kept checking his phone. Nervous energy. Ambitious or scared, hard to tell which. The one across from me, Viktor, had the dead eyes of someone who'd done this too long to care anymore. Useful for following orders. Useless for loyalty when things shifted.
Current problems: some Albanian crew skimming from a shared port shipment. A detective in Brooklyn asking too many questions about a missing container. Solutions floated like smoke—bribes, threats, disappearances. Standard operating procedure. I drank the bad coffee and said nothing, but I watched the hacker's face when they mentioned thedetective. He didn't react. Professional. But his fingers paused on the keyboard for just a second. Moral line, maybe. Or calculation.
Mental note: possible ally.
Lunch was next—1 PM sharp—at a Georgian restaurant in Brighton Beach owned by the family. Red walls, gold icons, the smell of khinkali and khachapuri thick in the air, making my empty stomach clench. Vodka appeared before water. "Real men drink," one lieutenant said, pouring shots like it was a toast to my initiation. I drank. Not enough to blur, just enough to play along.
They told stories—family, loyalty, respect. The holy trinity of organized crime, spoken like gospel. Then the other stories: what happened to men who forgot those words. Tongues cut out. Bodies in the Hudson wearing concrete shoes. All delivered with smiles and clinking glasses, like we were discussing football scores. I smiled back. Ate the food. Let them think I was absorbing the lesson.
But I was watching. Sergei drank too much, laughed too loud. Overcompensating. Viktor barely touched his glass—professional to the core. And the hacker, sitting at the far end of the table, ate in silence. He didn't join the storytelling. Didn't laugh at the violence. Just existed in the space like furniture. Smart. Invisible when he wanted to be.
I filed it away.
The "field work" came after—low-risk, they said. Just a visit. A debtor who'd been short on payments for a protection racket. Small-time bookie in a Brooklyn basement office, already sweating before we even walked in. The lieutenants hung back, watching. Testing again. Always testing.
Up to this point I think I was moving on autopilot, going through the motions, playing the role Klaus carved out forme. But standing in that basement, looking at this terrified man with his cheap suit and wedding ring he kept twisting nervously, I hit a wall. Fuck that. Was this the life I had to lead now? Forever?
