Half a kilometer from the structure, I eased off the road into a shallow cut between the trees and killed the engine. I let the darkness swallow the vehicle whole.
From there, I jogged on foot and zigzagged between the trees. The house wasn’t close to the road. That had always been the point. After leaving the dirt access path, it was a solid stretch on foot through uneven ground and brush before the river came into view. Far enough that no passing vehicle would hear a shot.
It was a hike in. Intentional and private.
Glock at my hip, suppressed and loaded. A backup tucked into the small of my back, and a knife strapped at my ankle. This would be tight, fast, and personal.
I kept my boots on soft earth instead of gravel, stepping over roots and low brush, controlling every sound. Ahead, the river house sat low against the water, concrete and glass pressed into the bank as if it had grown there. Lights burned inside, casting pale rectangles across the yard. Beyond that, nothing but dark water and black trees.
Andrey loved places like this… quiet and remote.
I moved parallel to the structure first, not straight toward it. I mapped sight lines from the windows, tracked reflections in the glass, and counted potential exit points. A narrow dock extended into the river, a side door was near the rear, and one main entry faced the drive.
One guard stood near the side entrance, a cigarette ember flaring and fading between his fingers. He leaned against the wall as if this were routine. Like I wasn’t going to light him up and lay him out.
He pushed off the wall and brought the cigarette to his mouth, back to me as he looked out over the property. I closed the distance and wrapped an arm around his throat, driving my knife up under his ribs in one efficient motion. His breath burst hot against my forearm, and he jerked twice against me before he went limp. I lowered him carefully and stepped over his body.
I didn’t know how many men were inside, but it didn’t matter. I was going to kill all of them tonight.
Andrey didn’t survive this long by being careless. The windows were reinforced, and exterior cameras were mounted high along the corners of the structure, angled to overlap coverage and eliminate blind spots.
Motion lights lined the approach from the dock and the tree line, positioned to snap on with sudden movement. The front entrance was steel. Side access required a coded keycard.
He trusted hardware. If I’d had more time, I would’ve researched every weakness in it. But I didn’t. So I studied what was around me and moved with that.
I stayed in the trees longer than I wanted to, watching the rotation of each camera head. They weren’t static and moved in a slow, mechanical sweep, overlapping coverage but not perfectly. No system ever was.
Twelve seconds per sweep. Three seconds where the far corner of the west side dipped into shadow before the lens came back around.
That was my window.
I moved only when the camera turned away, keeping tight to the earth and the natural depressions in the ground.
When I reached the blind angle along the rear corner, I pressed flat against the side of the house and waited for the next sweep.
One camera covered the back entry too closely to slip past cleanly. I drew my gun, suppressor screwed tightly in the barrel, and took out the camera with a single round to the housing. The lens cracked, and the circuit board sparked. I had little time before they realized it was out and came to investigate.
I circled to the rear door and checked the frame. Reinforced with an electronic lock and keypad entry, likely tied to an internal alarm if forced.
I was mapping the entry in my head, calculating angles and timing, when the door suddenly cracked open from the inside. One of Andrey’s men stepped out, a cigarette already between his fingers, shoulders relaxed like he thought the river and the dark were protection enough.
The door hadn’t even closed behind him when I moved.
I caught him before he could even register movement and locked an arm around his throat from behind, cutting off air and sound in the same motion. He thrashed instantly, boots scraping against earth as the cigarette fell from his fingers.
I drove him backward into the exterior wall, using my weight to pin him there. His elbow slammed into my side once, twice, but panic makes men sloppy. I shifted my grip higher and wrenched hard.
There was a sharp, sickening pop beneath my forearm as his neck gave. His body went slack almost immediately, kneesfolding. I held him upright for a beat longer to make sure there was no reflex and no last-second noise then lowered him carefully to the ground, dragging him into the shadow beside the doorway before slipping inside.
The air was cool and sterile, the design industrial andminimalistic which screamed this wasn’t a home but a staged location. Footsteps echoed faintly down the hallway ahead, and voices were low and muffled.
I wasn’t going to fire blindly. Zoya was somewhere inside this house, and I needed to keep her safe.
The first interior guard rounded the corner with his phone in hand, distracted for half a second too long. His eyes widened when he saw me raise my gun and shoot. The round took him clean through the eye.
I didn’t know how many men Andrey had called in, and as much as I wanted to light up this fucking place, the person who meant the most to me was somewhere within these walls.
I rounded the corner, keeping my body pressed to the wall just as a second man emerged from a room, bloody gauze and medical supplies in hand. A physician no doubt was called in because Zoya had shot Andrey.
