Color is slowly returning to her cheeks.
A dark curl rests against her closed eyes. I brush it back, my fingers lingering for half a second longer than necessary. Her skin is warm. She’s breathing. She’s alive.
And as long as she is, so am I.
"Sleep,dusha moya," I whisper into the quiet room, my thumb lingering on her jaw. "I have a war to start."
I unlock the heavy deadbolt of the office door and step out onto the metal catwalk overlooking the warehouse floor.
Down below, the Meat Grinder buzzes with a restless, dangerous energy. My soldiers pace the concrete floors, gripping Styrofoam cups of black coffee and other stimulants. They'realready in their tactical gear.Their eyes are dark with the fury and humiliation of yesterday’s ambush. They look like a pack of starved wolves at the edge of a cage, waiting for me to snap the leash.
My boots clang loudly against the iron grates as I walk down the metal stairs. Heads snap toward me. Low conversations die mid-sentence. The stillness that follows is deafening.
Bypassing the main staging area, I make a beeline for the tactical command center Ivan set up. It's a cluster of folding tables near the reinforced armory doors, covered in a tangled web of thick black cables and server towers.
Six large monitors glow brightly in the dim warehouse, casting a harsh blue light over the concrete. The cooling fans whir aggressively in the quiet room.
Ivan is leaning over the center keyboard, rubbing his bloodshot eyes with the heels of his hands. It doesn’t look like he’s slept a single minute either.
“Tell me you have them," I demand, stopping right behind his shoulder.
He straightens and turns his head to look at me, a vicious grin breaking across his exhausted face. “They’re arrogant, Boss. They think hitting us in broad daylight and walking off with the tablet means the game’s over. So they’re dragging it out.”
A pause.
“They don’t know you planted a military-grade micro-tracker in the motherboard.”
He taps a heavy key on the board, and the main monitor flares to life. It pulls up a high-resolution satellite map of the city and the surrounding coastline. A bright red dot is sitting dead center on the screen, blinking steadily.
"The signal is crystal clear," he says, tapping a pen against the monitor right over the red dot. "It's been entirely stationary since they fled the city limits last night. They're holed up atthe old Moretti oil refinery on the North End coast. It makes perfect tactical sense. To broadcast the override signal to theLady Anastasiaout in international waters, they need industrial radio antennas. That abandoned refinery is the only property the Moretti family owns with equipment powerful enough to reach the ship's navigation systems."
I step closer. Planting my hands on the edge of the folding table, I stare at the pulsing red dot and analyze the terrain around it. Chain-link fences. Rusted iron silos. A single, narrow dirt access road.
It's exactly where I need them to be. Isolated. Contained. Far away from the prying eyes of the city police, bordered by the freezing ocean on one side, and surrounded by highly flammable, rusted fuel tanks on the other. A perfect kill box.
"These bastards think they’re invincible," I murmur, my eyes tracing the choke points on the satellite feed. "The weapon coordinates inside the tablet are locked behind our firewalls. It will take days for their tech guys to crack my passwords. Until then, they’re sitting ducks.”
"And completely blind," Ivan agrees, crossing his arms over his chest. "What are your orders?"
My gaze lifts to the high, frosted windows of the warehouse. Morning light filters through, casting long, dusty beams across the concrete floor.
“We don’t hit them in daylight,” I say, already running through the angles, the distances, the approach. “If we move now, they’ll spot our dust from miles down that single access road. They’ll have time to dig in. We let them feel safe. Let them get comfortable. Then we strike at nightfall. Use the darkness to blind them.”
“Understood.”
Ivan’s fingers fly across the keyboard, blueprints of the refinery flashing onto the screens — sniper nests, load-bearing columns, structural weaknesses lighting up one by one.
I step away from the monitors and face the warehouse floor.
Dozens of soldiers stare back at me. Hungry. Restless. Hands hovering near their sidearms, waiting.
“Open the armory!” My voice cracks through the space, echoing off the concrete ceiling. “Prepare the vehicles! Tonight, we end the Moretti bloodline.”
For the rest of the day, the Meat Grinder transforms into a terrifying factory of death.
I don't go back to the glass office. My time is better spent on the floor with my men, immersing myself in the preparations for war. Time isn't measured in hours or minutes anymore, but in the sound of magazines slamming into rifles and the sharp metallic click of shotguns being racked and cleared. The air in the warehouse grows thick.
No one speaks. But every time I pass the heavy steel door leading to the basement clinic, I pause. Lev’s down there fighting for his life. The thought alone is enough to stoke the fire in my gut—as if I needed another reason to rage.
