And, behind him, another shadow. One I couldn’t deny recognizing, even after all these years.
My father.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Alexei’s POV
The warehouse wasn’t just a building anymore. It was a kill box, and I was the architect of its demolition.
Konstantin was a ghost at the eastern exit, a silent reaper ensuring no one slipped into the snow. In my ear, the comms crackled with the clinical, rhythmic voices of Damian and Dimitri, feeding me coordinates like they were reading a shopping list.
“Two tangos behind the mezzanine, ten o’clock,” Damian’s voice was a low hum.
“Clear,” Dimitri replied a second later.
I didn’t need the tactical feeds. I didn’t need the maps. Tonight, I didn’t even need a soul. I had rage. Instinct. Merciless precision. Strategy was for men who had something to lose; tonight, I was a man who had already lost his world and was simply tearing through the wreckage to find the heart of it. I moved on instinct, my body a finely tuned instrument of slaughter.
The first guard appeared from behind a stack of rusted oil drums. He was young, his eyes wide with the realization that he had brought a knife to a war against a hurricane. He raised his gun, his finger tightening on the trigger.
I didn’t give him the chance to breathe. I raised my HK, the weight of the steel an extension of my own arm. One shot. A clean, surgical puncture to the temple. He dropped without a sound, his body hitting the concrete with a dull thud that was swallowed by the roar of the wind outside.
I didn’t stop to look at him. I was already moving.
The second man was smarter. He lunged from the shadows of a heavy iron press, a combat knife gleaming in the dim red light of the emergency lamps. He was fast, but I washollow. There was no fear in me to slow my blood, no hesitation to dull my blade. I stepped inside his reach, the world slowing down to the rhythm of my own heartbeat. I caught his wrist, the bone snapping under my grip like dry kindling.
In one fluid motion, I drew the matte-black blade from the small of my back and drove it through his throat.
I held him there for a heartbeat, my eyes locked on the door at the end of the hall. I wasn’t seeing him. I was seeing Mila. I was seeing the blood on the library floor. I was seeing the life we were supposed to build being threatened by these parasites. Then I shoved the body aside and kept moving.
My boots didn’t make a sound on the blood-slicked floor. I was a phantom in a $5,000 suit, a monster draped in Italian silk.
“Alexei, the basement level is clear. They’re holding her in the central hub,” Damian’s voice cracked in my ear. “Enzo is there. He’s losing it.”
Enzo. The name tasted like ash.
I rounded the corner and saw her.
She was huddled behind a heavy wooden crate, the splintered remains of a chair scattered around her. Even from twenty feet away, in the haze of smoke and the strobe of flickering lights, I could feel her. She was the only warm thing in this frozen hell.
I dropped my guard for the first time since the library. I didn’t care about the corners. I didn’t care about the shadows. I was at her side in a few strides.
I dropped to my knees. “Mila.”
She looked up, her face pale, a bruise blooming like a dark flower across her temple. Her wrists were raw and bruised where ropes must have been, but when her eyes met mine, they weren’t broken. They were alive. They were fierce.
“Alexei,” she whispered. It wasn’t a cry for help. It was a prayer answered.
I reached out, my gloved hands trembling—a sensation I hadn’t felt in a decade. I didn’t say another word. I couldn’t. My throat was tight with a rage so hot it felt like I was swallowing glass.
I cupped her face, my thumbs brushing over her cheekbones. I pulled her forward until our foreheads pressed together. I closed my eyes, breathing her in—the scent of her skin, the salt of her sweat, the underlying sweetness that was hers alone. I needed this. I needed to ground myself in the reality that she was breathing. That she was real. That she was mine.
“I have you,” I rasped, the words catching in my throat. “I’ve got you, Mila.”
“The baby,” she breathed against my lips. “He’s okay, Alexei. I felt him.”
A shudder racked my frame. I held her tighter, my fingers tangling in her hair, shielding her from the ruin of the room. For a fleeting second, the warehouse disappeared. The war disappeared. There was only the two of us and the life we carried between us.
Then, the cold returned.
