Present
Prague in February smells like river water and cigarette smoke and the particular cold that gets into stone and stays there.
I’ve been on this street for four hours. Same position. Same coffee sitting cold in my hand, untouched, a prop and nothing more.
The café behind me has changed its lunch crowd twice. A woman walked past with a dog two separate times—same route, same dog, same oblivious rhythm of a life with no reason to look twice at a man standing still. I catalogued her on the second pass and filed her and stopped seeing her after that.
I see the target. Marek Novák. Fifty-seven years old. Founder and majority owner of Novák Logistics—one of the largest freight and shipping companies in Central Europe. On paper, he moves containers, machinery, and auto parts across thecontinent. In reality, he moves people. Specifically young men and boys for a discreet, high-end network that supplies very wealthy clients who pay premium rates for discretion and “fresh inventory.” The kind of inventory that gets broken in before delivery and quietly disappears.
He’s the kind of target my violence craves to close its teeth around.
I see everything about the target. The way he moves through the street with the specific entitlement of a man who has always had people around him paid to absorb consequences. Expensive coat. Unhurried pace. He’s talking on his phone, gesturing with his free hand, and the two men flanking him outside are good. Professional spacing, eyes moving correctly, hands loose and ready. The third is still inside the building they just exited, holding the door, which means he’s last out and positioned wrong.
Amateur.
I drop the coffee in a bin without breaking stride. In the next four seconds, I already know exactly how this ends.
The phone conversation ends in seventeen steps; I count them in my head as Marek laughs at whatever idiot is on the other end. His left shoulder dips a fraction every time he gestures, an old rotator cuff injury from 2009, never healed right. That’s his weak side. The taller bodyguard on his right has a slight limp—left knee, probably from a bad dismount two years ago in Berlin. The shorter one keeps checking his watch; shift change is in nine minutes. The third man has just exited the building and is falling in three steps behind the group—standard rear-guard tail. Professional. That gives me a clean six-second window with only two active threats once he commits to the follow.
Six seconds is generous.
I cross the street at the exact angle that keeps the café awning between me and the taller guard’s peripheral vision. My pulse is steady. I already mapped the three possible exit routes, the two CCTV blind spots, and the precise force required to shatter the shorter guard’s larynx before he can draw. I know the temperature of the pavement under my boots, the wind speed off the Vltava River, and that the woman with the dog will be exactly twenty-three meters away when it happens. Far enough not to see faces, close enough that her scream will cover the sound of the first body hitting the ground.
I don’t plan the kill. I plan the silence after it. Because that’s what I am. The best there is.
The taller guard’s head turns two degrees left, exactly as predicted. I’m already inside his peripheral blind spot. My left hand slips the karambit free. The curved blade is matte black, no reflection, no glint. The shorter guard is still checking his watch. Shift change in eight minutes and forty-one seconds. He’ll never make it.
I close the distance in four strides.
First guard drops with a crushed larynx before he can turn, just a wet click and the collapse of cartilage. Second guard registers the movement and reaches. Too slow. My right hand drives the karambit up under his ribs, twists once, severs the diaphragm, and he folds without a scream. The third man—the rear tail—spins. My boot takes the back of his knee. The blade goes through the base of his skull in one fluid motion. All three bodies hit the pavement in under five seconds. The woman with the dog is exactly twenty-three meters away. Her scream starts right on cue.
Marek finally turns. Phone still to his ear, eyes wide, but I’m already on him.
One hand clamps over his mouth. The other presses the karambit to the soft spot just below his ear—not killing, just promising. I spin him like I’m one of his own men and start walking him away from the bodies at a calm, professional pace, exactly the way a bodyguard would move a principal out of danger. To anyone watching, I’m just another security guy hustling his boss to safety.
We’re three meters away before the first civilian even registers the bodies on the ground. By the time the second scream joins the first, we’ve already turned the corner onto a narrow side street. Marek tries to struggle, and I increase the pressure on his throat until his knees buckle. I keep him upright and moving.
Two blocks. That’s all I need.
The service courtyard behind the old textile warehouse is exactly where I left it four hours ago—chain-link gate already cut, security light disabled, no cameras. I shove him through the gap, kick the gate shut behind us, and finally let him see my eyes.
“Who the fuck are you?” he blurts, spit flying everywhere.
I don’t answer, I’m too busy soaking up the fear in his eyes.
My left hand clamps over his mouth, and my right drives the karambit into the meat of his shoulder, not deep enough to kill, just deep enough to make the arm useless. He screams into my palm. Before the sound can finish, I shift my weight, hook my boot behind his knee, and stomp downward with every ounce of calculated force I possess.
The joint explodes with a wet, sickening crack. Bone and cartilage give way like dry wood, Marek’s leg folding at an unnatural angle, and he collapses, howling against my glove. The pain is so sudden and complete that his body forgets how to fight—exactly as planned.
I spin him, hook my arm around his throat, and drag his dead weight backward across the courtyard toward the rusted service door I jimmied open earlier. His shattered leg bounces and scrapes across the concrete. Every jolt sends fresh screams into my palm, and it spreads into my bones with heat.
I don’t loosen my grip. I want him conscious. I want him to feel every second of what’s coming. Not because she demanded it in red, but because I fucking want to. Because this fucker deserves it.
The stairs are narrow and steep. I haul him down them like a sack of meat. His good leg kicks uselessly against the steps. At the bottom, I kick open the heavy steel door to the old coal bunker. The air that rushes out is thick, damp, and black—the smell of wet stone and decades of forgotten coal dust. No windows. No sound. Two feet of reinforced concrete between us and the world above.
I throw him into the center of the room. He lands hard on the filthy floor, gasping, trying to crawl away on his one working limb. The broken leg drags behind him at a grotesque angle.
I step inside, pull the door shut, and slide the heavy iron bolt home. The sound of the lock echoes like a coffin lid, absolute darkness swallowing us.
