He grins. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a joy to be around?”
I bite the inside of my cheek and try to keep my temper under control. “Just get information from him and then kill him.”
I walk into the office area. Spot a metal staircase leading downstairs. Wait, this wasn’t on the layout Daniil gave us. This is something that’s not supposed to exist according to our intelligence.
I call Calder over. He approaches with blood splattered across the visible parts of his face, the rest hidden under layers of black ink.
We stare down the narrow staircase. I pull out my weapon, clicking the safety off, and he does the same. We descend one step at a time with guns raised until I stop mid-step and lift my gloved hand to cover my nose. The stench hits like a physical wall, making my eyes water. Calder just shrugs and keeps moving down.
I follow, still covering my face, into a large basement room lined with white folding tables. There’s a door in the back, closed, probably leading to another section. In the center, there are more drugs and cash stacked high, but along the back wall, there’s a row of heavy metal cages—the industrial kind used for large animals.
Someone’s slumped inside one of them, their body twisted at odd angles. Next to that cage, I see the source of the smell. Bodies are stacked like cordwood, all in different stages of decomposition.
A sudden blast of music echoes from behind the closed door. Some kind of death metal.
I raise my weapon higher, let go of my nose despite the stench. Then move toward the sound. The smell worsens.
I nudge the door open with my gun and look inside. Seven men sprawled across black leather couches with multiple naked women around them. Some dancing to the music, others drinking or snorting lines off glass tables.
I make the hand signal for multiple targets.
Calder nods and moves, but I grab his arm before he can alert them. “Work through the men first. They’re armed.”
“Roman said no survivors.”
“Da. Men first.”
I drop three men before anyone reacts. Calder takes the left side and puts down two more. Screaming erupts, and the women scatter, but instead of running for cover, they grab guns from the fallen guards and take us by surprise, opening fire.
“Fuck! I got hit,” Calder shouts.
I move through the chaos and drop the last two runners. The room falls silent, and I scan for threats, find none. Glancing over at Calder, he points to where he took a round in his vest and shakes his head with a scowl.
Father’s orders were clear. No survivors. Kill everyone.
Bringing the girls to Yulian would have been an option. He runs Vespera, and he’s good to his girls, doesn’t force them into work they don’t choose. They’d have protection, a chance to disappear into something safer than this. But they sealed their fates when they decided to target us and try to kill us, which means they would never have been loyal to us and would have turned on us the first chance they got, given our enemies information about us.
Calder turns his focus on me, dissecting me with his eyes. “Your form’s off. Technique’s fine, but your head’s somewhere else. What’s wrong?”
My jaw clenches at his comment. I pull my knife, flip it once, and throw it past his head. The blade grazes his ear on the wayby. He doesn’t move. Reaches up slowly, wipes the blood with his finger, licks it off. “Good aim.”
One day, I won’t miss on purpose.
I walk to the desk and start pulling files from the drawers, stacking them without reading through everything. Just grab whatever looks useful and toss it onto the pile.
Calder returns with more papers and drops them on top of my stack without saying anything. We work efficiently together even when he’s being a pain in the ass.
I text my father.
Me:
First location cleared, torching soon. Moving to phase two.
We endedup torching the stash house after collecting boxes of documents, then took care of the three names on Father’s list. But I have one more target I need to handle. Someone who wasn’t part of the original mission.
I park outside a gray, run-down house. Red pickup truck in the driveway. Somewhere past dawn but still early enough that the neighbors aren’t awake. We dumped the other car and switched to one of our clean vehicles with untraceable plates, so I’m not worried about being identified.
“He was not on the list,” Calder says, tilting his head against the passenger seat, studying the house.
