I pull back the slide on the gun with fluid, practiced motion.
The metallic click echoes violently in the damp air as the first 9mm round is stripped from the magazine and driven into the chamber. It’s a beautiful, merciless sound.
The slide snaps forward and locks into place. The safety is off.
I raise my hand. It’s all the signal they need.
The men fall in line by my sides, guns raised as we march forward. The rusty glass doors give way with a muted groan under the weight of my boot. We slip into the suffocating gloom of the complex and the men cough, then grumble indistinctly.
“What the actual hell?” Mikhail coughs beside me, covering his face with his elbow. “It fucking stinks in here.”
The stench is foul, like rotten corpses, wet concrete, and old dust. I grit my teeth. “What did you expect from a fucking pig? This is his natural habitat. You just keep your eyes on getting what we came here for.”
Loud static crackles overhead, and, following my hand signals, the men fan out behind me in perfect sync, their boots making no sound on the debris-littered floor.
“You know, Leo...” More static interrupts, and after a deafening screech of feedback, his voice returns. “That’s not a very nice thing to say. But I know you’re always crazy and bloodthirsty, so you literally say whatever stupid shit comes to mind. I’m feeling generous tonight; I’ll let it slide. We really do appreciate your visit. How can we help you?”
I haven’t felt this much rage in a while—the kind that’s blinding, fully capable of drowning all logic, until all you desire is to crush the head of your enemy in your hands. It makes my heart pump faster and faster, until my blood roars. I tighten mygrip on the handle of the gun to keep myself grounded, before I fall into a violent wave of bloodlust.
I tilt my head back, jerking my gaze from corner to corner in search of the hidden cameras I know he’s using to spy on us. I find one, a small black camera with a blinking red dot, mounted high on the wall in a tight corner, and I look straight at it. “You think this is a fucking game?”
“Isn’t it?” I hear the subtle jeer as his voice floats down from the ceiling. “Because if it isn’t, I truly am intrigued about why you’d randomly show up here.”
Control, Leo.
I breathe in slowly, trying to calm myself down, when all I hear is my blood roaring in my ears. “You have something of mine, and I want it back.”
“Err, no. There’s been a mix-up.” There’s sudden silence in the background, and then we hear a heavy chair scraping across the floor. He returns, speaking much closer to the microphone now. “What wedohave here is a pretty whore that I, personally, can’t wait to sink into. It looks like we’d be a great match. What’s your name, sweetheart? Oh! Would you look at that? She actually has your last name.”
My vision goes red.
“I’m going to fucking kill you, Vasili!”
Vasili’s maniacal laughter echoes off the walls of the building while my men fan out into smaller teams, spreading themselves across the lobby.
“What do we call this, Leo? The day of reckoning?
Narrowing my eyes, I raise my gun, tilt it an angle above my head, and aim at the black camera. “It’s the day you die, bastard. The day I get to send you back to your maker.” I pull the trigger and watch as the camera shatters into pieces. “Enough talk! Come out here and face me!”
Just before I turn back around, a voice yells from the shadows of the first floor, “Ambush!”
A group of heavily armed mercenaries charges out of the ruined office cubicles with their weapons raised, muzzles flashing against the peeling wallpaper. I don’t flinch. Adrenaline hits my system like liquid fire, transforming me yet again into the man who watched that house burn to the fucking ground.
I step directly into their line of fire, lifting my gun with precision.
I press the trigger twice, and the heavy recoil vibrates up my arm as two rounds find the center mass of the lead gunman. He drops like a stone, but I don’t check to see him hit the floor; I’m already moving, driven by pure strength and terrifying speed.
Another mercenary lunges at my side with a combat knife. I catch his wrist mid-air, crunching his bones beneath my white-knuckled grip as I twist his own blade into his throat.
“Where is she, huh? Where the fuck is she?”
He chokes and his eyes roll to the back of his head. I spin away, using his collapsing body as a shield against a hail of incoming bullets.
“Move to the left!” Mikhail shouts over the noise.
The fight becomes messier and more chaotic, like a violent explosion threatening to rock the foundations of the building. It’s deafeningly loud in the enclosed concrete space. I duck, running through the earsplitting roar of gunfire, the frantic shouts of dying men, and the splintering of wood and drywall as bullets tear them apart. Concrete dust fills the air, mixing with the metallic stench of fresh blood.
A masked man rushes at me, and I drive the heel of my boot into his knee, snapping it backward. He drops to the floor and I put a bullet through his skull before he can even scream.When another man charges forward to avenge his partner, I send him crashing through a shattered glass partition.
