Page 126 of Cruel Submission

The guard by the service entrance dies without making a sound.

I come up behind him while he’s still fumbling with his cigarette, one arm around his throat, the other locking the choke in place before I twist and crack. He drops in eight seconds. The body slumps against the wall, and I lower it to the ground carefully. Not out of mercy. Out of silence.

His radio crackles. Someone on the other end asking a question in Russian. Vlad, ty tam?

I unclip the radio, press the button, and grunt once. Noncommittal. The kind of sound a bored man makes when he doesn’t want to talk.

Static. Then nothing.

Move.

The service entrance is unlocked. The same lock Gavriil never upgraded because he trusts stone walls more than he trusts technology. A flaw. His generation of Bratva men believed in physical barriers. My generation knows that every wall has a door, and every door has a man standing behind it who can be put down.

I slip inside. The corridor smells like floor wax and old cigar smoke. And rot. The slow decay of a house where terrible things happen behind closed doors.

My earpiece clicks twice. Stefan.

I tap the mic once. In position.

Two more clicks. Acknowledged.

The layout unfolds in my head, every room, every stairwell, every blind corner memorized from the meetings we’ve held. Left past the pantry takes me to the kitchen. Right leads to the east corridor and then into the main living area. Upstairs, the bedrooms. Gavriil’s office is on the ground floor.

Where are you, zaychik?

My grip shifts on the Makarov. The metal is warm from my body heat, from the grip that hasn’t loosened since I dropped over the wall. I breathe. Count. Force the images back and stop myself from running through this house screaming her name and tearing the building apart.

Not yet. Not yet.

Soon.

I clear the service corridor in under a minute. Two doors, both closed. I press my ear to each one. Empty. Both empty. The kitchen is dark, nobody cooking for the old man tonight, it seems.

At the junction where the east corridor meets the main hallway, I stop. Flatten my back against the plaster. The main hall stretches out in both directions, lined with oil paintings hung above carpet thick enough to muffle everything except a gunshot.

Two guards. Positioned at the far end, flanking the double doors to Gavriil’s office. Young. Chechen, by the look of them, the soldiers Oleg Kadyrov supplied. They stand with their weapons across their chests, loose-limbed and careless, the stance of men who’ve been holding position too long and let boredom eat through their training.

I tap the mic three times. Two tangos. Main hall. Need distraction.

Stefan’s voice threads into my ear. “Thirty seconds. North window.”

I count.

At twenty-two, the alarm trips. Not the full house system—Mikhail killed that twenty minutes ago—but a single motion sensor on the north perimeter that Stefan’s been holding in reserve. The high-pitched whine cuts through the house, and both guards react exactly as I predicted. Heads turning. Weapons coming up. One of them reaching for his radio.

I’m already moving.

The first guard sees me three steps too late. I close the distance before he can bring the rifle around, driving my left hand into his throat while my right strips the weapon from his grip. He goes down gasping, choking on a crushed windpipe, and I’m past him before he hits the carpet.

The second guard is faster. He gets the barrel halfway up before I fire—a single round from the Makarov, suppressed, the sound no louder than a hardback book dropped on a table. The bullet catches him in the shoulder and spins him into the wall. He’s reaching for his sidearm when I slam the butt of his own rifle into his temple.

He crumples.

I stand over them, breathing through my mouth, the cordite smell mixing with that goddamn floor wax. Two down. The clock in my head has been running since I came over the wall—seven minutes, twelve seconds—and every second is another second Mirabel spends in this house.

My earpiece opens. Yanis’s voice, controlled but breathing hard. “We’re at the wall. Full team. Mikhail has the cameras looped—we’re ghosts. What’s your position?”

“Main hallway. Two guards neutralized. I’m outside the office.”