Page 127 of Cruel Submission

“Hold.” The authority in his voice leaves no room for argument, and it reminds me that my brother was commanding field units while I was still learning which end of a Kalashnikov the bullets came from. “We’re breaching now. Northeast entrance. Give us ninety seconds.”

“I don’t have ninety seconds.”

“Arkady.” My name, spoken with that specific Yanis tone—part warning, part love. “Ninety seconds. We clear the ground floor together. No solo heroics. Please, bratok.”

Blyad.

I want to argue. Want to kick through those double doors and put every round in my magazine into my father’s chest and find Mirabel and carry her out of this fucking mausoleum and never look back. But Yanis is right. He’s always right about this part—the discipline, the restraint, the difference between a rescue and a massacre.

“Ninety seconds,” I say.

“Copy.”

I use the time to reload. Check the corridor behind me—clear. Check the guards—still down, still breathing. Barely.

At seventy seconds, I hear them. Not the sounds themselves—Stefan and the team are too good for that—but a shift in the house’s atmosphere, silence changing as multiple bodies move through confined space with purpose. An occupied silence, replacing the hollow kind.

At eighty-five seconds, Stefan rounds the corner from the east wing, rifle up, Aleksei on his six. His face carries the expression I’ve seen a hundred times before on ops—blank, focused as he moves with an ease that makes you forget he’s built like a shipping container.

Behind them, Leo. Andrei. Then two more of my men whose names I barely register because the clock in my head is still running and every tick is a tick that Mirabel—

Stop. Do the job, mudak. Get her back.

Yanis appears from the opposite corridor. He’s in black, sidearm drawn, and the look he gives me says everything words would waste time on. I’m here. Let’s end this.

“Status?” Stefan murmurs.

“Office is the target. Gavriil’s inside—confirmed by thermal before Mikhail jammed signals.” I gesture toward the double doors. “At least three more guards between us and him. Possibly more in the rooms off the south wing.”

“Mirabel?”

I hold myself steady at the mention of her name. “Thermal showed two signatures in the south sitting room. One seated, one standing. Could be her and a guard.”

Stefan nods once. “Andrei, Aleksei… you take the south wing. Find her. Get her out. Everyone else, we hit the office.”

“Da,” the twins respond, almost in unison. They peel off without another word.

I watch them go, and something in my chest releases a fraction. Enough to breathe. The twins will find her. They’ll be careful. They know what she means to me—not because I’ve told them, but because men who’ve spent their careers observing people for a living don’t need to be told when their boss is in love.

Come on, zaychik. Hold on a little longer.

“Move,” I say.

We stack up on the office doors. Stefan left, Yanis right, me center. Leo and the others fanning out to cover the corridor behind us.

I meet Yanis’s eyes. He gives me the slightest nod.

I kick the doors open.

The office explodes into motion.

Three of my father’s mercenaries inside—two by the windows, one beside the desk. All armed. All turning toward the sound, hands going to weapons.

Stefan is through the door before it finishes swinging, rifle up, two rounds into the first guard’s chest. The man folds. Clean. Fast. Stefan doesn’t look at the body. He’s already transitioning to the second target, barrel tracking across the room in a smooth arc.

Yanis takes the guard by the desk—two shots, close range, the suppressed cough of the pistol swallowed by the room’s heavy curtains. The guard stumbles back into a bookshelf, pulling leather-bound volumes down with him as he slides to the floor.

The third guard raises his weapon—a Kalashnikov, the barrel swinging toward Stefan’s exposed flank. I fire twice. The first round takes him in the chest. The second follows before the recoil finishes, and he’s history.