Total pages in book: 52
Estimated words: 47961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Viktor.
I answered on the second buzz. Men like him didn’t tolerate waiting. Not in business. Not in war.
“Dima,” Viktor said, voice like a rusted hinge. “It’s been days.”
Days since the gala. Days since the contract should have closed. Days since I took Andrey Ivanov’s daughter instead of sending back his ring in a velvet box.
“You’ll get your corpse,” I said, stepping into the stale dark.
“I paid for immediacy,” Viktor replied. “Instead, I hear rumors you’ve taken a hostage.”
Of course he’d heard. Secrets traveled faster than bullets in this city.
“I have a plan.”
“Andrey was supposed to die not negotiate with you.”
“He’ll die,” I said. “But I need something from him first.”
I flipped the breaker, a dim halogen strip humming to life. Stacked crates and sealed metal trunks emerged from the dark. The air tasted like dust and old ambition.
“What the hell could you need from a man like him?” Viktor asked.
“Access.”
His interest sharpened instantly. “Access to what?”
“That’s between me and Ivanov,” I said. “But if he dies before I get it, I don’t get it at all.”
Silence stretched long enough to qualify as thought.
“You’re changing the sequence,” Viktor said.
“I’m maintaining the outcome.”
“Contracts don’t give a shit about sequence,” Viktor snapped. “They care about closure.”
“He will die,” I said. “After I take what I need. Then the body can hit the floor.”
Another pause, colder this time.
“So that’s why you took the girl,” he murmured. “Insurance.”
I didn’t confirm it. I didn’t need to.
“You’re using a living piece as collateral,” Viktor said. “Makes this political.”
“You’re still getting what you paid for.”
“Just don’t let this drag on,” Viktor warned, “or I void our contract. And if I do, it’s not going to be pleasant.”
Then he hung up.
The mill breathed around me, old steel and old ghosts. The job hadn’t changed. Andrey was still a dead man, but the order of operations had been tweaked. Contract killing wasn’t romantic. Viktor didn’t negotiate over the phone, and I wasn’t stupid enough to force him to start.
I opened one of the metal trunks. Passport. Pistol. Currency belts. Burner laptop. I took what I needed and left the rest. The loading yard was buried in snow by the time I exited the mill, and the city had sunk fully into night.
By the time I reached the slaughterhouse again, the building was quiet. No cars. No watchers. No shifts in the soundscape meant no one had found us yet.
I descended into the bunker and unbolted the door. Zoya sat in front of the heater, a blanket around her shoulders, hair mussed from sleep. Her eyes tracked me, not with fear but with calculation.
She didn’t ask where I’d gone. Smart girl.
“Did you get what you needed?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
She swallowed. “And then you’ll kill him?”
“Yes,” I said. “He dies.”
Something loosened in her shoulders. It wasn’t relief or triumph. It was acceptance. Most women cried about dead fathers. Zoya didn’t. She understood men like Ivanov without needing it explained.
I leaned against the doorframe. “As long as he delivers what I asked for, I finish the contract clean. One bullet. No spectators. If he doesn’t…” I shrugged. “Then other people collect on him. Viktor reclaims the contract and makes the ending public. Buyers get dragged in. Humiliation replaces death, and men like your father would rather take a bullet than be paraded.”
“So, either way he dies,” she murmured.
“Yes,” I said. “The difference isn’t life. It’s fallout.”
Zoya took a slow breath, then said without hesitation, “Then I hope he stalls.”
That was the moment I knew she’d been raised in the dark, whether or not she realized it.
“You should sleep,” I said. “This ends soon.”
I left and locked the bunker. Halfway up the stairs, my phone buzzed once with an encrypted alert. I checked the display and felt my pulse settle into something cold and inevitable.
Andrey had finally given me everything. There was nothing left for him to negotiate with now. But I wasn’t a fool in thinking he didn’t have plans in place to get out of this unscathed. He just didn’t know what his fate truly was. Even if I wasn’t going to kill him for my selfish, personal reasons, I’d been paid by Viktor to end him.
The underbelly would remain stable. Andrey Ivanov would die by my hand.
It should have been clean. Deliver the body, collect the balance, then hunt down the men who killed my mother and bury them six feet deeper than hell.
But the moment I closed my phone, my mind didn’t go to Ivanov. It went to Zoya.
She wasn’t part of the contract anymore. She wasn’t leverage or collateral or insurance. She was a problem I didn’t want to solve and a woman I had no intention of letting walk away.
When I killed her father, she would have nothing. No cage, money, or home. But she’d still have me. And I’d already decided that was enough.