21
The Girl, the Gun, the Grave
—Maksym—
The messages hit my phone in the middle of Pakhan’s job.
My stomach turned to lead. My hands—hands that had just broken a man’s knee without hesitation—started shaking. Not from adrenaline, not from the fight. From fear. The real kind. The kind I thought I’d burned out of myself years ago.
I left the lowlife facedown on the concrete, blood pooling under his cheek, and I ran.
The car came alive under my hands before I even registered sliding into the seat. Engine snarling, I tore out of the lot. Red lights blurred past; I didn’t slow. Horns screamed behind me. A delivery truck swerved into my lane—I cut left, tires howling,and kept going. Every second felt like it was bleeding away from her.
The tracker app glowed on the dash. Elevation reading: seventy-two to eighty-two feet. Seventh floor, maybe eighth. Lower if the developer got fancy with stupidly high ceilings—God knows. No room number. No hallway. Just height—and a prayer the signal wasn’t lagging.
I pictured her trapped in that room—Felix closing in, her clinging to every second, praying I’d show up. If I had the floor wrong... if he’d moved her... if I was already too fucking late. I’d never forgive myself.
The hotel entrance looked like a summit of predators. Politicians with shadows. Fixers with spotless suits. I recognized enough faces to know this wasn’t coincidence. The girls clinging to their arms were dressed well, trained well. One couldn’t have been older than seventeen. My jaw tightened, but I didn’t slow down.
Inside, the lobby still hummed with the tail end of whatever event they’d been hosting. More men. More girls. Security positioned like decoration. I glanced up automatically at the cameras mounted in the corners—the small red lights were dark. Every single one of them. No recordings. No evidence. Just criminals, minors, and money moving quietly through marble halls. It clicked into place fast. This wasn’t a party. It was a marketplace. I forced myself to keep moving. Kira came first.
Dead quiet greeted me as the seventh-floor doors opened. I moved fast, scanning door numbers, listening hard. No voices. No movement. Just the artificial brightness and the scent of recently cleaned carpet. Wrong floor. My pulse knew it before my head caught up.
I reversed, slammed through the stairwell door, and climbed. Eighth floor. I cracked the door an inch, scanned the hallway—same endless white walls, same numbered doors—and then I saw him.
At the far end, one of Felix’s men. Black suit, broad shoulders, sliding a keycard into the reader. Green light blinked. The handle turned. The door began to swing inward.
I sprinted.
The corridor stretched forever. Carpet swallowed the sound of my boots, but my pulse roared in my ears, drowning everything else. Sixty feet. Fifty. Thirty. I could hear it now—faint, filtered through distance and my own ragged breathing—a woman’s sharp gasp. Kira.
The guard stepped across the threshold. The door started to close behind him.
Fifteen feet.
He began to turn, sensing the rush of air at his back.
Too late.
My hands clamped around his skull—one under the jaw, the other pressing hard against the crown. One violent twist. Bone gave with a dry crack that echoed in the quiet hall. He folded sideways and dropped like a sack of meat. The keycard skittered across the carpet. I stepped over him and pushed the door shut behind me.
Kira stood frozen in the center of the room.
Her dress was in ruins—one strap torn clean away, the hem ripped high on one thigh, fabric hanging in strips, one breast exposed to the cold air. Her mascara had run from crying, dark streaks smudged beneath her eyes, and a red mark burned across her cheek—where Felix must have struck her. Her lips parted, eyes wide with shock. She stared down at the guard’s body for a single heartbeat, then her gaze lifted and locked on mine.
Blood pounded in my ears, drowning out thought.He did this. To her. Suddenly, all I wanted was to peel the soul from his bones.
“You did good, Kira,” I said, keeping my rage for him and my calm for her.“Now let me handle it.”
Felix was crouched like a coward. One hand pressed to his shoulder where a blade was buried, blood blooming through his shirt.
He straightened, hissing through the pain, registering the room in pieces—the closed door, the body on the floor. Fear flickered, quick and ugly, before he masked it with indignation.
“What the hell areyoudoing here?“ he demanded, reaching for his phone.
I crossed the room in three steps.
The phone skittered across the floor and shattered against the wall. My fist followed. Bone cracked under my knuckles. He staggered back, swore, swung at me. But he was slow—off-balance, pain dampening his reflexes. I shoved him against the wall, and grabbed the hilt of the knife still lodged in his shoulder.
