I hit him before he straightens.
Full weight, shoulder into his chest, both of us going down hard onto the concrete. He's fast, always been fast, twisting underneath me and getting the knife up between us, and I catch his wrist before the blade finds anything vital and slam it againstthe ground once, twice, until his fingers open and the knife skitters away.
He headbutts me.
My vision splits white. He gets a knee under my ribs and shoves, rolling us, hands going immediately for my throat.
"You should have stayed in that prison." His voice is ragged, fingers tightening. "Everything was fine when you were gone."
I get my thumb into the pressure point below his ear. He rears back involuntary and I reverse us, get on top, and look down at the face of the boy I raised.
"I gave you everything," I snarl.
"You gave me nothing." He spits blood. "You gave me a name and a leash and called it love."
I drive my elbow into his jaw. His head snaps sideways.
"I gave you Elena's memory." Another hit. "I gave you more than two decades of my life." Another. "I gave you my name when you had nothing and nobody."
He stops swinging back somewhere around the fourth blow. Just takes them, head rolling, body going slack underneath me, and still I can hear Aurora screaming from across the building, andstill the blood on my hands isn't only mine, and I don't stop until Viktor's hand closes hard on my shoulder.
"He's done," Viktor says. "Axel. He's done."
I look down.
Leo's face is unrecognizable, blood running freely from his nose and mouth, one eye swelling shut in real time. His chest pulls in shallow ragged intervals, each breath wet and uncertain.
"You were my son," I tell him.
He doesn't answer. Can't. His eyes find mine for one second, glassy and dimming, and then they close.
I stand up and leave him on the ground.
Anton Volkov is backed against the far warehouse wall, three of my men down in front of him, two of Luca's circling from the sides. Still standing, still firing, burning through ammunition with the recklessness of a man who knows he has nothing left to conserve. A gash across his forehead is painting half his face red, and he either doesn't feel it or stopped caring several minutes ago.
He sees me coming across the floor, and something shifts in his expression. Not fear. Recognition. The particular look of one man acknowledging another when the accounting is finally due.
"Santego." He snarls. "You should have stayed buried."
"You should have left my family alone."
He pulls the trigger, and the gun clicks empty.
The half second his eyes drop to the weapon is all I need.
I close the distance and take the gun from his hand and hit him with it across the temple. He goes hard into the wall, and I grab his collar before he can slide and hit him again, and he gets his hands up this time, trying to clinch, trying to buy space.
"It's over, Anton." I drive a knee into his ribs, feel something give. "Your men are down. Your deal with Leo is finished. It's over."
"Nothing is ever—" He swings, connects, splits my lip clean open. "—over."
I hit him four more times.
He stops swinging after the second. Stops moving after the fourth. When I finally release his collar, he doesn't slide down the wall. He drops straight down, face-first, and the sound he makes hitting the concrete is final in a way that needs no confirmation.
Sergei crouches beside him. Two fingers to the neck. He looks up at me and shakes his head once.
The silence that settles over the warehouse arrives in stages after that. Gunfire stopping, then shouting, then just breathing, and the distant sound of vehicles and the particular stillness of a space where something enormous has just ended.
