Silence.
Then Viktor's voice comes through the intercom. "Boss? All clear. Volkovs are down or retreated. We're securing the perimeter."
Axel hits the button. "Casualties?"
"Two of ours are wounded. Nothing fatal. Luca's fine. Leo's locked himself in his room."
"I'll be out in five."
He looks at me. Blood still on his hands, his shirt. Evidence of what he did to protect me.
He killed three men. Killed them without hesitation.
"You okay?" he asks.
Am I?
I just relived my mother's murder. Had a panic attack. Watched Axel kill men with his bare hands.
"I don't know," I say honestly.
"That's fair." He helps me stand. "Come on. Let's get you somewhere safe."
We open the door. The hallway's a war zone—bullet holes, shattered glass, blood smeared on walls.
Three bodies are where Axel left them.
But we're alive.
And for now, that's enough.
15
AXEL
The Volkovs left three men dead on our side. Eight of theirs scattered across the estate grounds like broken toys. It's not a victory, just survival with a body count.
I'm in Luca's office at 3 AM, multiple security feeds pulled up on every screen, painting the room in flickering blue light. Viktor's hunched over the desk, analyzing entry points with the focus of a surgeon. Sergei's coordinating cleanup crews via phone, his deep voice a constant rumble. Alexei's making coffee that tastes like battery acid but at least it's hot.
"They knew our blind spots," Viktor says, pointing at the eastern perimeter footage. "See? They came in exactly whereour cameras don't overlap. Right through this gap here, and this one."
"Inside information," I mutter, watching the timestamp replay of masked figures slipping through our defenses like ghosts.
"Has to be. No way they mapped this on their own." He switches feeds, pulling up the south entrance. "Someone gave them blueprints. Detailed ones."
"Not our men. They're loyal." I lean back in the chair, feeling every bruise from tonight's fight. "Volkovs have been sniffing around for months. Probably paid off someone in the city planning office. Got the estate layouts that way."
"Testing us," Sergei adds from the doorway, finally off the phone. "Seeing if prison made you soft. If you're still the man who ran this city before you went in."
"And what do they think now?"
He grins, gold teeth catching the light. "That you're not soft at all. That they fucked up coming here."
The door opens. Luca enters, looking as exhausted as I feel. His shirt's untucked, tie gone, the careful facade he wears for the world completely stripped away.
"We need to talk," he says.
Viktor and Sergei take the hint immediately, filing out and closing the door behind them with a soft click that sounds too loud in the sudden quiet.
