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If I play this right, I can intercept the team from the industrial area first. Since I was eleven years old and made my first kill, I have always played it right.
This time is no exception.
I take out the tires of the SUV they are driving in from my sniper position. Then I wait for it to crash into a nearby building and pick off the two men who get out. The driver is still at the wheel, either knocked out or dead from the collision. The man in the front passenger seat shows more self-preservation, diving to the back.
Bobby moves in on the SUV and takes him out with a head shot through the back window while Michael secures the driver. Alive then.
The cleanup crew arrives with a tow truck. They're trained as well as any Formula One pit crew and have the SUV up on the tow truck bed in less than three minutes. They take the prisoner. He'll be waiting for me at the warehouse when I'm ready to interrogate him later.
I want confirmation that Ivan instigated this attempt to take me and my brothers out and to kidnap Lucia, more intel on the Golubev bratva in Russian and information on Ivan's routines and whereabouts.
My crew and I move on to intercept the last kill team. They are driving through more populated areas and we have to wait to make our move. It soon becomes obvious the rendezvous point is supposed to be the compound.
It's almost anticlimactic how easy these assholes are making this for me.
Not that I mind this time. Not when Lucia's safety is at risk as long as the bratva soldiers are at large in the city.
I challenge myself to take them alive, and succeed with all but one. He jumps from the sedan, brandishing an automatic rifle and starts spraying automatic fire immediately. I take him out with a shot to the head before joining my team to surround the car.
One of the other bratva tries to be a hero, but I take him down with a shot to the shoulder and knee. He won't die before I get the information I want, but he'll wish he did.
Once the threat is neutralized, I want to get Lucia out of the panic room, but I don't. I need confirmation the four teams are the only Golubev bratva in the city before she comes out.
If I wait to get the other intel I want, there's a good chance the injured man will die before he can give up what he knows.
~ ~ ~
It's the early hours of the morning when I finish. Blood covers my face, arms and clothes.
"Good work, brother," Zeus says. "Go. Take a shower. Get your woman. She refused to leave the saferoom when I let Gina out because she'd promised you she would stay until you came back."
That's Lucia. She makes a promise and she keeps it.
"She's too good for me."
"You think? You're one of the best men I know. Loyal. Strong. Honest."
"I’m an assassin. I have killed more men than any serial killer on death row."
"War has casualties."
"She lost her first husband to a syndicate war." I hate acknowledging Lucia once belonged to another man.
"She won't lose you."
"I hid who I am from her. What we are. It hurt her."
"You didn't mean to."
"Does it matter?"
Zeus sighs. "I don't know. Intention doesn't prevent outcome."
"No." I wipe the blood from my hands, but don't attempt to clean it off anywhere else. "I didn't want her to know about Dimios. When I told her about being an assassin, I didn't plan on giving her details."
"Did something about today change that?"
"Not today. Just thinking about what she said. I'm not hiding anything else about who I am."
