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Prologue

Volkov

Six Weeks Before Everything Went to Hell.

The meeting is supposed to be routine.

That’s what I think when we walk in. Neutral ground, third-floor private room in a building off Atlantic Avenue, four men from the Sadalsky faction already seated, two bottles of vodka on the table. I’ve done a hundred of these. Nothing about tonight looks different from any of them.

Lavro is to my left, as always. Thirty-one years old, same dark hair, same jaw, none of the scars I’ve collected over the years because I made sure of it. I steered him toward the cleaner operations, the logistics, the things that kept his hands busy without getting them broken. I never said why and he never asked. That was our arrangement, and it worked.

It worked until tonight.

The Sadalsky men are talking. The one at the head of the table, grey-haired, thick through the chest, is going on about the eastern border like it’s a personal insult.

“Three shipments,” he says. “Three. Your men are cutting into our routes, and I’m told it’s an accident each time.”

“It’s not an accident,” I say. “It’s a miscommunication. We’ll fix it.”

“You said that last month.”

“And I’m saying it again this month,” I say. “Write it down, maybe it’ll stick.”

Lavro leans over. “That’s the good vodka they brought,” he says quietly, nodding at the bottle. “Sadalsky’s trying to impress us. Should we be worried or flattered?”

“Worried,” I say, and I almost smile.

The door opens, and the man standing in it isn’t Sadalsky.

Three seconds. That’s all it takes.

The first shot takes out the man to my right before anyone has time to stand. The second punches through the wall behind the grey-haired Sadalsky boss, and he drops sideways off his chair. I’m already moving, already reaching, the table flipping between me and the door as two more men pour through it. The noise is everywhere, not just gunfire but glass and wood and men shouting in two languages and the chaos of a room that was a negotiation thirty seconds ago and is now something else entirely.

I get my weapon up. I put the first man down. I’m moving toward the door, toward the threat, the way I always move, into it, not away from it, and that’s when the impact hits me from the left.

A body. Hard and fast, slamming into my side, knocking me off my feet.

I go down. Lavro comes down on top of me. I grab him, roll, get my weapon back up, and I’m still firing, two shots through the doorway, one man drops, another scrambles back into the hall.

The noise cuts out fast. Four seconds, maybe five, and the room is quiet except for someone breathing wrong in the corner.

I look down.

Lavro is looking up at me. His hand is pressed to his own chest, high and left, and when he pulls it away, the blood comes with it, and we both see it at the same time.

Everything in me stops.

Not fear. I don’t feel fear. I feel something worse than fear, something that has no name, a cold drop straight through the chest like the floor just gave out under everything I thought was solid. I’ve seen men shot. I’ve shot men. I’ve watched people die in front of me and felt nothing because they meant nothing. This is different. This is Lavro and my hands are already moving, already pressing down on the wound, already doing the things you do when you’re trying to keep someone alive, and underneath all of it is one thought, just one, repeating.

Not him. Not him. Not him.

“Brat,” I say. Brother. It comes out wrong. Too quiet. “Don’t.”

The room goes still fast. Three bodies on the floor that aren’t my men, two Sadalsky men gone through the window. Marka is at the door, gun up, already calling it clear.

“I saw it,” Lavro says, his voice as level as if he’s reading from a page, and that levelness cuts through me worse than any sound he could have made. “Saw it coming. Didn’t have time to tell you.”

“Marka.” I don’t look up. “Get a medic. Now.”