I stepped out from the shadows.
Semyon’s grin faltered.Not much, but it was enough.
“I heard you paid a visit to my family.”
He started laughing, but the sound was wrong — thin, ragged at the edges.My jaw tightened.My pulse stayed even.No matter how personal this was, I couldn’t lose my head and risk everything that was left.Not with this man.
“You made a mistake,” I told him.
“Oh?”He cocked his head, trying to hide the sudden twitch in his cheek.“Which one would that be?”
“You didn’t think to kill me, too.”
His smirk died.
I raised a single hand.
And that was when the world erupted.
Raze fired first— a sudden crack that echoed through the warehouse like a war drum.One of Semyon’s men dropped before he even knew he was dead.
Gianni moved next, gun steady, precision perfect.Two shots sent two bodies to the ground.
Chaos detonated.
Bullets screamed across the warehouse, ricocheting off steel beams and tearing through crates.Sparks rained from a blown light fixture overhead.The Russians roared with fury, spraying bullets blindly, but we were already moving — shadows weaving between shadows.
Raze barreled forward, a fucking wildfire in human form, diving behind a column, popping up just long enough to put another man down.
Gianni stayed near me, firing clean, deadly shots.Every shot of his was a promise that after today, the Sokolov family would cease to exist.
Archie fought like a man who’d been waiting years for the chance to take a crack at the Sokolovs.He was calculated, brutal, smiling as he put a bullet between the eyes of a man charging him with a machete.
The Russians went down one by one, screaming, choking, bleeding into the concrete.
Semyon tried to run.Because of course, that was what cowards always did.
Raze saw him and grinned — wide, wicked, feral.“I got him.”
He didn’t even run.Just walked.Calm.Unhurried.Semyon tripped over a corpse, scrambling backward until his spine hit a crate.
“No—no, wait?—”
Raze put a bullet in his thigh.Another in his shoulder.Then one right between his pleading eyes.
“Meeting adjourned,” he muttered, and silence fell.
Smoke curled through the rafters.The floor was slick with blood and oil, bodies everywhere.
Gianni wiped his face with the back of his glove.
Archie checked the perimeter, stepping over corpses without looking down.
Raze was already kneeling by the detonator bag, humming under his breath.He was happy.Like a kid at fucking Christmas.
I turned in a slow circle, taking in the carnage — the ruin of the men who dared touch my family.
My brothers.Alessio.Atlas.