Page 69 of My Wedding Night Massacre

Three years of building toward this. It should feel like nothing except the next step. It mostly doesn’t. There’s a thread underneath the operational thinking that I don’t try to locate or name. It’s been there since the wedding night, and it’ll be there after this, too.

The Lyubimtsev house sits in its neighborhood the way it always has, solid and unremarkable from the street, nothing about it announcing what it is. I know every entrance, every camera angle, every blind spot in the coverage. I know where the two gate guards position themselves and how long the mobile guard takes to complete his circuit.

We hit the gate at six-fourteen.

Romeo and Lorenzo take the two gate guards at once, moving from either side of the car before it’s fully stopped. Romeo gets his man from behind, one arm locking around the throat, pulling back hard and fast until the body goes limp. Lorenzo’s is faster, a single strike to the temple with the butt of his weapon, the guard folding at the knees without a sound. Both men are dragged clear of the gate in under ten seconds. The mechanism takes thirty more seconds, and then we’re through. The crew fans out across the property as planned, Luigi and Giorgio peeling left toward the rear, the others taking the flanks.

Misha stays on my right.

The mobile guard rounds the east corner at six-sixteen, two minutes ahead of his rotation, his radio already half raised. He sees me and opens his mouth. I close the distance in four strides, get his arm before the radio reaches his lips, and drive my elbow into his jaw with everything I have. The crack travels up through my arm. He drops straight down, no stumble, no grab for the wall, just down, his radio skittering across the stone path. I step over him and keep moving.

The front entrance. Misha is at my shoulder, both of us hitting the door together, the lock giving faster than expected. It swings open onto the entrance hall, the console table, the mirror, and the slightly crooked painting on the wall. I’m already moving before it’s fully open, my weapon up, sweeping right.

The first man is positioned behind the table, using it as cover, which is a mistake because the table is decorative and stops nothing. He fires once, wide, the shot going into the door frame above my head. I put two rounds into the table and through it, and he goes down hard, taking the table with him, the mirror above cracking from the impact as he hits the wall behind it.

The second man comes from the left corridor at a run, weapon drawn, his first shot closer, close enough that I feel the air move past my ear. I drop to one knee, let him run into my line of sight, and fire twice. Center mass. He hits the floor three feet in front of me and slides, his weapon spinning away across the tile.

I’m on my feet before he stops moving.

Misha takes the third man coming down the stairs, a single shot, clean and efficient, the body tumbling the last four steps and landing at the bottom in a heap. I step over it without looking down and take the stairs fast, not slow, because slow on a staircase is dying on a staircase.

Two men at the landing.

The first one has the angle on me and fires the moment my head clears the top of the stairs. The shot takes a chunk out of the banister six inches from my hand. I go over the top at speed rather than stopping, using the momentum, and hit him with my shoulder at full force before he can adjust his aim. He goes backward into the wall hard enough to crack the plaster, his weapon flying. I get my hand around his throat, drive his head into the wall once, feel him go slack, and drop him.

The second man has Misha in his sights, tracking down the stairwell. I put a round through his shoulder before he fires, spin him, get his weapon arm locked behind him, and drive him face-first into the banister. The wood splits. He doesn’t get up.

The upper corridor is clear. Six men deployed, six men down. The house has gone very quiet in the way houses go quiet after violence, a specific stillness that isn’t peace.

I check my weapon. Two rounds left in this magazine. I drop it, load the spare from my jacket, and keep moving.

The corridor stretches ahead of me, morning light coming through the windows at the far end, pale and indifferent. The runner underfoot, the same frayed edge at the left side that Pavlina described from memory, without knowing she was giving me the layout. Worn for years, never replaced. I notice it without meaning to and keep walking.

A door opens to my right.

The man coming through it is one I recognize from Misha’s surveillance photographs, one of Bogdan’s inner circle, not security, an operator, someone who had a choice. He has his weapon up, and he’s fast, faster than the men downstairs, and his first shot catches the wall beside my head before I’ve fully processed that the door is open. I go left, put myself against the wall beside the door frame, and hear him adjusting inside the room. He’ll come through the door to clear the angle. I wait exactly two seconds.

He comes through.

I let his weapon arm pass me, get both hands on it, twist hard and fast, feel the shoulder dislocate with a sound that fills the corridor. He screams, drops the weapon, and I drive my knee up into his midsection, once, twice, and let him fold to the floor. He stays there. I pick up his weapon and keep moving.

Behind me, Misha’s footsteps are steady on the runner, holding position at the top of the stairs, watching my back without being asked.

The office is at the end.

The door is closed.

I stop in front of it. My breathing is even, my hands are steady, three years compressed into the space between me and the door. Behind it is the man who orchestrated everything from inside a ballroom and spent three years building on top of what he took. My father’s organization, his men, his legacy. Pavlina in that house. Denis as a chess piece. Francesco dead in an outer borough safe house hallway. The wedding night and every night after it.

I hear nothing from behind the door. No movement, no voices, no preparation. He’s not running. He never planned to run. That was always the thing about Bogdan Lyubimtsev, he understood the end of things and met them sitting down.

I put my hand on the handle.

I open it.

Bogdan is behind his desk.

Not hiding, not armed visibly, sitting with one leg crossed over the other, his hands folded on the desk in front of him. His face is arranged into the expression he’s worn in every room I’ve ever shared with him, the steady, composed face of a man performing calm he may or may not feel, giving nothing away because giving nothing away is the last thing he can control.