Page 40 of Night Shift

Friendsgiving had been a blast, a perfect mix of good company and great fun. I made sure everyone got home safely, then finally headed back to my own place. I was content, and a little tired, but mostly grateful for having something to do on Thanksgiving other than sit home alone. It was a night I wouldn’t forget, a reminder of the good things in life outside the walls of the hospital.

Later that evening, I stood in front of my bedroom mirror and tried to picture myself at the holiday gala. Although I didn’t know what Dr. Sinclair looked like, I imagined her as annoyingly beautiful, and the image of her and Atticus together ate at me. I could picture them turning heads at the gala while I stood on the sidelines, feeling insignificant. As I changed into my pajamas, I wondered if I would ever be able to move on from the man who had turned my world upside down in just one night.

When I finally fell asleep, my dreams betrayed me, filling my mind with images of Atticus and me tangled together, our bodies glistening with sweat as we fucked on every surface of the cabin. I woke up feeling pathetic and frustrated. I needed to find a way to put him out of my mind once and for all. Although I wasn’t sure how exactly I was going to do that yet, I resolved to go to the hospital’s holiday gala and prove to myself—and to him—that I could move on without a second thought.

Chapter eleven

The chill seeped through my clothes as I fought to clear my mind. Returning to consciousness was like surfacing from deep water, only to find I had been dragged into a nightmare. My body was lying prone on some kind of cold, hard surface—concrete maybe? I realized I was in the heart of a warehouse, a grim arena set for my day of reckoning. I’d been drugged, snatched, and unceremoniously dumped here, and I now lay broken before the leaders of Volkovi Nochi, the reality of my situation unfolding in cruel clarity.

Shadows flickered across the grungy walls, offering no solace from what was to come. Viktor Volkov, the feared Pakhan of the Volkovi Nochi, towered over me, a specter of vengeance, his silhouette a portent of the storm to come.

“You’ve been a bad investment, Mac Sheridan,” he said, his words cutting through the silence, emotionless and cold as ice. “Stealing from us, selling our product as if it was your own? Did you think we wouldn’t find out?”

My throat raw, I struggled to rasp out a response. “I didn’t… I swear, Viktor. You’ve got it all wrong.”

His humorless laugh chilled me to the bone. “You insult my intelligence. We have proof.”

Before I could protest, his fist smashed into my face with brutal force. Pain exploded across my skull, disorienting me and blurring the grimy walls that boxed us in. Blood filled my mouth, its iron taste a reminder of my defenselessness.

One of his thugs, Ivan Krovopuskov, a mountain of a man with a gruesome scar running along his left cheek, stepped forward. “This is for your lies,” he snarled, delivering a crushing blow to my ribs. The crack that followed was unmistakable—a sharp, agonizing break of bone that echoed off the warehouse walls.

I gasped for air, each breath a razor slicing through my lungs. “I’m not lying,” I managed to choke out, the words barely audible over the ringing in my ears.

Viktor leaned in close, putting his face inches from mine. His breath was foul with the stench of vodka and cigars. “You are a cockroach, Mac. And what do we do with cockroaches?” He gestured, and another torrent of blows rained down on me. “We crush them under our boot.”

In a feeble attempt to protect myself, I raised my arms, but it was useless. Mercilessly, his goons rained down punches and kicks. Each blow was a hammer driving nails of agony through my flesh.

“Please,” I choked out, “you have to believe me. I wouldn’t…wouldn’t betray you.”

Viktor’s boot connected with my stomach, and I curled into a ball, fighting the darkness that threatened to engulf me. “Believe you?” he spat. “You are nothing but a thief, a liability we can no longer afford.”

His words blurred into a discordant noise of hatred. My heartbeat thundered in my ears. I was overwrought with pain, each new wave of punches crashing over me with unyielding force.

As I teetered on the brink of unconsciousness, Viktor’s voice cut through the haze. “This is what happens to those who dare to double-cross us.”

Each breath was now a battle, and while I lay there on that unforgiving floor, my mind slipped into the past. It was strange how, in moments of sheer agony, memories long buried resurfaced with vivid clarity.

I was back in my childhood home—a cramped, dingy apartment that always smelled faintly of mildew and cigarettes. My father, a man consumed by his own demons, mostly found at the bottom of a bottle, was a mere shadowy figure. There was a vague image of my mother, a tired, worn-out soul. She’d left me as a boy, leaving me with nothing but a faded photograph and a heart full of questions.

School had been a battleground, a place where I’d learned to fend for myself. I hadn’t been the smartest kid, nor the strongest, but I’d been quick—quick to learn the ways of the street, quick to understand that in this world, you either took what you wanted or you got taken.

By my late teens, I had fallen in with a local gang. They were my family, the brothers I’d never had. We’d started small—petty thefts and minor drug deals—but it had given me a sense of belonging, a purpose. The rush of adrenaline, the quick cash, it was intoxicating.

Then came the night that changed everything. We had planned a simple job, a smash-and-grab at a local store. But things went sideways fast. Alarms blared, police sirens wailed in the distance, and in the chaos, I’d made a decision that would haunt me forever. I left one of my own behind, a kid who was barely sixteen, to take the fall. While I hid in the shadows, I saw the betrayal in his eyes as the cops cuffed him. It was a look I would never forget.

That had been the turning point for me. From there, I’d only descended into deeper darkness. The jobs had gotten bigger, the stakes higher. Eventually, my reputation had caught the attention of the Russian Bratva. They’d been expanding their operations and were looking for someone with my particular set of skills. The money was good, too good to pass up. So, I’d stepped into their world, a world of drugs and violence, a world where life was cheap and loyalty was just another word for fear.

As I lay here now, broken and bleeding, a pawn in their brutal game, I realized how far I had strayed from the scared little boy in that dingy apartment. I had become a man I didn’t recognize, a man my mother wouldn’t have recognized. The irony wasn’t lost on me. In trying to escape the life I’d been given, I had sprinted headlong into a nightmare of my own making.

There had been this brief, shining time when I’d tricked myself into believing I had everything figured out. I’d had cash flowing in like water, a cozy spot in the suburbs, Jennifer by my side, and Samantha, our kid, rounding out the picture of domestic bliss. The front I’d put up as a successful software consultant while I’d been dabbling in high-stakes trading on the side, had lent me the veneer of a respectable, well-off community member. Everything had been smooth sailing until that godforsaken wreck had torn it all down.

That night, if Jennifer had not insisted on leaving the party early to tend to Samantha’s complaints of a stomachache, we’d never have been on that road. The crash that followed sealed my fate in the most twisted of ironies—killing Jennifer and leaving Samantha motherless. And me? I was shackled not by bars but by the relentless focus of the law breathing down my neck and a conviction of vehicular manslaughter that clung to me like a second skin.

That fucking judge, with his sanctimonious smirk, had thought he was handing me mercy on a platter by tying my probation to Sam’s coming of age. As if living every day with the ghost of my past mistakes hovering over me was some kind of blessing. Prison, with its routine, three square meals a day, and the Volkovi Nochi’s network weaving through its underbelly, would have been a damn sight better than the purgatory I found myself in now. At least behind bars, I could’ve leaned into the system, kept my head down, and emerged with a semblance of life waiting for me. Instead, I was trapped in limbo. Every day was a reminder of the life I could’ve had if not for the whimper of a child’s complaint that night.

And now, as the darkness threatened to claim me, the faces of my past flashed before my eyes—mocking what little existence I had left. Each was a reminder of the choices I’d made, the paths I’d taken. And I wondered, had it all been worth it? The money, the power, the fear I’d instilled in others—had it brought me anything but this moment of reckoning?

The past was a ghost, untouchable and unchangeable. All I had now was the present, a present filled with pain and regret.

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