Page 1 of Guarded Rebellion

1

LEV

Ican’t wait to be home.

With every mile that Rurik drove through the clogged streets of New York, my anticipation grew. Hell, at this rate of traffic, it was more like every inch that he managed to move the car, but I wouldn’t complain. Because I was finally heading home.

My assignment was done. Finite. Over. That long-ass job of staking out Yusuf Ilyin was one among many. It wasn’t the first job I’d done as a member of the Baranov Family, and it wouldn’t be the last.

“Thank fuck that’s all over,” I said before sighing again, letting my chest fill up then releasing all the remaining threads of tension that I’d lived with. For two months, I was out there—in the woods, the city, then back in the woods again. Stalking Yusuf wasn’t as simple as it should’ve been, but I’d succeeded. I was always victorious in whatever the Boss asked of me.

“Yeah, it’s good to have you back, man.” Rurik glanced at me as he drove, almost as though he had to check me out again. “Are yousureI shouldn’t take you to the Boss’s place and let one of the doctors look at those injuries?”

“No.” I shook my head, not a fan of another obstacle of getting home. “It’s not that bad.”

“It looks bad.”

I smirked, rolling my eyes as I lifted the bloody shirt I wore. I’d run out of spares to change into. Camping and roughing it in the wilderness did that to a man. Underneath the admittedly gory surface of the fabric, my skin looked healthy, if raw. Two gashes ran across my abs, but I’d stitched them up well enough. Nothing looked infected. “I’ll recover.”

He didn’t appear convinced, furrowing his brow as he focused on driving.

“That’s all I intend to do. Recover. Relax.”

“Relax? What’s that?” he joked wryly. “Relax?”

I allowed a small smile. Soldiers within the Baranov Mafia Family couldn’t claim to own that skill. Or luxury. Life in an organized crime group was often rife with danger, threats, and mayhem. But I could rest assured that the Boss wouldn’t have to worry about any peril coming to us from the Ilyins anytime soon.

“I’m just glad you’ve made it back,” Rurik said. “For a while there, we assumed we’d lost you.”

“Oh, how little faith you have,” I mocked.

“The Boss estimated you would be on this task for a month. Yet, you were gone for two.”

I shrugged, losing the fight with a wide yawn. Regret hit me at once when I stretched my neck, though. The aches and stinging tightness of a hard hit to my shoulder hadn’t faded yet.

Yeah, Ireallylook forward to kicking back and doing nothing for a while.I deserved a break.

“If it were a simple stakeout for a crime leader, I would’ve been done with it in the first couple of weeks,” I replied. “But Yusuf must have gotten word that someone had placed a hit on him.” That was the only explanation I could think of. Yusuf Ilyin was a paranoid bastard on a good day, but from the firstday I took on the mission to stalk him down and kill him, he’d been almost impossible to reach. He’d tripled his security forces. He hid and bunkered inside for long stretches. He’d also moved from one safehouse to another, leaving me too many steps behind to find him again. For three weeks straight, he’d holed up in a cabin with too many layers of guards, cameras, and patrolling dogs for me to slip in and take him out.

“Who, though?” Rurik guessed. “Who would’ve told him about a hit?”

I shot him a side-eye, incredulous that he’d have to ask that. Rurik had been a soldier in the organization for as long as I had been. He knew how this world worked.

After the Ilyin Family tried to set us up and frame us for a drug trade agreement gone wrong, it shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone in this criminal world that we would retaliate. No one fucked with the Baranovs and got away with it. I wasn’t born a Baranov, but since Oleg Baranov took me in when I was a young orphan, I considered them my blood. Yusuf Ilyin thought he could screw around with us, and in consequence, he had signed his own death sentence.

“He wouldn’t have needed to guess who was coming for him. He’d taken a strike against us with that botched drug trade. He had to have known we’d be coming for him.”

“But the Petrovs were also impacted with that agreement that fell apart,” Rurik reminded me.

I hardly gave a shit what the other Mafia Family felt about a drug arrangement gone wrong. They could recoup their own losses, but it didn’t seem like they’d incurred many. “I thought we had word that the Petrovs hadn’t suffered when that contract fell apart.”

It was his turn to shrug. “They had to have lost something. Maybe they didn’t profit as much as they’d hoped to, but it was still a salvageable situation. Maybe they suspected they’d bescrewed over and pulled back before Yusuf could interfere with the day of the big shipment.”

“I didn’t see any Petrovs trying to take out Yusuf,” I said. If the Petrovs were looking to punish the Ilyins by killing Yusuf, one of their highest leaders, then they would’ve been after him just like I was.

“Perhaps that means the Petrovs have aligned with the Ilyins?” Rurik guessed.

“I have no clue.” And I didn’t give a shit, either. Oleg tasked me with hunting down Yusuf and killing him, and that was exactly what I’d done. It had taken me much longer than I’d anticipated, but it was done.

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