Page 2 of The Debt

“So, what’s the next step? Are we going to infiltrate his territory?” The words ricocheted off the vaulted ceiling as Declan tilted his head back, tracking the Pterodactyl models that hung like dark sentinels above them.

Jarek watched him, remembering that night fifteen years ago, on the anniversary of his family’s death, when the walls he had built around his past had crumbled.

The whiskey had tasted like grief that evening, each glass carrying him deeper into memories he had tried to drown. His wife and daughter’s faces had swum before him—sharp as if they were there. The sorrow at their absence had crushed his chest until the truth had spilled out, a torrent of pain and rage that had left him raw.

Declan had sat there, stone-sober, absorbing every word of Jarek’s descent into darkness. Every detail of how a respectable medical doctor had transformed into Dublin’s most feared enforcer had been torn from his broken soul. The next morning, with darkness in his eyes, Declan had gripped Jarek’s shoulder.

“Your pain is my pain now,” he had said. “We’ll make the bastard pay.”

Now, standing beneath the prehistoric shadows, Jarek knew why he kept returning to this place. Emma loved dinosaurs, but more than that, the museum held echoes of extinct things—like the man he used to be, like the family that had been ripped from him. As the keeper of Jarek’s darkest truths, Declan knew why he preferred meeting there, and he was the only one who understood that vengeance wasn’t just a mission—it was Jarek’s oxygen.

“I know why we’re after Polov, Boss, but I have to admit, your insistence on spreading out to Atlanta instead of widening our local footprint came as a surprise.”

The darkness that perpetually lived in Jarek’s eyes seemed to deepen, turning them into bottomless pits.

“I think you’ve mistaken my intentions, Declan. I have no interest in invading Atlanta or becoming active there.” His voice dropped to a deadly whisper. “I’m not going to embark on a territorial war with him. That’s a battle that is lost before it even begins. Oh, no. You know my interest in Gregor Polov is personal… and I’m going to hit him where it’ll hurt the most.”

Declan’s shoulders tensed. “It’s about time. I’ve been waiting for this for over fifteen years. I’ll be right there beside you, Boss. I trust you. You know that.”

“Blind faith…” Jarek’s mouth curved into something that might have been a smile on anyone else. “It’s a noble gift, Declan. I just hope you don’t come to regret it.”

“I owe you my life, Jarek. You dragged me from the gutter and molded me into the man I am today.”

Jarek studied his underboss, who was also the closest he had to a friend. He still remembered the shell of a man he had found in Dublin eighteen years ago, a year after he had joined the Irish mob. Declan had been nothing then—a hollow-eyed junkie curled up in a rain-soaked alley with a needle still hanging from his arm and his breath rattling in his chest. Most would have walked past, and most did. But something in those fever-bright eyes had reminded Jarek of himself—someone with nothing left to lose.

“Do you ever miss it?”

“Miss what?” The question pulled Jarek from his memories.

“Ireland… the Emerald Isle with all its natural beauty.”

The nostalgia in Declan’s voice hit Jarek like a gut punch. Unwanted memories threatened to surface of him as a little boy running through verdant hills, with the taste of salt air on his lips and the feeling of freedom that had once defined his life—before everything changed. Before Atlanta.

The memories shifted and darkened. It was a different time and a different life when he had a medical practice in Dublin, which he had built from scratch into something remarkable in just two years. He would never forget the pride in the eyes of his wife, Lisbet, when he had opened his own clinic or the way their four-year-old daughter, Emma, would sit at his desk, pretending to write prescriptions with her crayons.

Then came the vacation to Atlanta. Lisbet had been so excited about attending the food festival. The memory hit him with devastating clarity...

September and Atlanta were sweltering with the kind of heat that made the asphalt shimmer. Lisbet smiled radiantly as, for once, her chef’s whites were traded for a flowing summer dress. She gushed about the fusion techniques she had learned at the festival.

“The way they’re combining Korean and Southern flavors is revolutionary,” she said, her Irish accent more pronounced in her excitement. “Emma, darling, wouldn’t you like Mama to make you some kimchi fried chicken?”

Emma wrinkled her nose but continued to skip between them. The rubber soles of her sneakers squeaked musically against the sidewalk.

“Can I have ice cream instead, Mama?”

The memory of their laughter tasted like ash in Jarek’s mouth. He closed his eyes as the movie reel continued to roll inside his mind.

Chapter Two

Jarek

Museum of Science…

The first shot sounded like a car backfiring. Then came the screams. Time seemed to slow down, then it fractured as one moment, they were a family walking back to their hotel; the next, they were caught in a storm of lead and chaos.

“Oh my God!” Lisbet’s scream cut through the cacophony of gunfire and shouting. Spanish and Russian curses filled the air as the street erupted into a war zone.

Jarek scooped Emma up and felt her small body spasm against his chest as she screamed out in terror.

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