Page 3 of The Debt

“Run!” The word tore from his throat as he grabbed Lisbet’s hand. Fear made her fingers slick with sweat. “There’s an alley ahead. Move faster, Lisbet!”

He positioned himself behind them, using his body as a shield. The first bullet that hit him felt like a sledgehammer to the kidney. The second caught him higher, near his shoulder blade.

“Fuck,” he grunted as the impact drove him to his knees. Emma tumbled from his arms. “Keep running, Lisbet. Get Emma out of h-here.” The words came out wet, metallic-flavored.

That’s when he saw him. Tall, broad-shouldered, moving through the chaos like a shark through bloody water. The dark sunglasses and the cap drawn low over his forehead hid his face, but Jarek had no doubt he was staring at a coldblooded killer—one who held power, perhaps even the Bratva Pakhan who had personally come to handle what was probably a territorial dispute.

The single shot seemed casual. Almost elegant.

“NOOO!” He watched, horrified at the response to the impact. In a split second, the single round tore through Lisbet’s chest and exited, only to slam into Emma’s skull. The result of the ugly transfer of kinetic energy from just one lead slug, traveling at thousands of feet per second, mutilated the bodies of the only two people he loved. They lay broken in front of him like discarded marionettes.

Helpless, Jarek saw the man step over their bodies. The Russian’s face showed nothing. Not a thread of remorse or recognition of the lives he’d just destroyed. They were less than nothing to him, just collateral damage in his war for territory. Behind him, his men executed wounded Mexican cartel members with mechanical efficiency.

Blood flowing from his wounds merged with the sanguine pool that bloomed underneath the bodies of his family. With trembling hands, he reached for Lisbet. Her beautiful blue eyes, which had once captivated him, stared vacantly into the night sky.

“No, no, no, my love, please,” he sobbed as he pressed his hands against the gaping wound in her chest. Blood seeped between his fingers. “Stay with me, Lis. I beg you, please stay with me.”

His fingers searched for a pulse. He found nothing but the cool touch of her skin.

“Don’t do this to me, Lisbet,” he begged as he began compressions, counting desperately through his tears. “One, two, three... come back to me... please come back…” he sobbed in desperation as his gaze caught a twitch from his little girl. Keeping his gaze on Lisbet, he continued his frantic movements.

“Baby girl, stay still,” he choked out, not stopping the compressions. “Daddy’s here. Everything’s going to be okay. Just... just stay with me, my love.”

His arms burned as he continued pumping Lisbet’s chest, but he couldn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop. The world had narrowed to the rhythmic motion of his hands. Another twitch from Emma… another sob tore through his chest.

“I know you’re scared, my darling. I know. But you’re so brave, my beautiful little girl. Help is coming. Just stay calm. Daddy’s here. I’ll keep you safe.” His voice cracked. “Tell me about Mr. Hops. Remember how he protected you from the monsters under your bed?”

The silence that followed his question was deafening.

“Emma?” Raw panic clawed at his throat. “Emma, answer Daddy!”

Sirens wailed in the distance as he finally turned to his daughter. Mr. Hops lay half-hidden under her in a spreading pool of crimson, its once-white fur now stained dark. But it was his daughter’s face that shattered what remained of his world.

His beautiful Emma, his precious little girl who had just lost her first tooth, who still believed in fairy tales and magic... Half of her angelic face was simply... gone...

“NO!” A primal and broken scream tore from his throat. “Please, God, no!”

Hands grabbed him from behind as police officers flooded the scene. He fought them, thrashing wildly as they pulled him away from his family.

“Let me go! Let me fucking go. My family needs me!”

“Sir, you need to step away. They’re gone.”

“NO! Not my wife! Not my baby! Not my precious little girl!”

But as they dragged him back, his eyes locked with Lisbet’s vacant stare one final time. The blue eyes that had once held such warmth and love had lost their light. Beside her, Emma’s stuffed rabbit lay as still as its loving owner, a silent witness to the moment his world ended.

Through his tears and the fog of grief and shock, one thought crystallized with terrible clarity—the Russian would pay. If it took his last breath, the last beat of his broken heart, he would make him pay.

“I will find you, you bastard,” The vow of retribution came out as a whisper, but it carried the full measure of an ironclad determination to avenge the deaths of his family. “No matter what or how long it takes... you will fucking pay for what you did here tonight!”

The murdering bastard had never looked back as he walked away, pausing only to put a bullet in a wounded cartel soldier begging for mercy. To him, this had just been business. His territory was protected and his rivals eliminated. Little did he know that in sparing Jarek’s life, he unleashed a dormant darkness, an invincible power unrelenting in his quest for vengeance.

The trauma surgeons who saved Jarek’s life had given him a ten percent chance of surviving his wounds. They were astounded that he beat the odds.

But the man who woke up in that Atlanta hospital wasn’t the same one who had walked into that street with his family. That man—the successful doctor, the loving husband and father—had died with them.

What rose from that horror was something else entirely, something forged in the crucible of utter hatred and honed into a lethal weapon with a single purpose.

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