Page 64 of The Russian Pakhan's Forced Bride
Without hesitating, I grab it and put the phone to my ear. “What is it?”
His voice reaches me clipped and laced with a solemn undertone I don’t hear from him much. “There’s a problem. Ivan found it on his way back from the docks.”
Taking pause, well aware of how serious it sounds, I lean forward slightly. “What happened?”
He pauses. “It’s Maxim…he made a mess of the warehouse nearby.”
My brows furrow, and I can already feel my blood pressure rising. I picture the warehouse, well aware of what one he’s referring to.
My jaw clenches. “How bad?”
Mikhail hesitates another moment, then murmurs, almost like an admittance. “Bad.”
Not needing to hear much more, I’m already on the move as I rise from my chair and leave the office. “I’ll be there shortly.”
Every step through the warehouse makes me feel like I’m being weighed down by the inevitable. With an immediate drop in my mood, the air around me feels thick with tension, and the employees I pass don’t say a word. Soon enough, they’ll catch wind of it, too.
The drive there is a blur. All the while, I try to keep myself level, hoping not to lose my cool before I’ve even seen the aftermath for myself.
But the moment I arrive, it's even worse than I anticipated.
The smell of blood hangs in the air, heavy and acrid. Even if it’s not something I shy away from, it still turns my stomach.
The warehouse is a small one tucked out of the way and serves more as more of a convenient hiding place than anything else. For someone who doesn’t know any better, they’d assume the place is abandoned from the outside—exactly as intended.
But at that moment, it’s a crime scene.
The bloodied bodies catch my attention first. Scattered around the floor like nothing more than trash on the city streets, a handful of my men are dead. Their lives were completely wasted.
There’s a gaping hole in the middle bay door, and tire marks scar the concrete. Further inside, several pallets of cargo are gone.
With my men slaughtered and product hijacked, it’s a double loss…and one I can’t take lightly.
Standing there, taking it all in, it’s apparent how gruesome it all is. How much more intense it seems compared to Nikolaev’s usual bullshit.
Before, his actions were mostly petty and idiot, but this…this is reckless. Suicidal, even.
The vile scene feels like a punch to the stomach, but I move through the warehouse anyway, finding Ivan and Mikhail there, talking with a few others who managed to reach the scene.
With each step, I hear the crunching underfoot…be it gravel, glass, or likely even bone.
Despite the rage unfurling just beneath my skin, I stay quiet. I keep deathly calm. Beyond that wrath, I’m straight-up shocked.
I’ve seen many brutal things during my time in this business, but something about this scene feels so intentionally awful.
It’s a message—a warning.
With the smell settling in my lungs, I can only stand there and assess the damage. The mission inventory. The shredded bodies and their pools of blood stained the concrete. Half of them aren’t even recognizable anymore.
Up until this point, our skirmishes have maintained a relatively low body count, despite how long it has dragged on.
To me, this kind of hit didn’t require this many sacrifices. Instead of stunning them, grabbing what they wanted, then leaving and not looking back, it looked more like my men were completely stunned. Blindsided, then murdered on the spot.
There was no attempt to take what was wanted while minimizing damage.
No…the damage seems to be completely intentional.
Maxim wanted me to see this grotesque display. It isn’t just a warning, but a declaration of sorts. I just know it.
