Page 70 of The Russian's Innocent Prey
The finality in those two words made my heart clench. ‘He wasn’t calling for backup, not coordinating with other teams, not following any of the protocols Lev had drilled into all of us for exactly this situation. He was going lone wolf, and in our world, that usually meant someone didn’t come home.
“Trev, wait for support,” Maxim barked into his radio, but there was no response. Just static and the kind of silence that meant someone had turned off their communications and decided to handle things personally.
I grabbed the binoculars from the window ledge, scanning the rooftops and approaches with the desperate intensity of someone whose family was about to bleed out in front of her. The safe house sat on elevated ground, surrounded by dense woods that provided excellent cover for both defenders and attackers. Perfect for keeping us hidden from casual observers, terrible for spotting professional killers who knew how to use terrain to their advantage.
Then I saw him.
Trev moved across the rooftop of the adjacent building with fluid precision, his silhouette dark against the star-scattered sky. He carried his weapon with the casual competence of someone who had spent years learning to kill efficiently, but there was something different about his posture tonight. Something personal and desperate that went beyond professional duty.
This wasn’t just about protecting the family assets. This was about Sasha.
“There,” I whispered, handing the binoculars to Maxim. “Northwest rooftop.”
He took them, adjusted the focus, and cursed softly in Russian. “Stubborn bastard. He’s positioning himself right in her path.”
“Can you support him from here?” Eleanor asked, her voice steady despite the chaos surrounding us.
“Not without risking crossfire.” Maxim’s jaw tightened. “If she gets past him….”
He didn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t need to. We all understood the math. Trev was our early warning system and our first line of defense. If Mila killed him, we were down to whatever surprise Maxim could generate from a defensive position.
Through the binoculars, I watched shadows move across distant rooftops like lethal chess pieces positioning themselves for the endgame. Then Mila emerged from the darkness with the fluid grace of something that had never been entirely human.
Even at this distance, even through magnified glass, she radiated predatory intent. Her movements were too smooth, too precise, like someone who had spent years learning to kill without wasting motion or energy. The knife in her hand caught starlight and threw it back in glittering arcs that spoke of edges maintained to surgical sharpness.
“She’s beautiful,” Sasha whispered beside me, and her voice carried the kind of detached wonder that trauma sometimes produced. “Like an angel. A broken, terrible angel.”
She was right. Mila Kozak moved through the darkness with ethereal grace, her pale features almost luminescent in the moonlight. If angels could fall this far, if divine messengers could be twisted into instruments of vengeance, they might look exactly like the creature stalking across Chicago’s rooftops toward my family.
The first exchange happened faster than my eyes could follow. Steel met steel in a shower of sparks that illuminated both fighters for a split second before they separated and circled each other like predators evaluating prey.
Trev was bigger, stronger, with the kind of tactical training that came from years in law enforcement. But Mila was faster, more agile, and she fought with the desperate intensity of someone who believed God was guiding her blade.
They came together again in a flurry of movement that made my breath catch in my throat. Trev blocked a strike aimed at his throat, twisting to avoid a follow-up that would have opened his femoral artery, but he couldn’t avoid everything. Pain exploded across his features as Mila’s knife found the spacebetween his ribs, sinking deep into flesh that had never learned to stop bleeding.
“Trev!” His name tore from my throat like a prayer, like a curse, like the kind of desperate sound mothers make when they watch their children fall.
Beside me, Sasha’s cup fell from nerveless fingers, tea spreading across the hardwood in patterns that looked disturbingly like blood. Her voice shook as she asked, “What happened to him? Is he…?”
I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know. Through the binoculars, I watched Trev stagger backward, one hand pressed to his side where crimson spread across his shirt like spilled paint. But he didn’t fall, didn’t surrender, didn’t do anything except raise his gun with the mechanical precision of someone who had been training for this moment his entire life.
The shot echoed across the distance between us, sharp and final as judgment. Mila jerked backward, her ethereal grace replaced by very human surprise as the bullet found her chest. She looked down at the spreading red with something that might’ve been confusion, like she couldn’t quite believe that Saint Michael’s protection had limits.
Then she crumpled, folding into herself with the boneless finality of something that used to be alive but isn’t anymore.
Through the comm system, Maxim’s voice cut through the sudden silence: “Trev, report.”
A long pause, filled with the kind of static that could be equipment failure or the sound of someone trying to breathe around punctured lungs.
Then Trev’s voice, weaker than before but still carrying that irreverent humor that made him impossible to kill: “Target down. I’m hit but functional.”
Maxim allowed himself a small smile. “You did good, brother. Held the line.”
“Had to,” Trev replied, and I could hear the strain in his voice now, the way words cost him more effort than they should. “Couldn’t let anything happen to my girls.”
His girls. Plural. Sasha and me, claimed by someone who barely knew us but who had been’ willing to bleed out on a rooftop to keep us safe.
Through the binoculars, I watched him lean against a ventilation unit, his free hand still pressed to his wounded side. But he was smiling, the bastard. Actually smiling as blood seeped between his fingers.
