Page 47 of Den of Thieves

“Like taking candy from a sleepy baby.” Karina agreed. Their attacker’s intel was bad or they didn’t bother with a head count to realize the two most dangerous women in Russia were missing from their little execution line up.

Karina pointed to the three men on the left and Aksana nodded, adjusting her AR-15 to the right to take out the other three.

The leader, none the wiser, raised his gun and his men followed suit. “Osvo sends his regards.”

Karina nodded at AK, and their bullets zipped through the air. The lethal metallic rounds hit their targets in the center of the forehead. She smiled as all six men dropped to the ground like sacks of potatoes dipped in cement.

Yaya, Milah, and the other women slowly opened their eyes and checked themselves for wounds. When they found none and noticed Karina and AK emerging from the tree line, they cheered.

“Fuck, I missed one!” Aksana growled, stomping over to the man jerking uncontrollably from a bullet to the eye. She shot him two more times for good measure.

“Thanks, we thought we were bear meat.” Ivanka said.

“I don’t know what we would have done without you guys!” Yaya gushed, and the other women nodded eagerly.

“I’m glad we made it back in time. We ran into some trouble of our own,” Karina said, returning Marianna and Lizah’s hugs.

Milah walked over and kicked the leader in the face with her heel until his skull was an unrecognizable bloody heap of broken bones and brain matter.

Karina pulled her back after the crunching and squishing sounds morphed into liquid splats. “He’s dead, babe.”

“That fucker ruined my new nose! It was still healing.” She pouted. Karina looked at Mila, and her nose was indeed crooked and rapidly swelling.

“What now?” Lizah asked.

Everyone looked to Karina for guidance. Her knee-jerk reaction was to backpedal and let someone else take the reins. She’d gone through enough today.

Then she thought about Vladimir. Her husband was strong and powerful. A natural born leader that never shied away from his duties. He cared about the Bratva, about his people. As much as she respected and admired him. A tiny part of her was annoyed with him because she was now a leader by proxy.

What would Vlad do?

“I’m tired of running,” Aksana said, crossing her arms. There were nods and murmurs of agreement amongst the women.

“We have to leave. I’m sure they told others.” Karina held up a radio she pulled off of one of the men. “Pick up your weapons,” she said, making eye contact with everyone. “First, we need to canvas the area and make sure these ass hats didn’t have friends. Kill anyone who isn’t us. Then we get the fuck out of here. If these buffoons know we’re here, there will be others.”

“Where will we go?”

“Back to Moscow. If today taught us anything, there is strength in numbers.”

The women nodded and dispersed, leaving Karina and AK with the dead bodies in the front drive.

As they looked down at the rapidly cooling corpses, there was only one question in the forefront of their minds.

“Who the fuck is Osvo?”

**

Vladimir growled in frustration as he stood up from the desk in his home office. He was growing tired of this game of cat and mouse. He was winning the war. Barely. Murders happened every other day. Vladimir was doing his best to draw out his rivals, but they were just as cunning as he was. And it pained him to admit that he’d yet to discover where Osvo’s headquarters were.

Up to this point, he and his enemies traded carefully calculated blows, neither gaining much information before their prisoners met their demise.

He could tell his men were growing stressed as well. Everyone was on high alert, with short fuses to match. As much as he tried to stop the hot heads from fighting amongst himself, he couldn’t fault them for their stupidity. Not this time.

Osvo’s attacks seemed random and sporadic. Still, the sick fuck had no quarrels about harming wives and children. He was glad he sent his family away. At least that was one thing he didn’t have to worry about.

He exhaled, letting the cigar smoke float past his lips. It was as close to relaxing as he was going to get. Commotion from the front gates caught his attention. His new home wasn’t as far back from the road as his old one. Still, he made sure there were two separate twelve foot stone walls between his castle and the Rublyovskoye highway.

As he got closer, Vladimir saw his men haul someone out of the driver’s seat of a white delivery van. He was unceremoniously tossed to the ground. He lay on his stomach with his hands trembling above his head.

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