Chapter 10 - Blood on the Ice
Soren stopped ten yards from the chair, his hands resting loosely at his sides.
He didn't draw a weapon. He didn't look up at the catwalks. He simply stared at Marko with the absolute, terrifying indifference of a god looking down at an insect.
“You look nervous, Marko,” Soren said smoothly.
“I’m holding all the cards, Soren!” Marko barked, though his finger twitched nervously against the trigger guard. “Volkov’s men are already taking over the Newark docks. By midday, your entire southern corridor will be gone! And you threw it all away for some two-bit nurse you met at a catering gig!”
Blythe stepped forward, clearing Soren’s shoulder just enough to make eye contact with Dana.
“Let her go, Marko,” Blythe said, her voice ringing clear through the cavernous warehouse. “You have me. You have Soren. Dana knows nothing. She can't hurt you.”
Marko laughed, an ugly, grating sound. “You think you have a voice here, sweetheart? You’re currency! Nothing more!”
He looked back at Soren. “Drop your weapon belt. Kick it over. Then bring the girl to me, or I paint this wall with her friend’s brains.”
Soren slowly unbuckled his tactical holster, letting his heavy sidearm drop onto the concrete with a dull thud. He kicked it across the floor. It skittered to a halt five feet from Marko’s boots.
“Now,” Marko sneered, “step aside and let the girl walk forward.”
Blythe didn't wait for Soren’s permission. She took three slow, deliberate steps toward Dana.
“Blythe, no!” Dana’s muffled screams rattled through the tape.
Blythe kept her eyes locked on Marko. She counted the paces.
Ten feet. Eight feet. Six feet.
“Good girl,” Marko smiled, lowering the barrel of his rifle slightly toward Blythe’s chest. “See, Soren? She knows who holds the power—”
*“Drop,”* Soren whispered.
Blythe didn't question it. She didn't look back. The microsecond the syllable left Soren’s lips, she dropped flat onto the concrete floor, curling into a ball with her hands over her head.
A deafening, synchronized roar shattered the silence of the warehouse.
High up in the rusted corrugated rafters, four silenced rounds impacted simultaneously.
The four gunmen on the catwalks didn't even have time to fire. Their bodies tumbled over the railings, crashing onto the concrete floor forty feet below with sickening impacts.
Soren’s sniper team had been inside the warehouse hours before Marko had even arrived.
Marko’s eyes widened in horror. He swung his rifle down toward Blythe—
Soren moved like a phantom.
He closed the ten-yard gap in the blink of an eye. Before Marko could pull the trigger, Soren’s left hand seized the barrel of the rifle, forcing it upward as a burst of automatic fire chewed harmlessly into the ceiling.
With his right hand, Soren drew a backup blade from his boot.
A single, blinding arc of steel slashed across Marko’s throat.
Blood sprayed in a crimson mist across the swinging lightbulb. Marko dropped the rifle, his hands clutching desperately at his neck as he collapsed to his knees, his eyes wide with disbelief as he choked on his own blood.
Soren stood over him, cold and unmoving.
“You were my brother, Marko,” Soren whispered, watching the life drain from the traitor’s eyes. “Which is why I made sure you didn't suffer.”
Marko slumped forward, motionless against the concrete.
Silence returned to the warehouse, broken only by Dana’s hysterical, muffled sobbing.
Blythe scrambled to her feet. She pulled the titanium folding knife from her waist and sliced through the ropes binding Dana’s wrists and ankles, ripping the duct tape from her mouth.
Dana collapsed into Blythe’s arms, sobbing uncontrollably. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, they took me from the lobby, they had guns—”
“You’re safe,” Blythe whispered, rocking her friend gently. “It’s over. You’re safe now.”
Two black tactical vans roared through the warehouse doors, their headlights cutting through the gloom. Lucian—pale, leaning heavily on a cane, but upright—emerged alongside six heavily armed operatives to secure the perimeter and clear the bodies.
“Get her to a private medical facility,” Blythe ordered one of the medics, helping Dana to her feet. “Sedate her, treat the contusions, and keep two armed guards on her door.”
“Yes, ma'am,” the medic replied without hesitation, treating Blythe’s command with the exact same authority they gave Soren.
Dana looked back at Blythe as they led her toward the van. “Blythe… are you coming with me?”
Blythe stood in the center of the blood-splattered warehouse.
Her jacket was torn. Her face was smeared with dust and dried blood.
She looked toward the open warehouse doors.
Outside, the first pale rays of dawn were breaking over the Manhattan skyline. Across the East River, the city was waking up. People were getting on the subway. Nurses were clocking in for shift changes at St. Jude’s. The quiet, ordinary world she had lived in for twenty-five years was still there, turning on its fragile axis.
Then she looked at Soren Vanek.
He stood near the edge of the riverbank, looking out over the water as the mist began to lift.
He had removed his tactical vest. The wind caught his dark hair, whipping his coat around his tall, imposing silhouette. He looked like an emperor of ashes—solitary, lethal, and burdened with a kingdom carved out of blood.
He turned his head, his slate-gray eyes finding hers across the gravel yard.
There was no demand in his gaze. No command.
Only an unasked question hanging in the cold morning air.
Her old life was waiting for her. With Marko dead and Volkov neutralized, Soren’s men could relocate her to another state, give her a new identity, wipe her debts clean, and let her return to being an anonymous nurse in a sterile, safe world.
Or she could walk toward the man who had burned an empire to keep her breathing.
May you like
Blythe looked down at the matte-black card still tucked into her pocket.
She took a slow, deep breath, stepped off the concrete platform, and began walking toward the edge of the water.
