Page 67 of The Russian's Innocent Prey
Petro Kozak had arrived, and he’d brought hell with him.
From the operations room in the underground facility, I watched my city tear itself apart on dozens of screens. Security feeds showed masked figures moving through streets that had been Antonov territory for three generations. They wore black leather and iron rings, some bearing Saint Michael’s sigil branded into their necks like cattle—if cattle chose their own branding and wore it as a badge of honor.
Dozens of Cossack mercenaries, trained in the dying arts of vengeance. Old World killers who thought murder became holy when you whispered the right prayers over the bodies.
Maps were strewn across every available surface, marked with red X’s where we’d lost ground and blue circles where we were holding the line. Screens flickered with real-time updates from street cameras, drone feeds, and the phones of every Bratva soldier still breathing in this war zone. Voices came through comms tight with stress and the kind of controlled panic that meant people were dying faster than we could count them.
I stood at the center of it all, hands braced on the tactical table that had served as command central for every family war since my father’s time. The irony wasn’t lost on me—I was orchestrating this battle from the same room where my dad had planned his campaigns against the Kozaks twenty-seven years ago.
History repeating itself in blood and fire.
“Maxim.” My voice cut through the chaos. He looked up from a screen showing casualty reports, his face grim. “Take Anya and Eleanor. It’s time.”
Anya, who’d been sitting quietly in the corner for the past hour, monitoring communications and pretending she wasn’t terrified, straightened in her chair. I could see the protest forming on her lips, the same stubborn determination that made her refuse to leave my hospital room for the week while I was in a coma.
“No.” I met her eyes across the room, letting her see exactly how non-negotiable this was. “You promised.”
The words hit like a physical blow. She had promised last night, when I’d explained what was coming, when I made her understand that staying would mean watching me die or becoming another casualty in Petro’s holy war.
Maxim stood, checking his sidearm with practiced efficiency. “I’ll die before I let anyone near her.”
I shook my head, already moving toward my own weapons cache. “You won’t have to die. I’m finishing this by the end of tomorrow.”
“Lev.” Drew’s voice carried a note of warning. “You know Petro’s luring you out. Every attack tonight has been designed to make you react, to draw you into the open where his snipers can take clean shots.”
I nodded, checking the clip in my Sig Sauer before sliding it into the shoulder holster. “I know.”
“And you’re going anyway.”
A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth—the kind of smile that used to make my enemies reconsider their life choices. “He’s luring me into his trap. I’m luring him into mine.”
Because that was what this had always been about—not territory or revenge or even the blood debt between our families. It was about pride. Petro needed to kill me personally, needed to look me in the eye while he played out whatever fantasy he’d constructed about divine justice and holy vengeance.
That need would be his downfall.
“The warehouse district,” I said, pulling on the black tactical vest that had stopped more bullets than I cared to count. “Pier 47. It’s isolated, defensible, and has enough open ground that he can’t surround me without exposing his people.”
“It’s also a perfect kill box,” Trev pointed out from across the room. He’d been monitoring Sasha’s medical feeds while coordinating with our remaining street assets. “If this goes wrong—”
“It won’t.” I cut him off because doubt was a luxury I couldn’t afford right now. “Petro wants a duel. Old World justice, dressed up in religious rhetoric. He’ll come alone, or close to it.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
I glanced toward Anya, who was gathering her things with the mechanical precision of someone trying not to think about what came next. “Then you make sure my wife and child are safe, and you burn this city to ash until nothing with the Kozak name draws breath.”
The weight of that responsibility settled on everyone in the room. These weren’t just soldiers I was talking to—they were family, bound by something deeper than blood or money. They understood what was asked of them.
Protection for the innocent. Vengeance for the fallen. The same code my dad had taught me, passed down throughgenerations of men who chose violence so others could choose peace.
***
An hour later, I was alone in my car, speeding down Lake Shore Drive with the kind of focused intensity that turns driving into a form of meditation. The Charger’s engine growled like a caged beast, 500 horsepower of American engineering that responded to my will like an extension of my own body.
In my rearview mirror, headlights multiplied like cancer. Motorcycles first—fast, agile, perfect for urban hunting. Then SUVs, black and anonymous, filled with Kozak soldiers who thought tonight ended with my death.
Let them think it.
I took the turn onto Lower Wacker at a speed that made physics weep, tires screaming against asphalt as I drifted through the curve with the precision of someone who had turned car chases into an art form. Behind me, engines roared and metal shrieked as my pursuers tried to match my pace.
