What Grows Dies Here

He took the gun with his eyes on the men. There was none of that ease in them from the night we met, only steely determination.

Nicholas glanced down at the gun, ejecting the clip then putting it back in with a familiarity that surprised me. If I’d had to guess who knew how to handle a gun in Wren’s family, it would’ve been her mother.

Nicholas looked to me, silently questioning which of the men he should focus on. I’d already confirmed that there had been two active shooters, the two on the right, so I nodded to one of them.

The other would be mine.

Nicholas stepped forward, his loafers not making a sound against the concrete floor.

I thought he’d back out at the last moment. That wasn’t me thinking little of him. He was a good man. For a rich asshole.

Good men didn’t have the stomach for violence, for killing. Not when they were face-to-face with it. With the smell of a grown man pissing himself. The fear in his eyes. The reality of it.

But he didn’t hesitate. Not once. He lifted the gun and fired it in less than a handful of seconds. The body thumped to the ground, the shot echoing through the empty warehouse.

He stared down at the spreading blood and brain matter for a moment before turning to me to hand me the gun. He held my eyes as I took it, his own full of turmoil and pain. After a heavy sigh, he nodded once to me then to Jay before walking out.

Jay did not waste time in shooting the other two, leaving the last one for me. I picked up my knife as Jay left. He knew I did not want an audience for this.

It was hours before I was done.

Jay was outside the warehouse when I finished.

I lit a smoke, inhaling deeply. It was a ritual that had started way back when, one I hadn’t been able to kick. I was compulsive when it came to this side of myself. The side I hid completely from Wren. The side that was barely human.

It took the length of the cigarette for me to come back. To resemble the man I once was.

Jay knew that.

So he waited.

I crushed the butt with my shoe.

“This means war with the Russians,” he spoke while staring into the distance.

“Yep,” I agreed.

There was no other way. The Russians had been trying to partner with Jay for months now. They had asked nicely, at first. Asked in a way to show Jay that it was an offer he couldn’t refuse.

They were the Russian Mob. An old institution. Not the same as they once were, but still powerful. They were still connected around the globe.

Jay was a powerful man. But at the end of the day, he was just a man. He could not go up against them.

Or so they thought.

They did not know Jay.

They made that clear when they opened fire on his fucking wife in the street. Called him to inquire after her fucking health and then urged him to reconsider their ‘offer.’

“We’re going to have to be smart about this,” he continued. “It’s going to be slow. We’re not going to get instant gratification. We’re not going to be able to avenge them, not properly, for months. Maybe even years.”

The men we had killed were merely pawns. Little satisfaction came from ending them because they were disposable. There would be no way to connect them to the Russians, of course. Even though they were the ones who gave the order.

“I know,” I told him.

“I’ll make you a promise right here and right now,” Jay said, looking at me. “We will burn their fucking empire down.”

I stared back at him. “I know.”