Page 102 of Cruel Submission

Then his voice. That voice.

“ARKADY!”

It carries across the gravel and the stone and the space between us like a disease. My father’s baritone—the voice I remember from childhood, the voice that ordered girls into shipping containers. The voice that told me Mishka’s death was my own fault and that I should be grateful he didn’t put me in the ground beside him.

“Come out here, you little piece of shit!”

I don’t move. Don’t respond. Beside me, Stefan’s breathing is controlled. Measured. We’ve rehearsed this. War-gamed every scenario Gavriil might throw at us. But rehearsal and reality are different animals entirely.

“Give me the girl, and we walk away without bloodshed!”

The girl. He means Debra. His property. His six-year investment in human suffering, reduced to two words.

“Refuse,” he screams, “and I’ll fucking end you!”

I can feel my men watching me. Waiting.

I say nothing.

Ten seconds pass.

Twenty.

The first burst comes from the left SUV—short, automatic, stitching across the stone pillar and kicking chips of masonry into the air. Stefan ducks, fragments peppering his jacket.

“Return fire!” I snap.

The garden erupts.

Leo opens up from the right, controlled three-round bursts that walk toward the lead SUV. The twins separate, Andrei moving along the wall to flank while Aleksei pins down the shooters near the tree line with covering fire. Bullets chew into the stone. A window behind me explodes inward, glass raining across the gravel.

I move between pillars, keeping low, the Makarov up and tracking. A figure breaks from behind the second SUV—running, weapon raised—and I put two rounds into his center mass before he makes it three steps. He drops face-first onto the road. Doesn’t move.

Another one, coming from the trees. Leo spots him first; the crack of his rifle is followed immediately by the man spinning sideways, hitting the ground hard.

The noise is total. Muzzle flash in the afternoon light. The sharp stink of cordite mixing with the absurd leftover scent of canapés from the garden behind us. Bullets tear through the hedgerow, shredding leaves into confetti. One of my men—Kolya, stationed at the south wall—takes a round in the shoulder and goes down behind the stonework, cursing in Russian. Another, Pasha, catches shrapnel in his left arm and keeps firing one-handed, teeth bared.

Andrei has completed his flanking maneuver. He opens up from the far side of the wall, catching two of Gavriil’s men in a crossfire they didn’t anticipate. One drops instantly. The other returns fire for half a second before Andrei puts him down.

The whole thing lasts ninety seconds. Maybe less. Time compresses in firefights—folds in on itself until seconds contain entire lifetimes.

When the shooting stops, the quiet that replaces it is worse.

Five of my father’s men lie in the road. Unmoving. Blood pooling on tarmac that was repaved two weeks ago for the engagement party. One of them is young—twenty, twenty-one—and my teeth grind because I know my father recruited him the same way he recruits all his soldiers: promises, money, a sense of belonging. This kid probably thought he was doing something important. Now he’s leaking into the asphalt.

Dmitri, one of our perimeter men, is dead. Took a round through the throat in the first volley. I didn’t see it happen—heard it on the radio, Stefan’s clipped voice: “Dmitri’s down. Gone.” Three words. That’s all a life is worth in a firefight. Three words, and then you keep moving, because grief is a luxury you pay for later.

Kolya’s shoulder is shredded, but he’s conscious. Pasha’s arm is bleeding through the makeshift tourniquet he’s already tied with his own belt. Yuri is en route from the house for both of them.

But something is missing.

My father.

I unsling the Dragunov and press my eye to the scope.

There he is. Crouched behind the armored door of his Mercedes, twenty meters past the gate. Silver hair. That granite jaw. The posture of a man who has never once questioned whether he has the right to take whatever he wants from the world—women, children, dignity, life.

His eyes dart between me and his dead men.