“Michael Axel. Old-school crime boss. The one who picked you up when you came home from war, broke and forgotten.”
“The one who taught you the street code. Taught you how to spot a traitor from a bystander. He gave you your place in that new world.”
“He made you North.” Alex stared at his second teacher. The man who had become a kind of father to him in a world run by wolves.
Uncle Mike was crying. Quietly, like an old man who had run out of pride. Tears rolled down his lined cheeks. “And now, Alex, lesson two.”
Roach placed another object on the table. Not a gun this time. A long, narrow, perfectly sharpened screwdriver.
A crude, pointed weapon from old street business. By unwritten rules, betrayal was paid for with a blade under the ribs. “Uncle Mike trusted you when you were his right hand.”
“And now he’s here. Because of you. You betrayed him.”
“So be a good man and honor the ritual. Or my people head back to the hospital. Clock’s running.”
The screwdriver lay on the green felt like a snake. Its sharpened tip caught the light. It wasn’t just a weapon.
It was a symbol. A symbol of the world that had taken him in. When he came back from war broken and unwanted, with old eyes in a young man’s face, Uncle Mike had taught him the rules of survival.
He taught him the shadow code, the unwritten law. A man’s word mattered. Betrayal meant death. And now Roach was forcing him to violate that code in the most ritualized, ugly way possible.
“Alex, son,” Uncle Mike whispered. His voice shook. “Don’t listen to him.”
“This man is evil. He’s not from our world. He doesn’t know a thing about honor.”
“Shut up, old man!” Roach snapped, his face twisting with sudden anger. He didn’t like it when his puppets went off script.
“Your word means nothing here. You’re the past.” “And he”—Roach nodded at Alex—“is my present.”
“I’m not doing it,” Alex said quietly, but firmly. His voice stayed level, but inside him something changed for the first time in a long while. The ice wasn’t just cracking now. It was melting, and under it was something white-hot.
Killing a soldier under orders was one thing. That belonged to his military past, where orders were orders. But killing the old man who had fed him and sheltered him, and doing it by a code Roach himself didn’t respect—that crossed a line.
“Not doing it?” Roach laughed, a dry, ugly sound. “You seem to have forgotten the rules of our game, Alex.”
He took out his phone and dialed. “Yeah. Plan B.”
“Go in. Pull the plug.” “No!” Alex’s shout sounded like a wounded bear.
He surged up from the chair, but the two guards instantly twisted his arms behind his back and slammed his face into the green felt. “Stop,” Roach said into the phone, then ended the call. “See? You are doing it.”
“You just needed a little motivation.” Alex breathed hard. The smell of felt, dust, and despair filled his lungs.
He lifted his head. Uncle Mike looked at him with such pain and pity it was worse than accusation. “Do it, son,” the old man whispered.
“If it saves your girl, do it. God can judge me.” “And forgive yourself if you can.”
That broke Alex completely. He understood that this man, like Sergeant Semyon, was willing to die for him. For his daughter.
His two fathers—one from war, one from the street—were offering themselves to save the one thing he had left. The guards let him go. He slowly straightened.
His face looked carved from gray rock. He picked up the screwdriver. It was cold as death.
He walked to Uncle Mike. The old man closed his eyes and began praying under his breath. Alex put his left hand on the man’s shoulder.
Not to hold him down. To steady himself. “Forgive me, old man,” he whispered so softly only Mike could hear. Then he struck.
Not under the ribs, the way Roach demanded, but straight into the heart. One quick, exact, merciful thrust. Death came instantly.
Uncle Mike sagged in his arms without opening his eyes. Alex pulled the screwdriver free and dropped it to the floor. He stood over the body, and one single tear rolled down his cheek.
The first in twenty years. It was hot as molten lead. “Two sacrifices. Two pillars of your world gone.”
Roach’s voice was flat, like a man reading quarterly numbers. “You killed your commanding officer and your criminal mentor. You destroyed your past, Alex.”
“So what are you now? Hero? Criminal?”
“No. You’re nothing. Empty. Just like my son.”
“Justice is almost complete.” The guards dragged Uncle Mike’s body away. Again the floor was clean. Again the silence settled.
“One act left,” Roach said. “The most important one. The third person who made you who you are.”
They brought in the third person. A woman in her forties, tired but still beautiful, streaks of gray in her dark hair. She wasn’t frightened…
