The Bratva's best tracker was killed with Ian Liebhart's knife buried between his ribs, the blade hitting the sweet spot below the sternum with surgical precision. Ian had been taught well by Dmitri Volkov—far too well, as it turned out. The irony eluded him not as he cleaned his mentor's blood off the blade.
"You could have stayed dead, little wolf," he said to the corpse at his feet, using the nickname Volkov had conferred on him when he'd first killed at age seventeen. When Ian had still possessed something called loyalty, prior to realizing that the Bratva family was one determined by making bullets pierce your head the moment you were no longer useful.
His hands trembled as he washed the blade—not from fear, but from the typical electrical storm building in his mind. The seizures always hit at the worst times, his malfunctioning neurons firing off in crazy patterns and leaving him powerless as a baby. Another one of his bastard father's presents, as in the tachycardia, which made his heart beat like a bird in a cage even when he was calm.
Three years he'd been on the run, since the warehouse killings. Three years of sleeping with one eye open, of adopting new identities like most people adopted new clothes, of never remaining anywhere long enough to get attached. The PTSD had wired his brain into a state of perpetual hypervigilance—every shadow was danger, every unanticipated noise a possible death warrant.
Tonight, though, was different. Final, somehow.
The seizure came out of the blue, his body jerking against the alley wall as his mind imploded into kaleidoscope fragments. When he snapped back into reality, precious minutes had passed—minutes that might have killed him—but at least he was still alive. Blood dripped from where he'd bitten his tongue, warm and coppery in his mouth.
His heart thrummed against his ribcage at nearly 160 BPM, the tachycardia being compounded by the post-ictal confusion that always followed his seizures. He needed to take cover, needed to get out of there before Volkov's backup arrived. But his legs felt jellylike, and the world went on spinning at impossible degrees.
The apartment complex loomed up before him like salvation—pocket-sized, unobtrusive, the sort of place where neighbors looked out for themselves. The dumpster behind it provided temporary haven, a place to slump while his mind reconstituted itself and his heart learned to pound at a rate that had a chance of survival.
As awareness faded again, Ian's last consideration was of the warehouse three years earlier—twelve corpses stacked like cordwood, their blood spurting random patterns onto concrete walls. His men, his brothers, murdered for the crime of witnessing something they shouldn't have witnessed. He'd survived only because he'd been in the bathroom when the shooting erupted, stepping out into a charnel house where his family used to be.
Volkov had looked him in the eye and smiled. "Clean this up, little wolf. Prove yourself."
And in response, Ian had run. And they'd been tracking him ever since.