Viktor
It’s been months since I killed Erik, and I’ve put him completely from my mind. He was human garbage, and I’ve seen nobler men killed over lesser circumstances.
Stepan and I are discussing agreements we’ve made with the nearby bars, usually related to protection of some kind. This side of town is crawling with degenerates of all types, and the rival gangs like to try and post up at the same locations to run us out of our territory.
“Okay, so there was that one asshole who didn’t pay Nikolai that time, but beyond that, I don’t think we have anything to worry about right now,” Stepan says as he evaluates the list of locations we’ve been assigning men to for the past three months.
I take the list from him and look it over as well. “Wait, didn’t these guys give Mikhail a hard time like a week ago? I thought he was having issues with one of the bouncers there.”
“Yeah, maybe, but it wasn’t anything major, and Mikhail can handle himself. They pay a lot to have him there. He can deal with it,” Stepan replies.
I’m about to respond when a bullet flies through the window to my right, nearly hitting me in the shoulder before I automatically fall to the floor to avoid another hit.
“What the fuck?” Stepan exclaims, withdrawing his gun as he joins me on the floor. The broken glass crunches under his boots, and even with the risk of getting shot at, the idea of falling into a sea of glass makes my skin crawl.
We both pause for a moment, and just as we’re about to begin moving away from the window, three more shots blow out the windows on either side of the one that was broken.
Before we can assess what’s happening, we’re attacked by a barrage of men, all armed to the teeth like they were expecting to go to war instead of ambushing us.
I fire four rounds at the first swath of men who run up on us, and I end up hitting two of them square in the chest. The other two are near misses, hitting them in the left shoulder and forearm.
The men I hit fall to the floor like a ton of bricks, and Stepan shoots one of them directly in the forehead, blowing out the back of his skull and spraying blood all over the face of the man that I assume is their leader.
He aims his pistol at me and narrowly misses as I lunge up from my place on the floor. He runs at me, attempting to subdue me with hand-to-hand combat instead of firing again, which I take as a personal challenge rather than a simple hit. This person is furious with me, and I don’t know why.
While he’s clearly angry enough to want to fight, he doesn’t have the skill set necessary to compete with my experience of fighting in the streets like my father did.
He grabs the back of my head and attempts to slam me into the wall, but I’m able to leverage his own weight against him and throw him over the bodies of the men I had killed moments before. He goes down hard, and he instinctively puts his hands out to break his fall, landing straight in the broken glass from the windows.
Immediately his hands are bloodied and torn up from the glass, and he screams a horrendous, guttural scream that I’ve only ever heard animals made moments before they give in to slaughter. He collapses into the glass from the weight of his body on his injured hands, and suddenly he’s reduced from the leader of a pack of wolves to a crying, screaming mess.
I take this opportunity to step on him, crushing him into the glass and hearing him howl even more. “Why the fuck are you here?” I growl, pointing my pistol at his head.
“Fuck you,” he spits.
I fire the pistol into the floor next to his head, and he immediately begins to cower and cry. “Tell me why the fuck you’re here,” I say, kneeling on his back and pressing my gun into the back of his head.
“You killed Erik. We were protecting his club, and you fucking killed him. He made us so much fucking money, you goddamn swine,” he yells with no regard for his survival at all.
I’ve gained what I need from him, so I fire twice into the back of his head, putting him out of his misery and sending the remaining men scattering from the building.
The first thing I do when I realize that the threat has dissipated is look for Stepan, who I realize is also slumped over on the floor.
“Fuck!” I shout, sprinting over to him.
He’s still breathing and conscious, but he’s been hit in the shoulder. He’s bleeding badly, and I know he has limited time before he risks going into shock.
I pick him up, staggering under his weight. He’s heavy as fuck, but the adrenaline coursing through my body pushes me through, and I’m able to carry him outside to the car.
“Stepan, you can’t go to sleep. Stay with me,” I plead with him, forcing myself not to shake as I start the car and peel out of the cracked, overgrown parking lot.
Every time I look over to him, I can see him losing consciousness, and it takes everything in me not to panic to the point of losing my ability to function. I’ve been in this position many times; I know the protocol. But this is the only true friend I have on the planet. I can’t fucking lose him.
As much as I hate being in hospitals, it’s obvious that Stepan isn’t going to survive just by visiting an underground mafia doctor for a few stitches. Even when Nikolai was the one in danger, I hardly trusted that doctor to save him, and I can’t take my chances right now.