The Final Hour (Volkov Bratva #3)(84)

The size of this place, let alone the location made it beyond expensive, and though Klaus knew how well they were payed for their services, it still wouldn’t pay for this. He was learning more about Celt in the last few weeks then the years they had spent around each other. Much like the warehouse that housed his fight club, there was a floor below the ground level, a coded elevator that took them down.

But unlike that place, this place was meticulously clean, this floor was made of concrete and polished steel, the walls lined with various weaponry, even a few rifles that weren’t on the market yet that Klaus had been looking to acquire.

Celt waved them over to a table, internally lit by LED lights. There were blueprints set up along the top of it, a room on the documents circled in red ink.

Klaus had been smart in contacting Celt, one of the best trackers he knew because despite it being a little over twenty-four hours, he had already found Jetmir’s location. He had learned the hard way how to control his reactions to things, and the only time he showed an emotion was when he wanted to.

Now, Klaus kept his excitement to himself as he looked over the plans, hunting for entrances and any possible exit. He had been waiting for this day for a long time, and though he had taken his time, working his way up the list of people that had hurt Sarah, it had all been worth it.

“Two guards in the front, at least ten on the inside throughout these rooms.” Celt pointed to three, one near the front door, another by the back hallway, and the last on the top floor. “Our target will be easy prey once they’re out of the picture. Red, you take the guards, then we breach. I don’t know which of you two are more hard up for the bloke we’re after, so I’ll leave his capture up to you.”

“Security?” The Russian asked speaking up for the first time since they got there.

“Already taken care of.”

The Russian glanced down at his watch. “Then we better get moving.”



“Maybe you should stay back, Russian,” Klaus suggested as he pulled on his mask, looking every bit of the mercenary he was. “You might’ve spent too much time sitting behind a desk.”

Mishca had always had a soft spot for Klaus—though he would never admit that fact aloud—if only because he remembered how broken he had seen him all those years ago. Sometimes Mishca wondered if all the sarcasm was a ploy to make everyone think he didn’t care, that nothing got to him.

Smirking, Mishca strapped on the bulletproof vest. “I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you.”

“You two are fecking annoying, you know that?” Celt spoke up glaring at the two of them.

The remark wasn’t unwarranted, especially when the pair of them were in the same room together. Their habit of bickering was a well known fact to practically everyone that knew them now.

Klaus flipped him off, going over to the edge of the rooftop where his rifle was set up. Mishca felt a pang in his chest at the sight of it, remembering his own wound, but he wisely put it out of his mind, crouching down beside the pair of mercenaries.

Just below them, at least three-hundred yards away, a man casually tossed a burning cigarette to the ground, extinguishing the flame with the toe of his boot as he blew out a thick stream of smoke.

In seconds, once Klaus pulled the trigger, he crumpled to the ground.

A shell casing hit the ground near Mishca’s feet, the sharp sound of the metal just softer than Klaus’s rifle as he reloaded.

The other guard, just as Celt had said, came around the corner, looking to his fallen comrade as he snatched a gun from his belt, as well as a walkie-talkie.

Before he could utter a word, though it was impossible to tell from his vantage point, Mishca watched as his head jerked back, a hole in his forehead.

“Damn,” Klaus muttered as he lifted his rifle from the edge. “I was off by two centimeters.”

Stashing the rifle away, Mishca, Klaus, and Celt headed across the street, looking to each other for a brief moment, an unspoken understanding between them all.

They breached.

As they entered the house, Celt and Klaus leading the way, Mishca decided that he would need to place a few mercenaries on his payroll, unless Klaus decided to stick around.

With effortless precision, all of Jetmir’s guards were taken out one by one in what ultimately became a competition between Celt and Klaus. Having them, Mishca didn’t have to do much besides follow their lead up to the second floor.

Yet Jetmir was nowhere to be found.

Mishca looked to Klaus with a raised brow, but couldn’t discern what expression he was currently receiving in return. Of course, there had been no guarantee that Jetmir would still be here at the exact time they arrived, but Mishca had taken the word of Klaus’…well he didn’t know what Celt was to Klaus exactly.

He would have said friend, but it didn’t seem as though Klaus had friends—and coworker didn’t seem an appropriate fit either.

As he opened his mouth to question them both, a creaking floorboard alerted them to another presence in the house.

Klaus cocked his head to the side, silent, listening, then rather suddenly, he shoved Mishca to the side, just as bullets shot through the floor, almost at the exact spot Mishca had been standing.

Celt took off, surprisingly fast despite the amount of weaponry on his body. Mishca looked from the holes in the floor to Klaus as he prepared to run behind Celt.