Emperor of Rage: Chapter 3

Fear is a delicious sensation.

She might think I’ve vanished into the shadows, but I’m still here, watching. Waiting. She runs, just like I knew she would—a little unsteadily at first, her hands trembling as she fumbles with her car keys, her breath coming in sharp, ragged gasps.

I watch through the glass I cracked when I pinned her to it. Watch her scramble toward the black Audi, her steps uneven on the dark, empty street.

She thinks she’s safe. She thinks she’s escaped.

She’s wrong.

I just enjoy a chase.

The night wraps around her like a shield, but I see everything. Every frantic glance over her shoulder, every flinch at a sound that echoes too loud in the stillness. She’s running on adrenaline, trying to escape the memory of my hand at her throat. Trying to forget the weight of my gaze on her from behind my mask.

I’m still watching.

Even though I do enjoy a chase, I’m still not quite sure why I let her go. My grip tightens on the windowsill as I watch her slip into the driver’s seat, her silhouette barely visible through the glass. The engine roars to life, and for a moment, I expect her to peel away immediately, tires squealing against the pavement in her panic. But she hesitates, her face dimly lit by the glow of the dashboard. She sits, frozen, staring out into the darkness like she’s waiting for something—like she’s expecting me to come after her.

My jaw clenches.

I fucking should, and finish what I started when I first caught her. I should’ve killed her. It would’ve been clean, easy. No witnesses. No loose ends.

Why didn’t I?

I’ve killed for less. Strangers, enemies, men who crossed me by accident. But something about her…the way she looked at me, defiant and terrified all at once…

I scowl.

I don’t like this feeling. Uncertainty.

I’m not used to it.

My hand hovers over the hilt of my katana, the scent of blood from the men I cut down still hanging in the air.

The smell of death and the rush of violence don’t bother me. They never have. It’s the one thing I can rely on—holding the weight of death in my hands and knowing with absolute certainty that I can control it.

But her?

Not so much.

I exhale sharply, forcing myself to step away from the window. The shadows swallow me again as I move through the office, stepping over the bodies at my feet. Back at the computer I was on before, I finish copying everything off Orlov Financial Solutions’ network to the thumb drive.

Like most times I go down this particular rabbit hole on this particular hunt, I’m not entirely sure what I’m looking for.

I hope I’ll know it when I see it.

When I’m done, I glance back at Fedir’s hand-less body. There’s something comforting in the finality of death and the stillness it leaves behind. These men were dead the second they crossed my path. Not just because of who and what I am, but because of who and what they were.

Possible accessories to a crime I’ve been trying to solve for far, far too long.

This particular road may turn out to be yet another dead end. I’ll only know when I’ve analyzed the information I’m taking with me tonight.

I could dwell on the “what if” of Fedir and his men not being involved in this crime I’ve spent almost two decades trying to solve. I could even allow myself to get tangled up in the irony of being a monster myself, hunting monsters.

A criminal looking to punish other criminals.

But it’s different with this.

It’s…personal.

In any case, even if Orlov Financial Solutions and the Grigorov Bratva weren’t involved in the horror show of twenty years ago, I doubt the world will mourn a piece of shit like Fedir Gusev and his band of shitheads.

But she… She was a complication I didn’t expect.

I kick my toe absently at the body of one of Fedir’s men. Blood from his sliced neck stains the entire front of his tracksuit.

They had to die. But her?

I can still feel her pulse beneath my fingers, rapid and erratic. I can still see the flash of fear in her eyes when I pinned her against the window. It wasn’t just fear. There was something else.

Something darker that flickered beneath the panic.

It’s been gnawing at me ever since.

I stand, rolling my neck. I should walk away. From this shitshow, obviously. But from her, too.

…But I know I won’t.

The drive back to the apartment I’ve been using while I’m here in New York is quiet. But not quiet enough.

This city bothers me.

It’s too faceless. Too proud of itself for no real discernible reason. It’s filthy, and it’s a never-ending slugfest between the various underworld powers.

The tension bubbling just under the surface makes the very air stink. It’s suffocating. And fuck, it’s loud.

I’ve always preferred the silence, the way it wraps around me like a second skin, drowning out the noise of the world. It’s easier to think that way. Objectively, for a city of ten million assholes, it is fairly quiet right now. But tonight, that quiet feels oppressive, like the weight of that girl’s gaze pressing down on me, demanding answers I don’t have.

The name—Karen Vanderschmit—is obviously fucking bullshit. I saw the flicker in her eyes when she handed the ID over, the brief hesitation before she spoke. She was hiding something.

I’ll find out what it is. I always do.

Tonight’s little foray into the offices of the Grigorov Bratva was a two-for-one, technically speaking. On the surface, I was there on Kenzo’s orders. But my cousin’s attempt to dig into the world of the Bratva as we expand into this goddamn city was only my excuse for being there.

My other reason is my own.

Kenzo sends me to things like this—things that any of our waka gashira or even a common foot-soldier could take care of—because I’m good at them.

And by “things” I mean “fixing problems”.

Except now I have a new one.

As I drive through the mostly empty and yet still too fucking loud streets of New York, my mind drifts back to her face.

Specifically, the way she looked at me.

Most people break when they’re faced with death. They panic, try to find some way out. But not her. She was scared, yes, and she did ask me not to kill her. But there was something else in her eyes. Defiance, and something else I can’t quite place.

It’s sticking with me.

Fuck, I should have made it clean. I should have left her dead on the floor next to those men, her blood mixing with theirs. But instead, I let her go. And now, she’s a thread I can’t quite cut loose.

My phone rings through the Bluetooth in the truck, and I answer without looking at who it is.

“Yeah.”

When I’m greeted with nothing but silence, my brow furrows. But when I hear the slow, rhythmic breathing through the open line, my eyes snap to the display screen.

Unknown number.

Fuck. I know who it is.

“That time of year again already, Jonas?”

The heavy breathing silences sharply for a moment before he speaks.

“Well, you know me, Mal…” the voice from my past murmurs quietly, his tone raspy and gritty.

“I’d rather I didn’t.”

Jonas chuckles darkly and quietly. My lips stay thinned and unmoving.

I don’t keep track of this date. I have no interest in memorializing it in any capacity. But Jonas does. And that’s why this darkness from my past insists on calling me on this date, every fucking year.

“What the fuck do you want, Jonas.”

“To remind you, brother,” he hisses back. “To make sure you never forget the day you killed our father.”

“He wasn’t our father,” I say tersely, mechanically. “Nor are you and I related, at all.”

“Oh, but we are, Mal,” Jonas murmurs lowly. “We are forever⁠—”

“Get help, Jonas,” I say quietly. “Stop letting that monster and the childhood he destroyed in us pull the strings on your life.”

Jonas is silent again for another moment.

“Just remember, brother,” he growls in his rasping tone. “One of these days, I will find something—someone—that you love. And I will destroy them, right in front of you⁠—”

“Find help, Jonas,” I mutter. “And lose my fucking number.”

I hang up and kill the engine outside my temporary residence in Soho. For a second, I breathe in the silence of the truck, trying to purge Jonas’ voice from my head. Then I head inside.

The building is nothing special—just another loft-style building tucked among the trendy, cobbled streets of lower Manhattan, with most of the other residents being coked-out models or married guys coming to use their downtown fuck-pad.

For me, it’s just a place to disappear to when I’m forced to be here.

The moment I step inside, the comforting weight of silence settles over me. But even now, something feels off.

I toss my jacket onto the back of the leather sofa, moving through the darkened loft like a shadow. My thoughts are still circling back to her, to the way her body trembled beneath my hands, to the sound of her breath catching when I leaned in closer.

She shouldn’t matter. She doesn’t matter.

So why can’t I shake the image of her from my mind?

The monitors flicker to life as I drop into the chair behind my desk, the soft hum of the computer breaking the silence.

Time to put this ghost to rest.

My fingers move quickly across the keyboard, pulling up the surveillance footage from the office I just redecorated in blood. I didn’t just download all those files. I set up a back door into their system, since I couldn’t get in before.

This would be why I had to pretend to be a potential investor and let Fedir and his dipshits lead me right to the place.

Russians are so predictable like that. Flash some cash, and they get sloppy.

I frown as I peer at the screen, scrolling back.

There she is.

My lips purse and I steeple my fingers under my chin as I watch “Karen” slip in through the side door of the building. She moves with a caution that suggests she knows exactly what she’s doing.

It’s…professional.

“A temp”, she called herself.

Yeah, bullshit. She broke in, and she was looking for something.

I let the footage run, frowning as I watch her scan the room, her gaze darting toward the back of the offices. She moves like someone who’s used to being unnoticed, someone who knows how to slip between the cracks. That means she’s dangerous.

I don’t like loose ends. And I hate dangerous ones.

I watch as she sinks down behind a desk, infuriatingly out of view of any of the cameras. But I do see her pop up again a few minutes later, peering around the corner of the desk and quickly darkening a laptop when I walk in.

I watch myself neatly slicing and dicing Fedir and his men. Then her bolting and running, with me right behind her.

I watch her squirm as I wrap a hand around her pretty throat.

I pause the feed there, staring at her face—wide-eyed, terrified, but not broken.

She didn’t break.

I lean back in my chair, fingers drumming on the armrest, replaying the scene in my mind. I could have ended it right then. I should have. But instead, I put my hand on her neck. I felt her trembling pulse beneath my fingers.

I let her soft, pouty lips wrap around my fingers and felt the wet softness of her mouth.

Then I let her go.

I’m still not sure why the fuck I did any of those things.

The question gnaws at me, but no matter how much I turn it over in my mind, I can’t find the answer. Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe I just wanted to see what she’d do. Maybe the monster inside of me sometimes just gets fucking bored.

Maybe I wanted her to run to see how far she’d get before I caught up to her.

I turn off the computer, the screen going dark as I lean forward, my fingers tapping the edge of the desk thoughtfully.

I’ll find her again. And when I do, there won’t be any hesitation.

Next time, she’ll know exactly who she’s dealing with.