Chapter 4: Corrupted Heart: Chapter 4

My prey has zero idea they’re being watched. Followed. Analyzed.

Hunted.

From the darkness concealing me, I watch my prey’s lips pull into a smile, revealing a flash of human emotion and showing me a glimpse of their “person-ness”…I won’t call it humanity…that will be extinguished in the next two to three minutes.

The glimmer of a smile doesn’t deter me. It doesn’t make me feel badly about what I’m about to do in the slightest.

Because actions have consequences. When those actions involve the trafficking of young girls into the hands of monsters to suffer a fate too horrifying to comprehend, the consequences will be appropriately horrific.

Despite my enormous size, I move silently in the shadows. If my prey tonight were to bolt and run, I’d have no trouble chasing them down. I’d enjoy it, too. But tonight, all I have time for is payback.

I’m not sanctimonious or arrogant enough to call this “justice”. I’m not “righting any wrongs” here. Yes, I’m guided by my own views on monsters like the one within my sights at this very moment, and he does deserve what’s about to happen to him, in spades.

But tonight is ultimately about self-indulgence.

It’s about letting my monster out.

Feeding the beast, and his need for blood, violence, and mayhem.

Pulling away from the dirty, grime-streaked window looking into the warehouse, I move along the alley at the back of the old brick building. A dumpster I already found gives me access to the old fire escape, which in turn gets me onto the roof.

Once up there, I move even more silently. I keep to the shadows and confine my footsteps to the places I marked yesterday with chalk—to the boards that won’t squeak and alert the cockroaches below that the exterminator is coming.

One, I don’t want them to freak out and do anything stupid with…or to…the girls they’ve got down there. But two, I don’t want them to scatter. Again, I’d chase them all down one by one if need be. But work smarter, as the saying goes, not harder. It’s already taken me a bit longer than I wanted to track down this distribution center of theirs after the change in plans the other night. I’d meant to carve the answers to my questions on the two former Carveli enforcers with the tip of a knife.

But they weren’t alone. And their company proved…distracting.

Which is putting it very, very mildly.

But before my mind can wander again to those big blue eyes and heart-shaped mouth, I yank my consciousness back to the business at hand. She’ll come later. First, I have business to attend to.

I left a skylight propped open last night: one, conveniently, in a corner above a hanging light without a bulb. Like a wraith, I slip inside the building, picking my way along one of the rafters. My gaze drops down to the haze of cigarette smoke, the smell of fear and dirt, and I listen to the chuckle of one of my prey as he bangs his gun against the bars of one of the cages. My teeth grind silently when I hear the sobs of the girls shrinking back from the bars and his laughter.

There’s evil everywhere in the world. Sometimes, it’s so much to think about that it almost overwhelms me. Sometimes it sparks a rage inside me that threatens to shatter the mask I’ve spent so much of my life perfecting for the people I call family and loved ones.

That’s what tonight is for. Not saving the world. Not destroying evil once and for all. You can do something, or you can do nothing. And the “something” I’m doing tonight will allow me to vent that rage that inevitably builds inside me.

I double check the knife strapped to my hip. Then I drop down to one of the catwalks just beneath the rafters. I move silently to the far side until I’m above a stack of old wooden shipping crates. Swinging over the edge of the catwalk, I lower myself, shoulders and biceps coiling like thick rope before I drop down behind the crates.

It’s a matter of seconds before my beast will be let out. And he knows it. He’s salivating for it. I slip the knife from its sheath, fingering the hilt. I slip around the far side of the boxes. My eyes stay shadowed as I keep hidden, taking note of my targets.

There’s only three of them. If they knew what was coming for them, they’d have added a fucking zero to that number.

The closest to me will be first, for practical reasons. He’s got an M-16 and an obviously inexperienced and twitchy trigger finger. His two buddies are similarly armed—one sitting at a folding table dicking around with playing cards and chain-smoking, the other doing his fuckhead maneuver of clanking the stock of his rifle against the bars while he laughs.

He’s apparently quite pleased by his ability to terrify children locked in cages.

The three of them have all got guns. I’ve just brought my knife. But I’m not worried. And it’s not as if I didn’t think there’d be firearms here.

I prefer the knife.

It’s more primal. More savage.

I can feel it more when I wipe their existence from the face of the earth.

It’s sentiments like that that might possibly indicate something far darker, psychologically speaking, than I care to contemplate most of the time. Does getting excited, maybe even a little hard at the prospect of ripping out the throats of child predators and traffickers make me a psychopath?

Perhaps, at least a little. Because it’s not just about justice or punishing the wicked to me. It’s not only about “doing the right thing”.

I fucking enjoy it.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, I am what I need to be: the strong, silent, gentle giant of a brother. The friendly and helpful grandson. The loyal friend.

But you can’t hide your true nature all the time. And it’s moments like this where I get to really be who and what I am. When I get to inhale malice and exhale violence and bloodshed.

It’s times like this when I feel the most alive.

You know, as in the opposite of what these three fucks are going to be in three, two, one…

Go.

The first never even sees me before my hand clamps over his mouth, wrenching his head to the side and snapping his neck. I drag him into the shadows, my knife cutting his throat anyway, because why the fuck not.

The other two jolt when I slip a shoe off their dead buddy’s foot and hurl it at the far wall of the warehouse.

“The fuck was that?!” the one at the table blurts, lurching to his feet and bringing up his M-16.

The dumb fuck still has the safety on when I charge up behind him. He screams, gurgling wetly as my knife punches into his lungs from behind, lifting him off his feet. The third one whirls, his eyes bulging in horror when he sees my size and my mask. Before he can even fire his weapon, I’m hurling cocksucker number two at him.

They both slam into the bars behind them. Roughly a quarter second later, I’ve got them both by the throats. I drag them into the shadows and away from the girls, who’ve already seen plenty of things they shouldn’t have, before slitting their throats as well and spilling their blood onto the ground.

I glance at my watch.

Three minutes and eighteen seconds.

Fuck. I’m getting slow.

“I’m glad you called, Kratos.”

The man in front of me with the slight Eastern European accent, blonde hair, and haunted blue eyes is my age. And yet Lukas Komarov always comes off as much older. I never actually asked how he knew who I was the first time we crossed paths, because I’d already looked into him.

Suffice to say that by the time we finally met, he was more than fully aware of who and what I was.

Lukas’ father, Viktor, runs the Kashenko Bratva, which Lukas will one day helm himself. But until then Lukas runs the Free Them Foundation alongside his wife, Lizbet, an organization that focuses on eradicating child trafficking around the world. To the casual observer, they do this by working with local legislators and police forces.

Under the surface, though, they do this by harnessing the power of the Bratva, not to mention Lukas’ personal penchant for darkness and violence, to exterminate the cockroaches that would harm children.

“Although…” Lukas arches a brow, turning to level his gaze at the three bodies now covered by a tarp in the corner of the warehouse. “When you did call, I sort of hoped we might be working together on this one.”

“Hey, I did call you.”

“An hour ago, yeah.” He eyes me. “When did you get here?”

I lift a heavy shoulder. “An hour and…three minutes ago?”

He smirks darkly before he nods at my face, which is still covered by my mask.

“You know, I do know a thing or two about masked vigilantism myself, Kratos.”

Yes. Yes, he does. I’ve looked into Lukas. His “methods”. His savagery. His complete lack of mercy when it comes to the type of men I just killed. Really, you could call me an admirer of his work. A student of it. He might know this.

I might not care if he does.

“Look, Kratos, what you’re doing is admirable. You know I have nothing bad to say about anything you do that aligns with our own mission. But we’ve got resources, man. Sure, I used to do it solo, too. But we’ve got a whole organization now. Teams that can help.”

I know where this is going. It goes here every single time he and I cross paths.

He wants me to come work for the Free Them Foundation. Not sitting behind a desk and attending board meetings, either.

He wants me to be a hunter for them.

It’s not that I have anything against Lukas, or Lizbet, or their organization. Not at all. But that’s just not me.

“Why don’t I save you the breath,” I growl quietly.

“Kratos—”

“I don’t do team sports, Lukas,” I shrug. “Sorry.”

Behind him, I catch a glimpse of some of his people putting up some temporary cloth backdrops. Past them, a beautiful and powerful-looking woman who I know is his wife, Lizbet, smiles warmly and cautiously as she slowly approaches the now-unlocked cage full of terrified girls.

I don’t like calling what I did tonight “rescuing” anyone. I merely curb-stomped evil. Besides, it’s hard to sell it as a selfless act when it was at least half about calming my beast.

It’s Lukas, Lizbet, and their organization who’ll do the “saving” tonight. They’ll remove the girls from here, and either find their original homes or make sure they get good, loving new ones. They’ll also take care of the therapy and the healing these girls will need.

I’m not the savior. Just the weapon.

Lukas exhales slowly. “The darkness catches up to you, Kratos. The darkness is the house. And you know as well as I do that the house always wins.” His eyes lock with mine. “You have to know when it’s time to take your chips and go home.”

I stay silent. Because the thing is, the darkness is home to me. This is where I breathe. Where I live. Where I feel alive.

Lukas shakes his head. “Okay, I’m done pitching you.”

“Sure, for now,” I growl.

He smiles quietly. “Yes.” He turns to nod his chin at the bodies. “Let me guess, former Carveli soldiers?”

I nod.

With the Carveli family now leaderless and in shambles, the whole organization is slowly breaking apart. And as that happens, there’s been more and more foulness concerning that family emerging from the shadows. Foulness like this shit.

The five major Italian mafia families in the States have a sort of “United Nations”-style agreement between them. Not a treaty or anything—more like a code of conduct that allows all ships to rise with the tide without infighting and bickering.

One of the hard and fast rules they set up was a ban on prostitution and trafficking. Say what you will about the Italian Mob, at least they don’t pimp girls anymore.

Or rather, they’re not supposed to.

Except it turns out there were a few little groups of people within the Carveli family who were. And I’m damned sure Massimo Carveli himself was getting kickbacks from it. Now that the whole organization is shattering into little fiefdoms, some of those groups are trying to make a go of it on their own. Groups like these dead assholes, or the two fucks I killed the other night.

The ones who tried to attack her.

I’ll be watching you, prinkípissa.

It wasn’t a threat.

It was a promise. And I never, ever break a promise.

I clear my throat and nod at Lukas. “Yep.”

“Same as the two assholes who got their throats cut way out in Brooklyn the other night?

I raise an eyebrow at him. He arches one back.

“Not like I don’t recognize your handiwork at this point, Kratos.”

I sniff. “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re referring to.”

He shakes his head, looking away. “Look, I know you’ve got this whole lone wolf thing going on. But if you ever change your mind⁠—”

“Something you might not know about me, Lukas,” I growl, “is that I’m a stubborn bastard. The day I change my mind, you can go ahead and bring ice skates to hell.”

He nods, a small smirk on his lips.

“Your people got this from here?”

He nods.

“Then that’s my cue.”

I turn and walk back toward the shadows.

“The house always wins, Kratos,” Lukas calls after me.

“Then I guess I’ll just have to be the house, won’t I?” I toss over my shoulder before I disappear into the darkness.

I’ve got somewhere else to be.

Other shadows to stalk.

Someone else to be watching over.

Like I said: a promise is a promise. And I never break a promise.