Chapter Twenty-Six
Tomasz —
He crouched at the edge of a wrought-iron fence outside a glass-and-stone estate, cigarette stub between pale fingers. Inside, two fawn Cani Corsi lounged on manicured grass — relaxed, trustful, the sort of animals whose owners slept nights because they had Anika on speed-dial.
Perfect.
A handler moved like a shadow; a dart gun coughed twice. The male dropped first. The female barked and then slumped beside him.
Lights flicked on. A tech exec stumbled out into the lawn, confused and blinking. Tomasz didn’t hesitate. He reached forward and swung a heavy elbow, skull meeting concrete with a dull thud.
“Bag them,” he ordered. “More to collect before dawn.”
As the van peeled away he watched the trees that hid the road to the east. “I’ll make sure to kill everything that matters to her.” he muttered, sucking air through his teeth.
The second property felt different before they crossed the drive. It was a modest ranch pulled into the Tennessee hills — one of Anika’s first clients, Robert Hensley, ex-Marine, steady and loyal. He’d bought a black-brindle female, Tonka, and a young red male, Mack.
Tomasz had watched the schedules. Dogs out by dawn, fed by six, inside by ten. Hensley was predictable. That made him vulnerable.
They hit the house in the lulls between routine: no narcotics this time. He wanted lucid animals who would fight, who would remember and tell stories with teeth.
Mack lunged, ripping a handler’s forearm. Tonka planted her feet and snarled, a sound with the weight of earth behind it. Men went down. Hensley fought like a cornered bull with a poker; one of Tomasz’s men didn’t rise. Floors splattered with blood.
Tomasz left the property with two more dogs in crates and a house gutted of calm. He stepped over a shattered family photo and spat. “She’ll feel this,” he said. “She’ll break.”
Anika —
The secure line rang just after midnight. The voice on the other end barely had the scaffolding to hold itself.
“Anika, it’s Hensley.” The man sounded hollow. “They took Tonka and Mack. My wife—she’s in the hospital. Lacerations. Concussion. I tried—”
Anika’s world narrowed to a pinprick of white noise. Her hand trembled.
Nikolai was at her shoulder before she had finished the sentence, moving for weapons like a shadow that knew command.
“Robert,” Anika said, voice controlled in the way practiced people stay together. “Get somewhere safe. Send photos. Vehicle make. License plates. Anything.” She paused. “I’ll handle it.”
“Why our dogs?” Hensley rasped.
“Because it hurts worse to take what someone loves,” she said, a whisper for herself as much as for him. She ended the call, the link clicking dead.
The war room felt smaller, colder. Nyx paced, low, sensing the change. Anika stood, jaw set.
“This is escalation,” Nikolai said.
“No,” she corrected, turning to the weapons cabinet. “This is war.”
Screens blossomed into maps and feeds. Two attacks — one at a corporate estate, one at Hensley’s ranch — tracked along a corridor between Tennessee and North Carolina. Tomasz wasn’t hiding; he was taunting.
“They’re picking soft targets,” she murmured, tapping channels into grids. “Setting a pattern in attempt to lure us...”
Nikolai watched her fingers move like a conductor’s. “Desperate men are dangerous,” he said.
“So are women who’ve been broken and pushed to the edge,” she shot back.
She named the strike team, voice cutting through the hum: “Zulu. Whiskey. Major. Delta. Ranger. Echo.” From darkness and kennels the dogs emerged, silent and lethal.
“They know,” Nikolai said.
“Yeah,” she said. “They always do.”
Nikolai gripped the wheel of Anika’s Escalade, the big vehicle eating the mountain road in silence. She sat passenger, eyes fixed on the dark horizon. Behind them, crates of gear rattled softly, dogs braced and steady—alert but calm, waiting for her command. In the mirrors, a convoy of blacked-out SUVs followed close, headlights hooded, each packed with Nikolai’s soldiers. Together they moved like a column of shadow, closing on the estate like a storm rolling in.
The slaughterhouse-turned-hub rose from flattening light: broken concrete, rusted steel, the smell of old blood. Infrared showed six guards outside, eight more inside. Four crates with dogs inside them near the back wall.
Anika smelled the place before she saw it—a metallic tang, old sweat. She felt herself harden into ice cold focus.
“Zulu, flank right. Ranger, flank left. Delta, Major on me. Echo, cut comms. Whiskey, secure exit,” she ordered quietly.
No shouting. No fanfare. Violence in silence.
Delta hit like a wrecking ball—low and devastating, a crack of muscle taking a man out before he could make a sound. Echo found the comms unit and made sure the hub’s throat was cut: radios dead, digital eyes blurred.
Anika moved to the crates. Tonka whimpered. Mack growled until she said, “va bene, sono qui.” (It’s okay, I’m here)
She picked the lock, blood from her shoulder trickling down her arm and splattering darkly on the cold floor. She must’ve tore the stitches. Behind her, Nikolai cleared a corridor with efficient cruelty—two guards left smoking on the concrete.
Inside, the pit yawed— A concrete basin stained with water and blood. A crate sat open, empty but for the memory of Ghost’s whimper. Teeth littered the edge like cheap trophies.
Anika pulled a steel collar from her pack—one that once bore Tomasz’s mock-sigil. She’d melted that sign away. Now there was a new tag in its place: You started this war, but I will finish it.
She threw the tag into the pit; it rang, a hard note that echoed off rust and bone.
They moved fast, neat, precise. Dogs reunited with owners who sobbed into their fur.
Tomasz —
Back at the warehouse, Tomasz watched an empty crate where Ghost had been held. The tag in his hand burned like insult. He expected to uncrate a weapon and return to a controlled world. Instead he found silence where obedience had been.
“She took Ghost,” he said, voice thin with a temper that had teeth. “She took my dog and made him hers.”
Around him, men shifted, uncertain for the first time. Tomasz slammed a fist down and then calmed into a different rage—strategic, slow.
He opened a drawer and pulled out a black folder bound in carbon fiber. A crimson insignia seemed to glow on the cover—something he never used unless all else failed. It was his last card, reserved for alliances that bled and payments that ended worlds.
Tomasz dropped the folder on the desk with a soft thud and smiled without humor.