[FROLO]
That evening, the city had its first glimpse of what pure hatred and spite could look like.
Sergei didn’t operate on footage and gimmicks anymore. If anything, he was like a maniac on the streets. A man who only had one mission.
Erase them all.
Then go home.
To Solnyshka.
That was what he was working toward, which was why, even now, as he was surrounded by soldiers with guns they’d probably bought from his distributors, Sergei wasn’t fazed.
Not right now anyway.
He didn’t care about anything, because everything that had been standing in his way and his home with Katya was slowly fading.
“Sergei, put the man down!” someone said into the megaphone, and the alpha just turned to the source of the voice. His abilities were extremely heightened because Sergei only had one priority now.
Hunt.
And hunting he was.
“Are you sure you want me to do that?” he asked, then he looked at the man he was holding.
A man almost the same age as him.
The man who had been assigned to lock up Katya Romanov. The man who had taken his Solnyshka away.
Sergei had looked for him all morning after coming for Romanov Steel. And he had found him at a cafe.
Laughing with his friends.
Cheering for things Sergei didn’t even care to look further into at the moment.
And then Sergei remembered them.
The whimpers from his mate.
The cries these past weeks that had haunted him in his sleep.
The nights when Katya got up from bed and went to cry in the kitchen because he didn’t want to wake Sergei up.
But Sergei had never slept. Not really.
Not since Katya had been taken.
Then his Solnyshka was back home, crying his heart out in the middle of the night away from Sergei. And when morning came, Katya would smile as if nothing had happened.
Like he didn’t spend the night cuddled up on the couch, crying for something that even Sergei, for all his power, had never been able to give him back.
Would never give him back.
And it hurt.
Because now… the only thing that Sergei wanted was complete annihilation.
He’d already killed six people in the span of two hours. This man was his seventh, and he had waited.
For the government to send soldiers. For them to arrive and give him threats. He had waited for them to tell him something he already knew.
For him to let the man go.
To let the man survive.
For them, he was too important.
Which was why they had started asking about his demands.
But what Sergei wanted was far too expensive for them all. They couldn’t bring what he wanted back.
The smiles of his Solnyshka in the night. They would never bring them back.
Sergei had thought coming home and being with his Solnyshka would fix everything. But he had overestimated the importance of it all. Because now the only thing he wanted was a life that had Katya in it.
Yet he couldn’t even have that because there would be people everywhere.
“Mr. Moskowsky, this is a warning! If you don’t let the man go, we will shoot!” the man announced again, and Sergei just laughed.
Shoot?
They had already emptied magazines into him. They had done everything they could. Tried even explosives, only for his pheromones to block them so fast and rip the closest people to him into pieces before they could get to him.
This was a madman.
A monster.
But Katya loved him.
Katya told him to go home.
That was what he was working toward.
Home.
“Alright, alright! sheesh! I’ll let him go then!” Sergei said, then he slapped the man’s head off his neck, and before the body hit the ground, he used the heavy bone-cutting blade he’d borrowed from the butcher down the street.
Then he struck the man at the waist, and watched as his insides spilled while his halves went sideways.
“There! Did it!! Don’t shoot!” Sergei said, the mockery in his tone coming through as the government operatives stiffened. They had tried everything to get to this man.
They had even called his son to help them out.
But Yaroslav had simply said he was busy running the empire. That they had chosen to agitate his father, and he was not going to go out there in the name of humanity that they didn’t give his father.
They tried to get through to Katya.
But Katya only asked one question…
“The man being tortured… what my Vladimir is accusing him of… did he do it?’
They didn’t have an answer.
Because they knew it.
The official was guilty.
The man was guilty of whatever Sergei was accusing him of.
And that was how the only leverage and links to humanity they could have used to bring Sergei back backed off on them.
Then they were alone.
Completely and utterly alone with a beast who didn’t mind killing many more.
It was haunting, really, because this was not even a man who had to worry about his mate anymore.
This was just…
Sergei.
The devil of Frolo.
The man who didn’t give a shit about anything anymore.
And they could smell it off of him.
The stench of death.
The man who ruined more than he saved.
But did he even have a reason to save anything right now?
“Okay, fine, you can shoot if it makes you feel better about what life has become for you. I will count three… and a half,” Sergei said, and they stared in confusion.
Three and a half weeks.
That was how old their child was.
How old their baby had been when he was murdered.
Sergei had suspected it, because there was just no way the medicines would have done that to Katya.
He had had Meera look into the compositions.
He had asked Zhenya to give him a list of medicines they used on Katya, including the ones meant to induce pain.
And Meera… she had analyzed it all.
By herself.
Then with a group of her friends.
Even sent the samples to other medics.
The result had been the same.
The meds used during torture couldn’t have done it.
And now, here they were, with a man who looked like he was about to send the whole city into a rampage.
But then he didn’t care.
Not anymore.
“By the way, you need to duck!” Sergei shouted as he looked at the soldiers whose hands were shaking on their guns.
They looked pitiful, really, not that Sergei would smile at the thought or even feel terrible for them.
They were part of the system.
Not just the justice system anymore.
The system that had made Katya cry again.
The system that Katya had trusted and had hurt him again.
“Always the dramatic one, aren’t you?” Rastenkin sighed as he walked over to where Sergei was.
In that moment, canisters were suddenly dropped on them by drones. Drones that no one had really been able to see because of the cloaking technologies developed by Knox Tech and Moskowsky Holdings.
Then the massacre really began.
The six Sergei had been with through and through.
Against hundreds of soldiers.
It was a done deal the moment the Myrtles and the secretaries came through. The moment the secretaries turned their sniper guns at the snipers aimed at their boss.
The moment the Myrtles had arrived with canisters.
And soon, there was only red dust in the air, and blood that spilled like life was worth nothing. People who were hurt and damaged lay there; there wasn’t much to think of.
It didn’t take long before the other crew stepped in.
The Psych Ward.
Sure, the Moskowsky betas had been given twenty-four hours by Sergei to prepare and say their goodbyes, but the Psych Ward operatives had always been active. Always.
Which was also why it was hard to tell who was who from the smoke that lingered. Because here and now, everyone was prey.
The betas.
The Psych Ward Operatives.
The Myrtles.
Even Sergei himself.
But in a man-eat-man society, there was always going to be a monster who prevailed.
And Sergei… gods, Sergei.
Thirty minutes into the confrontation and overload of red canisters, his drones showed up again. Absorbed the smoke like it was just another regular day.
Only that when the smoke was gone, and the man stood in the middle of what was supposed to be his last moment, there were bodies scrawled all over.
Some soldiers were dead.
Some had survived.
And in Sergei’s war, survivors were what made the war more interesting.
So he let them go. Because he wasn’t here to eliminate them all just to prove what he was.
He already knew what he was.
The city knew what he was.
Everyone already had the answer.
The only thing that mattered was the war.
The war Sergei had begun. One that he wasn’t about to call quits on.
Not before he got to the man who started this all.
Daniil Aleksandrovich.
But Sergei was a patient man.
He had waited and learned. The only problem this time?
He had someone to go home to. He had a home to go back to. He had…
A husband.
A husband who wanted him back.
Soon.
“Go home to your bosses. Come find me when you’re stronger, or maybe tomorrow. I don’t care. Just come, or I will hunt you down and end this myself.”
And with that, the Moskowsky team left quietly, as if they had never been there.
Only with clothes that were covered in blood and ugly parts.
And behind them…
The very first state of something no one knew how to name yet.
Somewhere in the middle of the city, the Blackwaters watched excitedly, like the massacre was just another thing for them.
Well…
Until someone knocked on their door.
“Hi, I’m looking for Tyler…”
Zhenya Levin was here.
Well, what the hell??