The Code To A Don's Heart

t w e n t y - s i x

Warning: blood and murder :)

P E A C H    M C C O Y — T H E    H A C K E R

Britney Spears can't block out the sound of screams.

My body shook, my mind crumbled. I was worried for Viktor. That man had a death wish. That beautiful, caring and wonderful piece of ass was down there fighting for his life and mine while I was hiding behind a crate, cuddling with my gun.

I had to get down there and help him.

But I'd also kind of promised to stay put.

My heart and my mind were at war. Save him, but that meant going against his wishes. Stay put, but that meant risking his death. Viktor Makarovich could not die on me. I cared for him. Yet another man had weaseled their way into my life and found reason for me to care for them and do my best to see them alive and well. That's when a particularly horrific male scream cut through my chorus of Toxic, I opened my eyes and stood up.

Screw it, I was saving the Russian.

But getting to the end of the rail and looking down, I realised he didn't need my help.

My brain couldn't comprehend it at first. There was so much red. On the floor, on the crates, on him and yet he stood and moved as lithe as an animal born to hunt. He seemed as crazed as one too as his muscled inked arms swung in wide arcs, holding a red axe. I recognized the weapon because we'd passed it on our way up here. It didn't seen deadly then but in his grasp, it held the same will as death itself.

Viktor had this crazed and detached demeanor. A side of his blond hair was slick with blood and the red substance run down his bulletproof vest and the shirt underneath. He wasn't the same man who'd treated me like glass. I was looking at someone different, someone scary beyond what I could've imagined and the worst part...

This person, whoever he was, enjoyed the bloodshed.

Viktor was a hedonistic serial killer. I didn't know the cold terror that can wash through you when you see a person who seeks thrills and derives pleasure from killing like he was obviously doing. For all the men that came for us through the door, two remained standing but not for long. Viktor swung and spun the axe like it was just an extension of himself but it was at the moment when he sunk the heavy object into the last man's skull, cracking the helmet on his head that I gasped and put my hand over my mouth.

The strength in that blow caused three sounds to ring out in the now gravely silent warehouse. The first was the disgusting squish as the axe landed home in the man's cranium. The next was the sloppy noise of metal on bone as Viktor yanked it out, breathing heavy. And the last was the whimper I couldn't suppress behind my hand.

Viktor heard the last one and looked up at me. I didn't want to see the look in his eye so I backed up from the rail. In my state of terror and shock, my back hit a crate and I could't find it in me to move.

He just killed like.... like...

I shivered but there was a tingling sensation in the back of my head. A name. A mass murder. A case that could fit with this one. Bodies killed in the same fashion flashed before my eyes but they were on a screen. My laptop screen. It was a news report. They had been thugs then, drug traffickers but it was all the same.