Draft version - Russian Roulette - Family secrets

Ch. 86: Come with me, Phoenix

Scrambling in the dark to get to his phone, Gareth rolled around in the sheets to reach the nightstand. The ring tone told him it was work.

"Da," he gruffly spat out, still groggy from being ripped from the under 2 hours of sleep he had gotten.
"It's Oleksander, I'm at B-point waiting on deliveries. The first two trucks have been here but I'm still waiting on the last one. It's an hour behind the others."

Yawning Gareth stretched and tried to clear his head. "That's not really unusual?"
"It's Jace. I've tried both his, Nicholay and Ruslan's phones and nothing. One of them would have answered."

Gareth was already out of his bed and rummaging through his closet, the phone was on speaker while he got dressed in whatever his hands could get a hold of. "Where was the delivery? Text me the address and send fucking everybody, I'm on my way."
"Don't go alone!" Oleksander warned with clear worry that Gareth was walking into a proper shitshow unprepared.
"Jace would do it for me." Gareth did not bother to listen to Oleksander's reply, he cut the call and ran out of the bedroom.

In his office he found weapons in his gun locker and stormed out of the apartment.

Oleksander had texted him the address for the delivery and he was there in 10 minutes. On screeching wheels, Gareth had driven from his apartment along the harbor to the docking section where the delivery had been made.

Quietly he pulled up at the location and parked. He got out and snug closer, weapons at the ready, fueled with adrenaline. Full Russian assassin mode.

Enter the Dragon.

Everything was quiet, a few lamps cast a yellowish light on the area but left a lot in shadow. Gareth had no way of knowing if anybody was hiding in the shadows, he was willing to chance it.

He turned a corner of a warehouse and saw Ruslan on the ground. There was no reason to check if he were alive, the gunshot wound to his head said everything. Gareth saw Nicholay's body in the middle of the parking lot, not far from the van, and went closer, still ready to defend himself if anything should come out of the shadows.

Nicholay's throat had been cut to the point where his head had almost been severed. Gareth felt the blood pump in his veins, if that had been the fate of Ruslan and Nicholay he feared what had happened to Jace.

If he had been taken or...

Looking around he saw the one thing he had hoped not to. Sticking out from an angle where he could not see more, hidden by the van, were boots.

It had never been in Gareth to pray, he was pragmatic. Though at that moment he was ready to do so. Moving in, he felt his hands shake and how his legs were like lead, he was afraid of what he would find.

Deep breaths.

Two more steps.

No!

No, no, no, no, no!

On the ground in a pool of blood Jace's body was slumped on his side. There was blood everywhere. Jace's pale face was all Gareth could focus on. No rosy tint to his skin, no toothy grin, no annoying as fuck jokes.

Just a pale body soaked in blood.

Crying out in pain, Gareth fell to his knees in the mess of blood supporting himself with his hands on the ground, not caring at all that his clothes and hands got soaked. The gun and knife he had been holding ending by his sides.

Tears sprung to his eyes and he did not care.

Hate surged through him.

Regret, sorrow, disbelief, hurt.