Derek Holt broke my arm, trapped me in the bathroom, and calmly told me the police would arrest me instead of him

The air in Lincoln Park was thick with fog as Nikolai’s tactical van parked two blocks away from my childhood home. The house, a beautiful historic brownstone, was surrounded by construction scaffolding and warning signs. It looked abandoned, a silent monument to the happy childhood Derek had tried so hard to make me forget.

“Mikhail and Yuri will clear the perimeter,” Nikolai said, checking his silenced pistol before tucking it into his holster. He looked at me, his hand reaching out to gently touch my cheek. “Stay close to me, Emma. If anything goes wrong, you run. Do you understand?”

“I’m not leaving you again, Nikolai,” I said, my voice steady.

He smiled, a genuine, breathtaking smile that warmed the cold night. “Very well. Let’s reclaim your inheritance.”

We slipped through the rear gate, bypassing the padlocks with Yuri’s bolt cutters. The interior of the house was stripped down to the drywall, smelling of dust, old wood, and plaster. It was eerie walking through the rooms where I had once played, now hollowed out and dark.

We reached my father’s former study. The fireplace was still intact, a beautiful structure of dark red brick.

I knelt before it, my left hand tracing the cold bricks. I searched for the one my mother had described. Near the bottom left, my fingers brushed against a rough surface. I shone my small flashlight on it. There, faintly carved into the clay, was a small, elegant letter “G”.

“This is it,” I whispered.

Nikolai knelt beside me. Using a tactical knife, he carefully scraped away the crumbling, decades-old mortar around the brick. With a firm pull, the brick slid out, revealing a dark cavity behind it.

Inside lay a heavy, metal lockbox wrapped in oiled cloth.

“We found it,” Nikolai said, pulling the box out.

Before we could celebrate, the floorboards above us creaked.

A flashlight beam cut through the darkness of the hallway, followed by a voice that made my blood run cold.

“Well, well. Look what the stray dog dragged in.”

Derek stepped into the study. He was bruised, his face swollen from his encounter with Nikolai’s men, but he was holding a heavy semi-automatic pistol. Behind him stood four heavily armed mercenaries, their weapons trained directly on us.

“Derek,” I whispered, a wave of disgust replacing my fear.

“Did you really think Volkov’s men could keep me locked up forever?” Derek sneered, his voice laced with manic energy. “Petrov has deep pockets, Emma. He bought my way out of that basement. And now, he wants that box. Hand it over, and maybe I’ll ask him to let you live. As for your Russian boyfriend… well, his reign in Chicago ends tonight.”

Nikolai slowly stood up, placing himself directly between me and Derek’s gun. His posture was completely relaxed, his arms hanging loosely at his sides. He looked at Derek like a wolf looking at a barking toy breed.

“You are a very foolish man, Derek,” Nikolai said softly. “You think Viktor Petrov bought you out because he values you? You were the bait. He knew you would lead him straight to us. But he didn’t tell you one very important detail.”

Derek’s brow furrowed, his confidence wavering. “What detail?”