BLOOD OWNS THIS CITY

The Storage Unit

The door creaked open at 2:47 AM.

Marcus had been waiting for two hours. His body was pressed flat against the roof of the storage facility's main building, invisible against the gravel. Below him, two guards made their rounds. Flashlights cut through the darkness in lazy arcs.

He'd been watching this place for three weeks. Knew their patterns. Knew their blind spots. Knew exactly when the shift change happened.

Viktor's storage unit was in Section D. Number 47. A fortress of reinforced steel and biometric locks. Marcus had memorized the layout from the blueprints he'd stolen from the city archives.

The guards passed beneath him. He dropped.

His left leg buckled on impact. He caught himself with his hands, rolled behind a dumpster, and waited. The guards didn't turn. They kept walking, laughing about something, completely oblivious.

Marcus moved through the shadows like water. Five years of hiding had taught him to be invisible. Not just physically—mentally. He made himself forgettable. Unremarkable. The kind of man you looked past without seeing.

The fence around Section D was twelve feet high with razor wire at the top. Marcus pulled a pair of wire cutters from his jacket and made a hole just big enough to slip through. His leg screamed. He ignored it.

Unit 47 loomed ahead. A steel door with a keypad and a retinal scanner. Marcus didn't have Viktor's eyes. But he had something better.

He pulled a small device from his pocket—a portable retinal scanner he'd salvaged from a black market dealer. The device held a copy of Viktor's biometrics, stolen from a coffee cup the man had left behind at a press conference. The trick had cost Marcus six months of patience.

He pressed the device against the scanner. A green light flashed. The door clicked open.

Inside, the unit was packed with wealth. Artwork. Gold bars. Boxes of documents that smelled like money and secrets.

Marcus ignored the gold. The artwork. Everything that glittered.

He went straight for the filing cabinets.

The manifest he'd already found was in his pocket. But he needed more. Names. Dates. Connections. The kind of evidence that would destroy Viktor's entire empire.

He pulled open drawers and scanned documents. His fingers moved fast. His eyes were trained to find patterns, inconsistencies, the smell of lies on paper.

There. A folder marked "Project Serpent." Marcus pulled it out. Inside: photographs. Transcripts. A list of names.

His unit's names. All six of them. Marked with red X's.

Marcus's hands started shaking. He forced them still. Not now. Not yet.

He flipped through the folder. The photographs were from the night of the betrayal—grainy security footage showing his men being ambushed. Viktor's men in the background. And one other person.

Marcus squinted at the photograph. The face was blurred. But he recognized the stance. The posture. The way the man stood with his weight on his back foot, ready to flee.

His father. Simon Webb.

Marcus stared at the image. His father was here. In this city. Living like a king while Marcus's men rotted in unmarked graves.

The door behind him clicked.

Marcus dropped the folder and spun. Two men in gray jackets stood in the doorway. Both had guns drawn.

"Put your hands up," one of them said. "Viktor wants you alive. But he didn't say in one piece."

Marcus didn't move. He was calculating. The distance between them was twelve feet. The men were armed. He was not.

But he had surprise.

He threw the folder at the first man's face. The man flinched. Marcus closed the distance in two steps, grabbed the second man's gun, and twisted it sideways. A shot went wild. The sound was deafening in the small space.

Marcus disarmed the man, reversed the gun, and slammed the butt into his temple. The man dropped.

The first man was still recovering. Marcus drove his knee into the man's chest, felt ribs crack, and followed with an elbow to the jaw. The man went down.

Two seconds. Two men down.

Marcus stood over them, breathing hard. His leg was screaming. His hands were shaking. But he'd won.

He grabbed the folder and shoved it into his jacket. The photographs. The manifest. The list of names. Everything he needed to destroy Viktor Volkov.

He stepped over the bodies and walked out of the unit. The guards were still making their rounds, oblivious.

Marcus slipped through the fence, disappeared into the shadows, and limped away into the night.

Behind him, the storage facility slept.

But in the morning, Viktor would know someone had been there.

And the hunt would truly begin.

*Now that Marcus has the evidence, should he release it immediately or use it as leverage first?*