The Blood Oath

Chapter 1

Rain bled from the London sky like a warning, soaking through the cobbled alleys of Shoreditch as

 if the city itself wanted to wash away what was about to happen. Kabri crouched in the back of the unmarked black van, his gloved hands calmly reloading a matte black Glock-19. Across from him sat Jamil, sharpening his signature combat knife with quiet precision. The van's interior was dimly lit, but even in the half-light, their eyes gleamed—not with fear, but with a cold, shared focus born from years of survival and bloodshed.

This wasn’t just another job.

This was Fred’s job.

And that meant two things: it would be high-risk and high-reward.

“Warehouse has two main guards on rotation, third one sits near the vault control with a Remington pump. Cameras in the southeast corner are decoys. Real feed goes upstairs to the office. I’ve got the jammer,” Jamil said without looking up, his voice low but steady.

Kabri gave a nod. "No names, no noise. In and out."

"Same as Berlin," Jamil added.

"Cleaner than Berlin," Kabri corrected.

Fred had tapped them for the diamond lift only four days ago, pulling them into a clandestine briefing in a Kensington wine bar that stank of oak and lies. The score was massive—over twenty million pounds in raw, uncut diamonds, discreetly stored at a private vault owned by a Belgian syndicate. No alarms. No sirens. No mistakes. Fred had made it clear: you either brought the gold or you paid in blood.

The van jerked to a stop behind an abandoned shoe factory. Jamil killed the lights. Silence. Not even a whisper of breath.

Kabri pulled down his balaclava, his features disappearing beneath the black wool. In that moment, the man known to the world became a ghost—no identity, no past, no conscience.

They moved like shadows.

Through the alley, past the broken fence, over the loading dock, each step rehearsed to precision. Kabri took point, disabling the keypad with a cold, electric flick. The heavy door gave with a soft groan, and they slid inside like smoke.

The warehouse interior was dim, half-lit by overhead fluorescents that flickered like dying memories. The diamond vault was buried behind a series of steel-enforced rooms, motion sensors, and retinal scanners. But they weren’t going through the front.

They were going under.

Kabri led Jamil down a service tunnel hidden beneath an old cargo elevator. The tunnel had been mapped by Jamil the week before, using stolen blueprints and two nights posing as a janitor. Everything had been planned—down to the millimeter.

They reached the junction where power lines and old drainage pipes formed a man-sized crawlspace. Kabri dropped first, his body moving silently through the dark tube, until he emerged in a small service room directly beneath the vault’s control panel.

Above him, two guards laughed at something over a shared phone screen.

Kabri climbed up the utility ladder and signaled with two fingers.

Jamil answered with one.

Three seconds.

The door burst open.

Kabri moved first, a swift strike to the throat of the closest guard, whose body crumpled silently against the filing cabinet. Jamil’s knife danced once, slicing through the jugular of the other before he could blink. The floor welcomed their silence with a wet kiss.

The vault was ahead.

Kabri knelt at the keypad, slipping the cracked card reader Fred had provided into the access slot. The green light blinked once.

“Ten seconds, max,” Jamil murmured.

The door unlocked with a low groan, and the air beyond was dry and sterile, the kind of artificial cold found only in banks and morgues. Inside were rows of silver cases stamped with barcodes, each one holding a treasure that could fund wars or buy governments.

Kabri pulled the list from his inner pocket. “Box 31B, 44A, 12C. Don’t touch anything else.”

Jamil was already stacking the correct containers in the reinforced duffel bags. Each case weighed nearly twenty pounds, but neither of them grunted. These men didn’t sweat. They were weapons built in silence, trained not to feel the weight of what they carried.

They were in and out in six minutes.

On the way back through the tunnel, Kabri paused.

Something felt wrong.

He stopped moving and raised a hand.

Jamil froze.

A faint clicking sound echoed above them—too rhythmic to be rain.

“Motion sensors weren’t supposed to be active,” Kabri hissed.

Jamil's expression tightened.

Kabri scanned the ceiling grid. A small dome rotated slowly in the dark. New. Hidden. Fred’s blueprints hadn’t included this.

“Trap?” Jamil asked, fingers tightening on his weapon.

Kabri didn’t answer.

He already knew.

They moved faster now, every footstep burning with urgency. The exit door was in sight when it happened—metallic thunder shattered the quiet.

Gunfire.

Kabri spun around as bullets chewed through the doorframe. Jamil dove for cover behind a pallet of crates, returning fire in sharp bursts.

“Back route!” Kabri yelled.

“No time!” Jamil barked.

A bullet tore through Jamil’s shoulder. He stumbled, groaning, but kept shooting. Kabri returned fire, dropping two masked shooters near the catwalk.

These weren’t cops.

These were Fred’s men.

Clean gear. No identifiers. No sirens.

Kabri dragged Jamil back behind a forklift. Blood pooled around his friend’s boot. Jamil was pale, but his jaw was clenched tight.

“They knew,” Jamil muttered. “Fred sold us out.”

Kabri didn't speak. His eyes were already cold with understanding.

The warehouse was a kill box.

He’d seen it before.

Fred had done this once in Naples—eliminated three of his own crew after they demanded a cut of a side deal. Kabri hadn’t believed it then. He believed it now.

Jamil coughed. Blood speckled his lips.

“Go,” he said. “I’ll cover you.”

“No.”

“I’m not walking out of here, brother. You know that.”

The look they shared wasn’t one of defeat—it was recognition. A silent oath remembered. Kabri nodded once.

Then he moved.

The next few minutes blurred—gunshots, flames, screams. Kabri used every shadow, every blind angle, every lesson learned in years of war to escape. He climbed through ventilation, slid through sewage channels, and disappeared into the London night like a memory being erased.

By the time the authorities arrived, the warehouse was nothing but fire and smoke.

Three bodies burned beyond recognition.

Fred's version of the truth would say Kabri died too.

But that was the first lie in a long line of many.

Kabri survived.

Jamil did not.

And somewhere beneath that dark London sky, a ghost was born.

A man with no name. No country. No past.

Just blood... and the memory of a brother who bled for gold.