The Shot Gun Wedding

The sky over New York City hung very low and grey, the kind of weather that will make the buildings look tired and the people beneath them even more so. Noah Anderson stepped off the curb, his sneakers was soaked through before he reached the crosswalk. His hoodie was pulled up over his head, his shoulders hunched against the rain. He looked like any other college kid just trying to get through another miserable day.But he wasn't just another college kid. Not exactly.

Clutched against his chest was a weathered folder his final presentation, wrapped in hope, fear, and three nights of less sleep. If he could just survive the next hour, he could go back to pretending everything was fine. That the late night headaches, the flashbacks, the shadows in the corners of his mind were not clawing back into his life again.Noah didn't talk about the nightmares. He didn't talk about the fire.Or the blood.Or how his parents were killed when he was seventeen, leaving him with nothing but half truths and lies written on police reports. "Wrong place, wrong time," they said. "A robbery gone bad." He never believed that.

He saw the man. Or maybe just a glimpse of him. A figure, tall and cold, standing in the flames, he was walking away while his home burned down. His face had blurred over the years, but the chill hadn't. And now six years later that feeling was back.  

Across the city, in a glass walled office on the top floor of an elite high rise, Viktor Mikhailov stood staring out into the rain soaked skyline. He didn't blink. Didn't sip the untouched vodka in his hand. His mind was somewhere far much colder. 

"Vitaly's dead," his second-in-command said quietly from behind him. 

Viktor didn't react. 

"No message. Just a slit throat and a missing shipment," the man added. 

Still, Viktor didn't say anything   

He didn't have to. 

Everyone in the city knew what happened when you crossed Viktor Mikhailov the head of the Bratva's American empire. The kind of man whose name lived in whispers and whose enemies vanished without a single trace. 

But tonight, his thoughts weren't on retaliation. 

They were on the message he'd received like an hour ago. 

The boy is back. Noah Anderson. 

That name hadn't passed through his ears in years. But it lived in the back of his mind, buried under smoke, blood, and a choice he could not undo. 

Noah's parents had gotten too close. They knew things they were not supposed to and they tried to run. So Viktor did what he always did he cleaned the mess. Efficient. Precise. With No second thoughts.

Until he saw the boy. 

Seventeen, frozen in the hallway, eyes wide as the fire lit up behind him. Noah didn't scream. Didn't run. He just looked.  

And Viktor had let him live. 

Now the past was back. And it had a name. 

Noah's presentation was a disaster. His slides glitched. His voice cracked. His professor barely even looked interested. By the time he stepped outside, he didn't even care anymore. The rain hit his face like ice, soaking through his hoodie, but he just kept walking. 

New York had never felt like home. 

There was just something about it the noise, the strangers, the pressure that made him feel like he was constantly being watched. Maybe it was just paranoia. Maybe it was the trauma. Or maybe someone was actually watching him. 

He crossed the street without even looking.  

Inside a sleek black car parked just across the road, Viktor watched him. 

No bodyguards. No tinted glass. Just him, alone. He had not planned to come in person. He didn't do this anymore the surveillance, the tailing. That's what his men were for. But this is different.

Noah is different.