As soon as I walked off that plane in to Tibersky Airport, I felt the cold chill of the air stroke and brush past me. Its icy touch was disdainful with no remorse. It reminded me of that darker part of myself I had gone and hidden for so long now. I’d just wished that it hadn’t come to this…

My name is Nikolai Rushnikoff. Once a proud ‘soldier’ of the Russian Mafia but now nothing more than a shadow – something that used to be a man with a loving wife and something that could have been a future. Now she’s somewhere out there and I’m powerless to do anything. Sonya, my wife, was in something deeper and darker than I could really handle.

Tibersky was a hellhole, full of scum, lowlifes and people who were trying to get out but were hooked down by its claws. It was time for my grand entrance back to the place that I used to live in.

And this time I had a lot of catching up to do. My friends had decided to come along with me, I’d thought it best that they stay in a hotel whilst I did my own thing. I didn’t wait long as I packed my two .45’s and a shotgun. The others couldn’t get involved in what I was doing. I couldn’t stand to see them getting hurt because of me.

It was bad enough that they were here in the first place – dammit, Flinch, why did you have to tell the others I was coming here?

A Russian taxicab dropped me off in to the old industrial sector of the town. This part of Tibersky had long been forgotten. It’s old architecture, it’s smells, it’s thoughts and feelings – all of it a distant remembrance of communism and the future of everyone being equal. Not to quote "Animal Farm" but within every part of the world, "some are more equal than others". I’d found that out in the Mafia.

-----
I stood outside an old bar I used to love which used to be a hang out for most of the Russian Mafia. I thought this was a better place as any to start off to find out where Sonya was. It’d been a while since I shot my favourite guns, but they were aching for the trigger to be pulled. I took them both out of my coat and held them down to my sides as I approached the door.

It’d been a long while since I had a devious evil smile on my face. It sickened me but it felt good to get the cold hard unforgiving steel of the .45mm handguns in my hands again. I looked up to the blue neon sign above the bar and heard the noises of Russian men inside. It had been a long while since I’d spoken Russian, after being in Tadbruck with my friends for so long, I had got soft with my accent. I’d almost lost my entire Russian heritage.

To be honest, that wasn’t a bad thing in hindsight.

"Vlad’s Bar," I said to myself to no-one in particular with that horrible devious smile on my face, like a demon in me had awaken, "Guess I should say ‘hi’ to everyone."

I looked around and asked myself, "Who the hell am I talking to?"

I kicked down the door as a load of faces turned round. All of them were wearing classy suits and ties. They were Russian Mafia all right. They began to pull out their guns as I began to move in quickly. Two on the right and three on the left. I couldn’t focus on my surroundings quick enough in that split second but I could see a fat balding man run in to the back of the bar and then I heard the scream of a woman.

"Shit! What’s he doing here?" I heard one of them exclaim in Russian as he pulled out his gun. He fumbled around for it actually. He wore glasses so I was guessing he was a nerd with no idea what he was doing. So he was the first one I picked off on the left as I let one perfect bullet in to his chest. The sound of a gurgling lung as he hit the floor. It was just like the old days on the run with Sonya trying to kill these bastards.

I jumped in to the far corner of the bar and pushed over a table as bullets began to spray the air around me. I felt my pockets for anything useful apart from my guns and that devious smile crossed my face again as I pulled an object out of my inside coat pocket.

The men on the other side of the room stopped as I went silent.

"Did we kill him?" One of them asked. I always liked people who asked that question.

I threw the object over the table I’d overturned in to their general direction and put my head in my hands. I had curled up in to a ball…I knew what was coming…

"Holy fuck! It’s a grenade! Run for-!"

It was the last noise they ever made.

The explosion ripped through the bar as the table took most of the blast for me. I gingerly got up and brushed myself off. I finally looked at my surroundings. The bar was seedy with neon lights and a couple of pool tables. Well…it was until I wrecked it. The man who I shot in the lung was gasping for breath more rapidly as I walked towards him. Broken glass crunched and echoed under my heels as I paced myself slowly to him – I wanted to make him sweat even more before I got the information I wanted.

I grabbed him firmly by the collar and lifted him up to my level whilst kneeling over him. His glasses had fallen off and I could see the fear in his eyes.

"Where’s Sonya Rushnikoff?" I asked as grizzly as I could. It’d been a while and I had a little rust in my voice but I still had the edge.

"I-I…don’t know what you’re talking about!" The guy gasped, sweat began to ream from his forehead.

"I don’t think you should have said that." I said quietly as my brow furrowed.

I looked around to try see what I could use to interrogate him with. I noticed something just behind the bar that could help me here. A giant fridge full of beer and, more notably, vodka was looming there with a door that looked sturdy enough to cause some damage.

I pulled the guy by the collar again towards the fridge, opened the door and pushed him down with my boot between the edge of the opening so it could swing freely in to the side of his temple.

"So are you gonna tell me?" I asked again.

"You know what, you can go fuck-" He yelped as I rammed the door in to the side of his head, "-ah! AHH! Oh god! I don’t know!"

I swung the door a little harder this time. He began to cry like a little dog now.

"I…don’t…know!" He said again with such patheticness. He knew something and I was gonna kick it out of him somehow.

I looked around again because this obviously wasn’t working. There was a kitchen out in the back and everyone who was occupying it had run away – my little entrance of chaos had seen to them going away. I dragged the sorry excuse in to the kitchen and looked around.

This was the torturer’s haven. That horrible smile came out again.

"What…are…you…gonna……do?" The man attempted to say to me.

"I’m gonna make you talk." I said back coldly.

I looked around…toothpicks? Nah, that wouldn’t work. Cheese Grater? No that’s too much hard work. Maybe that iron kettle over there?

I was running out of ideas to get this guy to talk to me, then I noticed something in the corner. I took him to a machine that was about to make me very happy.

I turned on the fat fryer and banged his head on the surface just near it to get him to refocus his attention. The fat sizzled near his face.

"Alright! Alright! I’ll talk! They say she’s with her mad brother, Melphis! They say he’s gonna take over the Mafia! You’d have to talk to your Mother! Please! Don’t kill me!"

That’s all I wanted to hear. I threw him in headfirst and heard him scream as I walked away. It was all I needed to know.

I could find the woman I loved. The screams echoed as I was reminded that darker part of me still existed.

But if you had someone you loved, and you made a promise to come back to them and they were in danger, would you have made a lot of mistakes to get them back?

I have…and now that I look back – I know I had to. She was the only thing I lived for. The broken glass crunched under my feet again as I got to the door, the flames of the explosion licking at the walls and the distant sizzling of the fat fryer were the only things I ever remember. The smell of the frying flesh of the guy I interrogated hung in my nostrils before I went to back in to the cold chill of Tibersky.

The chill felt good compared to that dark warm side of me in all retrospect’s.