The leader, whose name was Marek, didn’t answer immediately. He looked at the photograph—a faded image of a younger John Wick standing next to Marek in a world of sand and fire, long before the suits and the Continental.

“Help?” Marek finally rasped, his voice sounding like grinding stones. “Kid, if John Wick sent you here with those tags, ‘helping’ is the only way we survive the next hour. If we don’t, there won’t be a building left to bury us in.”

He turned to his men, who were now armed with shotguns and submachine guns, their previous mockery replaced by a frantic, sweating desperation. They knew the legends. They knew that if the Boogeyman was calling in a debt, it meant the devil himself was on his way to collect.

“Vinnie! Get the boy to the basement vault,” Marek barked. “Barricade the steel door. Don’t open it for anyone but me. And if I don’t come for you… you wait until the screaming stops, then you run out the back.”

The boy clutched the dog tags tighter as Vinnie, a massive man with tattooed knuckles, scooped him up. “Is my dad coming?” the boy asked, his eyes wide.

Marek paused, checking the slide on his .45 caliber pistol. He looked at the front doors, which were already rattling under the first heavy blows from the outside.

“Your father is the reason the world stays under the bed, kid,” Marek said, a grim, respectful smile touching his lips. “He isn’t coming to save you. He’s coming to make sure there’s no one left to hurt you.”

Outside, the screech of tires and the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of tactical boots hitting the pavement signaled the arrival of the High Table’s hunters.

Marek kicked over a heavy oak table, using it as cover. He looked at the shattered glass on the floor, then up at the ceiling. “Gentlemen!” he shouted to his crew over the sound of breaking windows. “Today, we pay our debts! For the Baba Yaga!”

The front doors didn’t just open; they exploded inward. As the first wave of black-clad assassins flooded the room, a low, familiar whistle echoed from the shadows of the alleyway outside.

The boy, huddled in the dark of the basement, heard the first gunshot. It wasn’t loud or chaotic. It was precise. Rhythmic. A signature written in lead.

He closed his eyes and whispered his father’s name, knowing that while the men upstairs were fighting for their lives, the man outside was simply doing his job.