A MAN CALLED ADRIAN D. ROMANOV

Mandy would've been in a state of denial but the pain was genuine and throbbing enough that even she can't overlook it. It was a slight immunity to painkillers. Opioid, probably. It was always that blasted drug that never really wanted to work right with her. It's been such a long time since she used it so she forgot all about it until this very minute. Little Russia was right across from them but Mandy truly had to take a moment and sit down on the curbside, drowning in a state of slight dizziness and pain induced groans.

John was beginning to already see the side effects before Mandy did and had her sit down. He ran off a couple of minutes ago to head to a convenience store that was just down the street, trying to see if he could get her anything to drink.

The painkillers weren't working well but Mandy was out of choices since they were already at the church. They can't waste any more time with this. There's a high chance that Viggo'll figure out where they were and what they were going to do with his money. It was just one of those times where she'll have to grin through the pain and get this over with. It wasn't the first time she'll have to do it, she had a pretty decent pain tolerance but that has its limits too.

Twelve minutes later, John finally came back with a bottle of cold water. "You getting dizzy yet?" he asked while giving it to her. The look in Mandy's hazy and troubled brown eyes answered his question without any words being used. She was definitely feeling a bit off from the pain. "Sorry. I forgot this sort of thing happens." He took a seat down beside her.

Mandy cracked the seal on the water bottle and grimaced. "You and me both." She leaned her head back and down at least half the contents in what felt like a fraction of the second. The coldness of the drink soothed her throat a little but was soon hit hard from the pain a moment afterwords. "Son of a..." She bit down on her lips and held her tongue, not even wanting to spend the energy to curse the world. "Nothing we can do about it anymore. We're already freaking here." she gave an annoyed gesture to the church.

"We could leave," John suggested. "Give you a day to relax."

Mandy stared at him silently, lips thinned out and unexpressive. She finally spoke up, speaking flatly but a bit of cracking in her voice. "Don't sacrifice yourself for me. It won't do us any bit of good."

It wasn't often that she was serious, so something must've really been bothering her, not because of the pain and her immunity to painkillers. The chipperness in her voice was gone and as well as that childish sparkle she would get in her eyes whenever they would talk. Ever since the other day, Mandy has been quite short with him and had been purposely avoiding eye contact.

Mandy was dejected for some reason. Like she realized something that wasn't to her liking.

John ran his hand up and down her back and It must've surprised her since she flinched from the touch. Mandy didn't move away though.

It was silent for a minute between them. Mandy did nothing but close her eyes while John made an attempt to soothe her anxious heart, or at least make her smile if only a little. It must've worked though because she looked up at him, patting him a few times on the face, each time getting harder and harder. An old habit of hers. John pulled his head away and he finally saw her smile widely at his attempt to escape from her slaps.

"You alright now?" he asked.

She bit down on her lips and looked back at the church. "No, but when are we ever?"

That statement pained him to hear...since it was true.

John and Mandy walked into the church side by side and noticed that the inside was partly empty, aside from a couple of people kneeling at the pews. Some of the men had tattoos on their hands and were given Wick and Rose suspicious eyes, fingers twitching with bad intentions.

A priest humbly walked up to them and opened his arms, the tattoos very visible on his hands. "How may I help you-"

Mandy calmly and quickly reached inside her leather jacket, to her shoulder holster and whipped out her pistol and put a round in his leg. A whole rainbow assortment of curse words fell from his mouth when he crumbled to the ground.

Before anyone else in the church could react, John revealed a heavy-duty AR-rifle that was hidden by a leather-coverer. He turned around and shot at anyone who got up from their kneeling position. Three on ground-level and one up top.

"Motherfucker!" the holy man spat words out from the devil's favorite dictionary, only making Mandy laugh at the irony she was faced with

"Sir, this is a church." she flashed her marble white teeth at him and chuckled to herself.

"Fucking bitch!" he could only curse at her while laying helplessly on the ground. The blood was starting to seep through his green robes, but he'll live. "Do you know who you're fucking with?" he said in Russian.

John stared coldly at the man, unwavering in the threat with unsettling calmness. "Yeah. I do." He looked at Mandy and made a gesturing motion with his head, telling her to grab the guy. "Let's go to the vault."

Picking up the injured man, Mandy strolled behind John as the three entered the downstairs vault that was full of Viggo's money, all tucked away behind the safety of bars.

Naturally, it was being guarded by armed men but they were easily shot down or injured by John.

Once they were down there, Mandy shoved the man at the bars. Bars that can only be unlocked by a passcode, a code that only he knew. "Do us a favor and open it," she said.

He scowled at her. "Do you think you can scare me into opening this gate?" he grits his words out through his teeth, hissing venom out at Wick and Rose.

John's voice was low and chilling, mixing oddly well against Mandy's crystal clear words. "Yes/Yeah," they said at the same time, mixing his Russian with her English.

The man was beginning to see how dire the situation had become since these two had no intention of falling back. They were deadly serious. "Viggo will kill me."

John then suddenly heard the sound of one of the injured men get up. He swiftly turned around and knocked the butt of his rifle against his head before shooting him down. He turned back to the trembling man, gun still raised and eyes still steely. "Ah-huh?"

He seemed to slump down into himself and thought it over for a moment, gripping the bars with his bloody hands tightly. He gave in to their request and finally punched in the code to open the vault.

John opened the gate and walked inside, gesturing his hand towards the two unarmed women who were harmlessly counting the money. "Ladies, out," he told them calmly.

The two terrified women got up quickly and rushed past John and up the stairs.

"Bye now," Mandy called out to them and leaned against the frame of the gate.

The two began by dumping all the priceless money, cards, CD's, blacklists, everything on the floor until it was at Mandy's knees. John walked out just as his partner dumped the last box of cash onto the ground.

"Mandy, you got the-"

"Yeah, I do." Mandy passed the fire-starters to him.

John waited till she was out of the vault before pulling the pins. He threw the starters onto the pile just when it started to spark and burn the wealth. The fire grew inside the vault before the money was totally consumed by the revenge-driven flames, turning Viggo's priceless stash of cash into nothing but gloomy grey ash.

It distressed Mandy to sit still and watch as black SUV's swarm the church. Her heart was beating so fast that she could actually hear her blood pumping through her veins, drowning out all other sounds around her.

Viggo was here...right down there. 10 long years have definitely aged that man but he didn't look different at all in Mandy's rusty-colored eyes that were starting to turn a bit glassy.

She struggled with a smile, clenching down on her forearm and with her long nails. "Viggo..." she said bitterly with her trembling lips.

John glanced at her from the corner of his eyes, heeded the odd pain in her voice but decided not to say anything. He knew this behavior was from that time long ago, a time he was still in the dark about. Mandy hasn't mentioned anything about that night 10 years ago. What happened and what Viggo must've done to her, but there was definitely resentment in her voice when she spoke his name.

Down below, Viggo was practically boiling with anger. His face was red and his voice was seething. "Get me that fucking idiot!"

John and Mandy watched quietly from the rooftop and watched as the priest figure who was shot and killed, right in the middle of pleading for his life.

John gave Mandy a little nudge on the shoulder and made a motion with his hand. She nodded and moved out separately to cover more ground and box Viggo and his men in.

She hunched down low once she made it down to the streets. Peeking over the black SUV's though, Mandy spotted Viggo heading through the parking lot, face flushed with anger. In that very instant, she was overwhelmed with the longing to put him down, fire one shot into his head and end his long life that should've ended 10 years ago...for what he did to her...why must he continue to live while Mandy suffers?

But this act of revenge wasn't for her. Being here now, being able to see John again. The only reason she doesn't go with her desires was because of him. Because of his loss, the loss of his wife and the last gift she gave to him. Mandy knew with every ounce of her being that she can't screw this up, she can't jeopardize this with her own selfish needs.

She bit down on her lips until she tasted the iron of her blood and shivered. Closing her eyes, Mandy waited, hunched over behind the cars until the sound of rapid gunfire began with the first bullet John gave out. The parking lot erupted in a hailstorm of ammunition that forced everyone to dive for cover, including Viggo. John swiftly unloaded the whole magazine in his rifle and hunched down low for Mandy to fire off her rounds from her pistol. Bullets penetrated the cars parked in the lot and the bodies began to drop more and more often.

The sound was absolutely ear-rattling for Mandy. She forgot what it felt like to have her whole body vibrate from the recoil, and what it smelled like to have the sent of gunsmoke overwhelm her senses. It was neither addicting nor fun. What it was though was numbing. Like every feeling she possessed went on autopilot or just stopped working. Mandy felt nothing for this kind of job. She felt like she was a machine...a machine that could still feel pain.

The adrenaline rush was real but it wasn't able to hold back the throbbing discomfort her injuries were going through. And with a sudden spike of pain, Mandy gasped deeply and felt her gun slip from her hands. Rippling, pounding and violent, she could no longer handle the ache her wounds were putting her through and collapsed to the ground. She broke out into a cold sweat and started to give struggled breaths. The surrounding sounds melting away to a nonsensical buzzing in her ears. "John...?" she weakly called out but knew he couldn't hear her. Her world started to fall away when her eyes became heavy, and very slowly...she slipped into unconsciousness.

John actually noticed immediately when Mandy stopped firing. Her gun is a high caliber so the pop was always the loudest, but now he couldn't hear it anymore. She couldn't be reloading because it surely wouldn't take her that long. "Mandy?" he called out but she didn't answer back, spiking a dreaded sense of anxiety through his body. "Mandy!" He was forced to duck down low when the windows of the car below out. John dropped the smoking magazine to the ground and quickly reloaded.

He knew if Mandy wasn't yet dead than she would have to be unconscious. Mostly likely from the wounds she sustained from the Red Circle. He could curse himself right now for many things. How could he forget that she had immunity to her prescribed painkillers? Why did he just push on with the mission when he KNEW she wasn't ready for it?

John didn't even have the reaction time to notice a speeding car coming to his left. It rammed into the SUV he was hiding behind and slammed into him, knowing him to the ground. In that small window of consciousness he had left, he saw Viggo and his men slowly surrounded him...and Mandy was still gone.

It was only a faint thought that lasted for a fraction of a second, but something in the back of her mind, deep in her mind, didn't want to wake up. Mandy didn't want to face the world. She didn't want to open her eyes and feel the same throbbing pain that had lasted for the past 10 years. Given the chance, she would retreat into her safe dark corner and never return to the light ever again.

But it appears she can no longer do that anymore and is forced to face down the man who had haunted her dreams for a decade. "Long time no see, Viggo. You definitely gotten older." She offered with a chipper voice that pained her to do.

Viggo laughed at her attitude. "So have you. They sure as fuck broke the mold with you and John." One of his men pulled up a chair in front of them and Viggo sat down. "You both had quite an audacity about you. I can say that you two are the same John Wick and Mandy Rose of old."

Her smile fell and she cast a glance to her left, seeing John hunched over beside her. He was awake but frighteningly silent. The only thing he did was look up at Viggo with these glowing eyes of a predator ready to pounce.

Mandy spoke up to him. "Hey, you alright?" she said softly

John shifted his heavy gaze over to her and they relaxed a bit when he saw that she was alive. "Yeah. And you?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "I guess." She couldn't answer him honestly since the pain on her side was still very prominent. Not to mention the position she was in right now, being tied up was very uncomfortable. "Viggo, you once said that people don't change...is this what you meant?" she asked and looked up at him, meeting his gaze.

Viggo scoffed. "Times, they do." His eyes seemed to glow with anger. "Do you know what was in that vault? Artwork, cash, not without its worth, but the leverage I had on this city, audio recordings, physical evidence, blackmail. It was fucking priceless!" he shouted and sprung up from his chair. "PRICELESS!"

John shifted his eyes to amusement. "Yeah. I think I enjoyed it a lot more than Mandy did."

Viggo chuckled. "I know you did." He took his hand and slapped John hard across the face, trying to vent his anger any way he could. It helped a bit Because a murderous growl came deep from Mandy's throat. Threatening and hungry.

Mandy's suffering seemed to amuse him more than injuring John.

"Then after Mandy left...it gave you a chance to marry someone, ah?" Viggo saw the hurt shift in Mandy's eyes at the mention of it. "How did you manage that anyways?"

"Lucky, I guess," John glared.

"Yeah, while you had your wife, I had my son, and Mandy had Adrian. And believe me...you and I had a far better deal."

Did the room just suddenly turn cold?

Mandy's head snapped up and her eyes grew wide, showing off every golden flake in her eyes that danced under the dim orange glow of the room. She looked as if someone had just shot her and her mind was only now beginning to process the terrible thoughts. She looked frightened...Mandy actually looked terrified right now at the mention of that name...a name that hasn't been used in over 10 years.

John saw the way his partner began to panic. "Adrian?" he spoke, confused because he felt like he heard that name before. He knew it...but only knew it for one reason. "What are you talking about, Viggo?" he immediately regretted saying those words with the way Mandy looked at him. Pleading, begging him not too.

All the color drained from her face when the odd feeling of 'fear' found her once again, wrapping around Mandy's body. Is this why she found the room so cold? Fear? "John, no." Mandy's voice cracked, moments away from crying.

Viggo's bemused smile stretched far across his face. "I had a feeling she never told you, the little coward."

"Viggo...!" All the strength just evaporated from her voice like an open wound.

"Then if you don't know...allow me to elaborate about Mandy's dirty little secret." One of his men handed Viggo what looked to be a black briefcase. "John, do you remember that task I gave you? The Impossible Task." He ran his fingers over the locks and popped them open, one after another just to see Mandy flinch at each sound. Tears were beginning to form in her eyes. "I ordered you to do away with a family...a rival gang family." There was one last pop of the lock and Mandy's tears finally began to fall. "The Romanov family."

John hesitated to speak and was growing more and more concern with what was happening. "Yeah, but before I even got to them, they were nothing but a shell...a shadow of their former self."

Mandy was crying and Viggo was absolutely delighted by that fact.

A sharp laugh echoed from Viggo. "Right, right. They were like that though because they had no leader...because he died. He was a man called Adrian D. Romanov." He opened the case and pulled a couple of things out. Pictures by the looks of it, and threw them to the floor right in front of a hysterical and catatonic Rose. "And he was Mandy's lover."

The news shook John to his very core and made him honestly feel sick. He took one last look at Mandy the moment her eyes fell upon the pictures. Her pupils grew wide and her body started to shake uncontrollably

Viggo was unsympathetic to the woman before him. "And I had that fucker killed."

The pictures were grim and stomach-wrenching. It showed what looked to be a man laying on the ground face-first in his own blood. The side of his head, blown out and exposing all the brain-matter that ran down into the hardwood floors...in Mandy's own house.

Author's Note:

And the truth comes out in the worse way possible. Mandy had a lover...that wasn't John? Bet you didn't see that coming. I will be explaining it more fully next chapter though and will even have a flashback of that night 10 years ago. The night Adrian died. I wonder how Mandy and John's relationship will handle this giant secret drop. Well...I'm excited to show you!