The plan is set. The mission is clear:Get in. Get Sofia. Kill anyone who stands in the way.
Mancini lays out the details, his voice clipped, his expression drawn tight with the weight of what’s at stake. He tailed the Lombardi enforcers down to a warehouse on the outskirts of Nuova Speranza—one they’ve used before as a temporary hideout. It’s isolated, surrounded by empty lots and abandoned buildings, a perfect place for something to disappear. Orsomeone.
Adriano is already hunched over his laptop, fingers flying across the keys as he hacks into the building’s security system. The blueprints load first—an old industrial structure, reinforced steel doors, high ceilings, multiple exits. Then, the camera feeds blink to life, grainy black-and-white images filling the screen.
The place is crawling with Lombardi men.
Armed. Ready.Waiting.
"They’re expecting a fight," Dante mutters, standing over Adriano’s shoulder.
"Good," I say. "Then we won’t disappoint them."
I start working through the approach in my head, refining the plan as I speak.
"We hit them from two sides. I take the main team through the front—fast, direct, no hesitation. Adriano kills the power right before we breach, plunging the whole place into darkness. That’ll buy us an opening."
"And me?" Dante asks.
"You’re the distraction."
He grins like I just handed him a new toy.
"You’ll take a small team," I continue, "and hit a Lombardi stash house a few blocks away. Set a few cars on fire, make some noise. They’ll think we’re after something else, and if we’re lucky, they’ll send reinforcements away from the warehouse. That should thin their numbers before we move in."
Dante nods, already eager to get started.
Adriano doesn’t look up from his screen as he speaks. "I’ll be set up a few blocks away with my gear. I can shut down their security feeds, but they’ll notice the blackout pretty fast."
"Doesn’t matter." I check my gun, sliding the magazine into place with a sharpclick."We won’t be giving them time to react."
No one argues.
We all know what’s at stake.
The city crawls past in streaks of dirty light, neon signs bleeding red across rain-slick asphalt, the gutters running with piss and oil. These are streets my family has paid for in bone. I know every turn, every rusted lamppost, every alleyway where men have begged for their lives and got silence instead. The car cuts through the dark without hurry, the engine low and even, like it knows there’s no need to rush. What waits at the end willstill be there, whether we arrive in five minutes or fifty. I sit in the passenger seat with my gun across my lap, thumb resting against the trigger guard, the barrel warmed by my palm. My jaw is locked tight. My teeth grind against the weight of what I haven’t said, of how I left things with Sofia. The others know better than to fill the silence. They ride behind me, loyal and still, like blades sheathed and ready. But my mind doesn’t quiet. It sharpens.
I don’t know what they’ve done to her. I don’t know if she’s bleeding. I don’t know if she screamed and no one came. I don’t know if they kept her in the dark, if they touched her face with hands that didn’t belong to her, if she bit down until she tasted iron just to keep from breaking. What I do know is this—she’s mine. And mine is not a word I throw around. Mine means you do not look at her unless I allow it. Mine means your life ends the moment you think about hurting her. Mine means that I will kill for her, slowly if I have time, quickly if I don’t. I have burned men for less. I’ve leveled families for what they thought was a mistake. This is no mistake. This is intentional. Which means they’ve chosen their end.
I stretch my neck once, roll my shoulders, hear the soft crack of tension being chased out of bone. My knuckles shift on the grip of the gun. I breathe in slow. Not to calm down, there’s no need. My heart isn’t racing. It never does before the kill. I’m calm because I’ve already decided what comes next. There’s no question, no hesitation, no plea they could offer that would reach me. My mercy lives and dies with her. If they’ve taken it from her, then they’ve taken it from me, too.
The warehouse comes into view, squat and wide and stinking of damp rust. It’s typical—low ceilings, no windows, two exits at best, and walls thick enough to swallow a scream. I raise my hand. The convoy behind me obeys without a word. Engines go quiet. Doors stay closed. Every man on this job was handpicked,not for loyalty—that’s expected—but for discipline. No one gets sloppy tonight. No one fires unless I give the signal. We don’t make noise. We don’t make mistakes. We end it.
I step out into the street. The wind bites cold against my skin, and I let it. It clears the last of the fog from my head. My boots hit the pavement, silent and certain. The others fan out behind me, weapons drawn, eyes forward. No one speaks. No one asks what happens if we’re wrong. We’re not. I can feel her.
Adriano breaks off, setting up in a darkened alleyway a few blocks away. His laptop screen flickers as he gets to work.
"The system is old," he mutters. "Shouldn’t take much to crash it."
Seconds pass.
Then—
A lowhum.A flicker. And then?—
Darkness.
The warehouse plunges into blackness.
