It wasn’t a question.
Picasso broke eye contact with Gabriella and nodded to Wolf. “Fine.”
Gabriella let out a breathy huff and turned back to the table. “Guess I better get another energy drink.”
Picasso rolled his eyes discreetly and commented under his breath, low enough that only Falcon caught it. “Last thing she needs is more caffeine.”
As Picasso turned to study the glowing map, Falcon nudged Reef with his elbow. Reef, feigning interest in his boot, smoothly slipped a crisp dollar bill into Falcon’s palm.
“She totally won that round, dude,” Reef muttered just loud enough for Falcon.
Falcon smirked, tucking the bill away. “Just points. Standard one-spot. We wouldn’t want to encourage actual gambling, now would we?”
His gaze flickered subtly toward Wolf’s side of the table.
Abe caught the tail end of the exchange, narrowed his eyes, and leaned toward Mozart.
“Did I just witness a transaction?”
Mozart smirked subtly, watching the other team with newfound interest. “Looks like their scoreboard.”
Wolf gave a barely perceptible shake of his head and the faintest smile, as if saying,Just roll with it.
FOUR
GABRIELLA
Gabriella stepped into the conference room, and the silence hit her harder than the heat outside. The air was thick, pressurized, clinging to the room like a second skin. Maps were spread across the mahogany table: a chaotic patchwork of red zones, supply lines, and strategic choke points. On the wall monitor, grainy drone footage flickered on a loop: collapsed apartment blocks, shattered highways, and dust clouds that hung heavy and brown over the devastation.
The silent, shattered city on the screen cried out for help. The room around them, by contrast, felt like a tomb.
She caught her breath, the memories flooding back: the floodwaters rising in her coastal hometown, the frantic hours spent helping neighbors escape, and the helplessness as homes were swallowed in mud and debris. That was the moment she vowed to dedicate her life to swift aid, to making sure no one waited too long.
Picasso was already there, bent over the main map like a surgeon examining a terminal patient. He traced a route with a black pen, his movements precise, almost robotic. His eyes, sharp and unyielding, dissected every topographic detail.
“Primary route is unstable,” he said without looking up. His voice was clipped, a low baritone devoid of the panic Gabriella felt clawing at her throat. “If we proceed without securing every inch, we risk the entire convoy. We need to account for every variable before we start engines.”
A familiar, hot surge of impatience spiked in Gabriella’s chest. She pushed off the wall, the movement sharp. “Look, Senior Chief Waverly, supplies don’t wait for perfect scenarios. I’ve seen what happens when aid arrives too late. Protocols are necessary, sure, but we adapt on the move. Over-planning is going to cost us the only thing we don’t have time.”
He stopped writing. Slowly, he looked up, shooting her a pointed glare. The frustration radiating from him was cold and controlled. Beneath it lay something sharper, something she couldn’t quite decipher.
“Call me Picasso,” he said quietly. “We don’t use ranks on missions because we don’t want the enemy to know who’s who.” His eyes darkened. “And what you’re suggesting is reckless. This is about lives—lives we have to protect from the disaster, but also from what’s waiting for us in that cartel territory.”
Gabriella’s jaw clenched. “The only enemy I see is the clock. Your obsession with caution keeps us frozen while people starve and bleed out.”
Picasso’s gaze grew colder. “The enemy is not just the clock, Gabriella. It includes the cartel patrols, the unstable ground, and the aftershocks. Charging in blindly through their territory is how you get yourself and everyone else killed.”
She shoved off the wall and stormed toward the table like a storm breaking loose. “The lives waiting on those MREs, water, and medical kits do not care about your perfect plan or cartel bullets. They just want us to get there now.” She stopped a breath away from him, eyes blazing, and spat out his name like venom. “Picasso, you’re sending them straight to their graves.”
Wolf stood positioned between them, leaning back against a file cabinet, arms crossed. As another SEAL Team Leader, he held the same rank as Picasso, but Command had tagged Picasso as the operational lead for this mess. Wolf watched the exchange with the relaxed alertness of a predator in high grass. Gabriella felt his quiet assessment, but her focus remained locked on Picasso. His meticulousness felt like a personal affront to her urgency.
The air between her and the mission lead seemed to tighten, humming with a coil of irritation and something else was there as well, a strange, static electricity that made the hair on her arms stand up. It was deeply annoying. Every precise barb from Picasso was met with an equally sharp retort from her, their frustrations barely masking the complicated undercurrents. She hated that he was calm. She hated that his calm made her feel chaotic.
She started to pace, the nearly empty energy drink bottle in her hand rattling a nervous rhythm. The clock on the wall was mocking her. Thirty-six hours to load up, finalize plans, and mobilize. Thirty-six hours. To her, that was a death sentence. Every second wasted in this sterile, air-conditioned box, staring at lines on paper, felt like blood on her hands. The planners might need their diagrams, but Gabriella saw only a countdown she had no patience for. Supplies needed to be en route, people were counting on them. Those wheels should have started turning yesterday.
She caught the gaze of the other operators around the table: four from Picasso’s team and five from Wolf’s. They were silent, tense, thick with anticipation. These were men trained to read micro-expressions and threat levels, and right now, their eyes darted between her and Picasso like spectators at a particularly intense tennis match. They took mental notes, gauging the shift in air pressure each time she snapped and Picasso iced her out.
Reef, who had been silently tracking every change in Gabriella’s pacing, leaned slightly toward Falcon. “Dollar says she cracks him. He concedes the timeline before the hour’s out.”
