"The spreadsheet is dead." I stride to the tactical table, slapping my palm against the cool metal surface. I pull up the digital map of the West Loop. "Jeff ran. Rourke is currently tearing the hub apart with a squad of six men. Two on the perimeter, four inside."
Matteo sets the firing pin of the rifle down. His expression hardens. "Jeff was supposed to hold the line until Friday. Why did he break?"
"Because Rourke accelerated the debt collection." I tap the screen, bringing up the architectural blueprints of the transit hub. "Rourke threatened Jeff's family. The pressure shifted. Jeff panicked. He cleared his locker and fled."
"The ledgers." Dante moves to the table, his eyes scanning the blueprints. "Did he take the hard drives with him?"
"Unlikely." I point to the administrative wing on the schematic. "The secondary safe is bolted to the foundation in the manager's office. Jeff wouldn't have the time or the tools to crack it under panic. He likely ran to save his own skin, leaving the data behind."
“If Rourke finds the safe, he blows it open,” Matteo states coldly. “He gets the shipping logs. He already knows Bellanti cash has been moving through our infrastructure. Those records just give him what he needs to make the laundering look like ours.
"He connects it to Natalia." I say the words out loud. The truth hangs in the stale air of the war room.
Silence descends over the tactical table. Matteo pauses his reassembly. Dante slowly lifts his head, staring at me with a sudden, intense focus.
They hear the raw, bleeding edge in my voice. They hear the total abandonment of my tactical detachment. I have spent my entire life chiding Dante for his explosive rage, lecturing Matteo on the necessity of emotional control in the field. I have played the grandmaster moving pieces on a board.
I am no longer playing a game.
Dante leans his hands on the table, a grin spreading across his face. He recognizes a mirror image of his own claim. "She isn't just a cover story anymore, is she, brother?"
"No." I hold Dante's gaze. I do not hide the obsession. I let it burn in the harsh light of the monitors. "She wears the ring. She wears my mother’s legacy on her finger. I am going to earn theright to put her on the family books. And Rourke is a threat to her survival. Which means Rourke ceases to exist tonight."
Matteo racks the slide of the reassembled rifle. The metallic clack is a definitive punctuation mark. "Then we wipe the floor with them. What is the play, Enzo? You are the architect."
I force the raging instinct into a narrow, highly focused laser. I channel it into strategy.
"A two-pronged assault." I trace a path on the digital map. "Matteo, you take a three-man team to the old rail yards. Jeff's older brother used to crew a Canadian Pacific freight line out of that hub, and the south fence has been dead to surveillance since the city pulled the grant. He is a coward. He will use what he knows. Find him. Secure him. Bring him back to the compound. He answers to us now."
Matteo nods sharply. "Consider him caught."
"Dante." I point to the transit hub. "You and I take the main facility. We go in hard and fast. No negotiations. No warnings. We breach the administrative wing, neutralize Rourke and his squad, and secure the ledgers from the safe."
"Four men inside, two outside," Dante repeats the odds, his fingers drumming against his holster. "Close-quarters combat. Heavy structural cover. It will be loud."
"Let it be loud." My voice drops, precise and absolute. "Loud is the message. The Bellantis need a price tag attached to our logistics network, and tonight we are stamping one on Rourke's body. Every soldier on their payroll wakes up tomorrow knowing the rate."
The cost of threatening my woman.
I turn away from the table and move to the armory cage at the back of the room. I punch my biometric code into the keypad. The steel grating slides open. The smell of gun oil and cold metal washes over me.
I grab a matte black tactical vest. I slide it over my head, securing the velcro straps tightly against my ribs. I slot two spare magazines for the Glock into the front pouches. I grab a sleek, lethal combat knife, testing the edge with my thumb before sliding it into the sheath strapped to my belt.
Dante and Matteo gear up beside me. The familiar, comforting symphony of the Costa family preparing for war. The click of magazines seating into place. The zip of Kevlar vests. The thud of combat boots checking footing. We move with synchronized, wordless efficiency. We are a machine built on grief and forged in violence.
I turn back to the monitor wall. My eyes scan past the live feeds of the transit hub, bypassing the traffic cameras, searching for the one feed that matters.
The top left monitor displays the internal security camera covering the east wing hallway up to the bedroom corridor—the same line our cameras have never crossed.
Turi stands exactly where I left him, positioned like a stone sentinel at the top of the stairs leading to the east wing. Behind that door, she is waiting. Behind that door, the woman who dismantled my pristine, calculated life is wearing my ring, bearing my marks, holding my heart hostage.
A fierce, primal satisfaction settles deep in my ribcage. The chaos in my mind clears, replaced by a singular, violent purpose.
I will keep her safe. I will work the list of every Bellanti name with line-of-sight to her until the column is empty, and then I will burn the column itself. I am the Fixer. I am the man who solves the impossible problems.
Rourke is a problem.
I am the solution.
