“How much?”
“Enough to disappear permanently. Him and about a dozen men.”
So this isn’t just about the ledger. It’s about Viktor building his own empire with stolen funds and the secrets in that book as leverage. He’s not trying to take over the families. He’s trying to escape them entirely, and he needs the ledger to guarantee his safety once he’s gone.
I file that information away and focus on the screens. “The cathedral has four entry points. Main doors, side chapel, sacristy, and the basement access through the old bootlegger tunnel.”
“Viktor will have them all covered.”
“Viktor has maybe twenty men left after we took out his backup team last month. I have sixty ready to move. Loyal soldiers who answer to me personally, not the families, not my father. Men I’ve been cultivating for years.”
“He has Luca.”
The words hit me like a hammer on the chest. I grip the edge of the console so hard until my knuckles turn white.
“I know what he has.”
Marco doesn’t flinch. He’s known me too long to be scared of my anger. “I’m saying we need to be smart about this. Viktor’s expecting you to come in guns blazing. That’s what he’s planning for. He knows you, knows how you react when someone threatens what’s yours.”
“Then we give him something he’s not planning for.”
I pull up another screen, this one showing the full extent of what I’ve built over the past six years. Safe houses in seven states. Offshore accounts that make Viktor’s look like pocket change. Weapons caches hidden in locations only I know about. A network of informants in every major family, every law enforcement agency, every corner of this city that matters.
Marco stares at the screen for a long moment. “So what’s the play?”
I turn away from the screens and face him directly. “We go in through all four entry points simultaneously. Viktor can’t cover them all with twenty men, not effectively. Main force hits the front doors, draws attention and firepower. Smaller teams breach the side chapel and sacristy. And the extraction team goes through the tunnel.”
“You want to lead the tunnel team yourself.”
“No.” It costs me something to say it. Every instinct screams at me to be the one who reaches my son first. To be the face Luca sees when he’s finally safe. “Viktor will expect me to come for Luca personally. He’ll be watching for me, positioned to intercept. That’s why you’ll be leading the tunnel team. I’ll take the sacristy entrance and make sure he sees me. Draw his attention while you get Luca out.”
Marco nods slowly, understanding the logic even if he doesn’t like it. “What about Scarlett?”
“She stays here with Elena. The panic room on the third floor is reinforced steel and concrete. She’ll be safe there until it’s over.”
“Boss.” Marco’s voice is careful, the way it gets when he’s about to say something I don’t want to hear. “She’s not going to accept that.”
“She doesn’t get a choice.”
Even as I say it, I know it’s not true. Scarlett stopped being someone I could control the moment she walked back into my life with our son. She’s fierce and stubborn and absolutely unwilling to sit on the sidelines when Luca is in danger.
“Get the teams ready,” I tell him. “Full briefing in two hours. I want everyone armed and in position by noon. Anyone who isn’t ready gets left behind.”
Marco leaves and I stay in the operations room, running scenarios through my head until they blur together. Every plan has their loopholes. Every approach carries risk. There’s no way to guarantee Luca’s safety, and that’s the thing that keeps eating at me, the uncertainty, the knowledge that I can’t control this no matter how hard I try.
I’ve spent my whole life being the one in control. The one who sees every angle, plans for anything and eliminates every threat before it materializes. And now my son’s life depends on me being perfect, and I’ve already proven I’m not.
I don’t hear Scarlett come in until it’s too late. One second I’m alone with the screens and the next she’s standing in the doorway wearing one of my shirts and looking at me like she’s seeing something new. How the hell did she even find here?
“Marco said you were down here.”
“You should be resting.”
“So should you.” She crosses the room slowly, taking in the screens and servers and weapons lockers lining the walls. Her eyes move across the displays showing troop positions, financial records, intelligence reports. I watch her face as she processeswhat she’s seeing and wait for the fear or the disgust or the realization that I’m something darker than she thought.
But I wait for nothing because it doesn’t come.
She stops in front of the main console, studying the cathedral blueprints with an intensity that surprises me. “This is a lot, like you’re planning a world war.”
