The panic room. That’s what this is. I’ve heard Marco mention it. Military-grade. Biometric lock. Designed to keep people safe during a siege. Or to keep them trapped.
I slide down the door until I’m sitting on the floor, knees drawn to my chest. Emergency lighting casts the small space in a dim amber glow. A narrow bed against one wall. A mini-fridge humming in the corner. Concrete reinforced with steel. No windows. A tomb. A very comfortable tomb.
He knew. The whole time we were walking, he knew where he was taking me. When I thanked him for letting me come. When he said I should see this through. He was already planning this.
Lorenzo knew. And he put me in a box.
Just like Paolo. Just like my mother. Everyone deciding what’s best for me without bothering to ask what I want.
I force myself to stand. Wipe my palms on my jeans. Look around the room with new eyes. The bed. The fridge. A smallbathroom through an open doorway. Emergency lighting on battery backup. Ventilation through a grate in the ceiling, too small to crawl through. Concrete walls. Steel reinforcement.
And the door. Heavy. Sealed. With a biometric thumbprint scanner glowing red on the inside panel.
Lorenzo thought a lock could hold me. He doesn’t understand who I am.
He knows I’m a hacker. He’s heard what I did to his family’s systems, the Benedetti systems, half the crime families on the Eastern seaboard. But knowing and understanding are different things. He’s never watched me do the dirty work. Never seen me turn security into a suggestion.
I’m not a woman who waits to be rescued. I’m Ghost.
I cross to the scanner and study the panel. Standard hardware. I’ve cracked better systems with less motivation. I raid the bathroom for a nail file from a cheap toiletry kit. Three minutes to pry the panel open. The mechanism underneath is simple when you know where to look.
Thirty-eight minutes. I press my thumb to the scanner. The light flashes green.
I push the door open and step into the empty corridor.
Silence over the compound. Not empty. Two men at the front gate. Another doing rounds near the garden. Skeleton crew left behind. But I’ve had weeks to map every camera angle, every blind spot, every rotation pattern in this security system. I disabled the perimeter feeds from the panic room’s emergency terminal before I walked out. Three keystrokes. The guards are watching dead screens and can’t tell.
I ghost through the corridors, sticking to the camera dead zones I catalogued during my first week here. The guard near the kitchen passes within ten feet of me. His flashlight sweeps left. I move right. He doesn’t see a thing.
I check my phone. The tracking app is still loaded with Marco’s coordinates. The Benedetti compound, forty minutes by car. Maybe thirty-five if I push it.
The garage is on the west side. I’ve clocked which bike has the keys left in the ignition because Nico is careless and I pay attention.
Paolo taught me to ride when I was twelve. Before the gambling swallowed him whole. Before he became the man who sold my sister. He put me on the back of his old Honda in the driveway and said,Lean into the turns, Izzy. Trust the bike.
I trusted the bike. I trusted him. Funny how that worked out.
I didn’t come this far to sit in a cage while other people decide Sofia’s fate.
Lorenzo is going to be furious. Good.
I start walking.
22
LORENZO
I made the right call.
The SUV cuts through New Orleans darkness, headlights carving pale tunnels through the humid night. Dante drives. Nico rides shotgun. I’m in the back, running through the tactical layout Marco fed us an hour ago. Entry points. Guard rotations. The holding area where they keep the girls before transport. Where they’re keeping Sofia.
Isabella is safe. Locked in three inches of reinforced steel with enough supplies to last a week. She’ll hate me for it. That’s fine. I can survive hate.
“She’s going to be furious.” Dante’s eyes find mine in the rearview mirror.
“She’ll be alive to be furious.”
Silence. Nico shifts in his seat, exchanging a look with Dante. They’re thinking what they won’t say out loud.
