It’s Isabella who speaks up first, eyes frantic with fear. “We don’t know anything yet. We don’t know who this was for sure.”
“They attacked my home. They attacked my pregnant wife. They attacked myfamily.There is no more room for waiting around and playing this safe. As of right now, The Prince’s Hand is at war with the Cartel,” Leon’s voice booms out with authority.
As his words sink in, he turns to Teo and Rocco. “Is the Guild with me?”
Teo shares a long look with Rocco. Their faces are grim with the same resolve that has defined them all these years.
“Of course,” Teo says, his voice laced with the same anger I can see burning in Leon’s eyes.
“I guess my sabbatical is officially over,” Rocco mutters over Cas’ head.
I sag against Leon’s arm and listen to him bark out instructions, the adrenaline finally starting to wear off and the exhaustion kicking with a vengeance. I don’t realize how close I am to toppling over before Leon suddenly catches me.
“I’m fine,” I say to the frown on his face.
Leon’s chocolate-colored eyes are everywhere, darting across my body as if he can somehow do a comprehensive medical analysis by sight alone.
I expect him to chastise me, to hit me with some insistence that I rest.
I don’t expect him to bark for Teo. “I need a favor, Vitale.”
The Guild’s don enters my periphery with a concerned look at me. “What do you need?”
“I seem to recall that you have a bunker. I need Mia to stay somewhere safe until the babies are born.”
22
LEON
The Cartel’s blood seeps into Brooklyn’s streets like a stain that refuses to lift.
After four months, even the local broadcasters are getting wind of “extensive gang activity”, warning civilians to stay home at night, suggesting curfews for their own safety.
I have no interest in civilians. I have no interest in the Cartel’s goons either.
The only blood I long for is Amos Rubios.
I’ve turned the borough into a chessboard, every block a battleground, every move calculated to deliver maximum pain.
They thought the explosion would cripple us. They were wrong. I prove it to them every time they seek us out, every time I annihilate everything in my path.
They brought this violence on themselves the second they attacked my family.
I don’t stop. I don’t sleep. I live in the Guild’s warehouse, where we’ve set up a war office that can accommodate the combined forces of both Teo’s men and mine.
Teo sits in the corner, surrounded by monitors, tapping away, looking at security feeds and encrypted servers. His knack for digital warfare is unmatched, and he finds the cracks in the Cartel’s armor before they even know they’ve exposed themselves.
“Their shipment lands at Pier 27 tomorrow night,” Teo says one evening, his voice flat but focused. “Weapons. High-end. Heavy.”
I nod, already planning. “Rocco, get your people on the dockworkers’ union. I want eyes and ears before they unload a single crate.”
Rocco leans back in his chair, cracking his knuckles. “Done.”
Dante handles the international angles, his connections running deep in shipping and logistics. When the Cartel reroutes their product through the ports in Jersey, Dante has their smugglers cornered before they even leave the harbor.
“We’ve got a freighter with their name on it,” he tells me, his tone smug. “Offloaded on our doorstep by mistake. Shame, isn’t it?”
Even Max, recovering from his head injury, refuses to sit idle. He spends most of his time glued to my side whenever I’m not out in the field myself, contributing where he can.
