“We’ve cut off most of their resources now,” he says one night, his voice still a little rough, one eye perpetually sagging under his wound. “It’s only a matter of time before desperation weeds out their weaker foot soldiers. Rubio can’t keep them paid.”
But this war is more than tactics and alliances. It’s a grind.
Months of bloodshed, back-and-forth battles, and neighborhoods turned into war zones. Businesses pay the price of our aggression. Families hide behind locked doors.
And through it all, I miss her.
Mia.
Four months of nothing but a hard cot and a dozen other men snoring in my ear, and I can still imagine her tucked beneath the blankets of my king-sized bed at the Brownstone.
Our bed.
My one reassurance is that she’s safe, hidden in a bunker far from the chaos. She might hate me for it; likely, she’ll never forgive me for locking her away again. But theirs are the three heartbeats that I refuse to put at risk.
But every day without her feels like a knife twisting in my chest. When the silence falls at the end of each long night, all I can think about is her voice, her touch.
I think of the way she used to look at me in those brief moments when I thought we could be something important.
“Heads up.” Rocco drags me from my brooding to draw my attention back to the war room. “Teo’s found something.”
The Cartel pushes back harder every week, desperate and cornered.
But I push harder.
When they try to open a new drug route through Brighton Beach, I have Max and Dante shut it down before the ink ontheir contracts dries. When they threaten one of Teo’s cyber operatives, Rocco has the man relocated and safe within hours.
Move. Countermove.
But no matter how many victories I win, the weight never lifts. Not when every choice I make seems to drive us deeper into the trenches. When every success leads me further from Mia.
Yet I cling to a notion, a plan that’s been weeks in the making. Every detail, every contingency, is hammered out with precision.
I don’t leave anything to chance—this isn’t just about winning. It’s about crushing the Cartel so thoroughly that Amos Rubio has no choice but to retreat to his fortress. One blow big enough to corner him for good. The beginning of the end.
Teo finally joins us at the table, spreading out the maps he’s been working on before us—the Cartel’s remaining operations are like a spiderweb stretched across the city.
“They’ve centralized,” he says as he taps at the map. “One location, high risk, higher security. They’re desperate.”
“Good. That makes them predictable.”
Our target is a sprawling warehouse, one of the last major hubs the Cartel controls in Brooklyn. It’s more than a storage site; it’s their final lifeline. Drugs, weapons, cash—all of it flows through that building.
“We hit it hard and fast,” Dante says as he peers over the map behind Teo. “Take it out, and they’ll fold.”
“Not just fold,” I correct him. “We want Rubio on his knees.”
On the night of the attack, the air is electric.
Rocco secures our entry point through his contacts in the docks. Max oversees the strike team, coordinating with Dante to handle extraction. Teo monitors everything from his command center, relaying updates to keep us one step ahead.
My men move like shadows, slipping through the dark streets surrounding the warehouse. From my vantage point on a nearby rooftop, I watch as the Cartel’s guards patrol the perimeter, their arrogance palpable.
They don’t see it coming.
It begins with a single explosion—atTeo’s signal. A fuel truck parked along the warehouse ignites in a massive fireball, throwing the guards into chaos. My men move in immediately, breaching the building within seconds.
I’m on the ground with them, leading the charge. My gun is steady in my hand, every shot purposeful. I don’t waste time or ammunition. Each Cartel soldier that stands in our way falls quickly, their defenses crumbling under the weight of our assault.
