Luca exhaled, tension easing from his shoulders for the first time since the meeting began.“Thank you.”
Kaiser inclined his head a fraction.
For the first time, Luca believed it.
He could leave her.
And she would be safe.
****
“Move.Now.Low profile.Blow the door.”
Luca’s voice cut through the dark like a blade.
The warehouse door blew inward an instant later, steel screaming as Dominic’s charge ripped the hinges free.Cold night air collided with heat and rot, the smell inside thick enough to taste—old blood, bleach, fear that had been trapped too long.Fluorescent lights stuttered overhead, half of them dying, the other half flickering like they were trying to look away.
Concrete stretched wide and shapes resolved out of the darkness
Men.
Women.
Chains.
“Contacts left,” Mateo said in Luca’s ear.“Four.Armed and nervous.”
Luca was already moving.
The first man rushed him, wild-eyed, gun coming up too fast, too sloppy.Luca stepped inside the arc, twisted the wrist until bone gave, followed with an elbow to the throat.The sound was wet.The man dropped, choking on nothing.
A second man raised his weapon.
The crack of Kol’s rifle split the air.The shooter spun, shoulder exploding, body slamming into a pillar with a howl that echoed and died.
Then the shouting started.
“Wait—listen—fuck—”
Havelock’s men shoved the women forward.
Eight of them stumbled into the light.Bare feet slapped against concrete.Wrists bound raw.One collapsed to her knees, another caught her before she could fall completely.Their eyes were hollow, glassy in the way that meant they had already learned begging didn’t work.
Two gunmen dragged women by their hair, forcing them down between the Covenant and their gun barrels.
Luca felt the shift inside himself—the click where restraint ended and precision began.
“Put the guns down,” he said calmly.“This doesn’t end the way you think it does.”
The man in front—the lieutenant—laughed.It was thin, panicked, high.“We walk out of here, or they don’t.”
The first shot detonated the room.
A woman’s head snapped back.She dropped without sound, blood already spreading beneath her.
The second gunman didn’t hesitate.
Another shot.Another body.Another life ended like it was nothing.
