"You don’t open the door. You don’t go near the windows. You stay in the center of the room." I lean down. My nose brushes her jaw. I inhale her deeply. The anchor I need before diving into the blood. "If anyone breaches the outer stairwell, the automated lockdown seals the inner door and the alarm trips. No charges, nothing that touches this room. You stay low to the floor."
She nods. Her hands come up. Her fingers press into the weave of my vest. A grounding touch. "Come back."
"There’s no universe where I don’t come back to you." I crush my mouth to hers. A punishing, brief kiss. No softness. Just a brand.
I grab the AR-15 from the rack. I hit the door. The steel slams shut behind me. The locks engage with a series of loud, mechanical thuds. I am already moving. Down the stairs. Into the alley.
The black armored SUV roars to life. I tear out onto the street. Tires screaming against the wet asphalt. Chicago blurs outside the windshield. The early morning sky is a bruised gray. Neon lights streak across the glass. My grip on the steering wheel is rigid. The engine hums a violent frequency.
I need to be in two places. I need to be guarding my woman. I need to be killing for my brothers. The dichotomy claws at the inside of my skull.
I have been a weapon since the night Carlo died. Since the silence fell. I stood in the compound and understood that no one was coming to fix what had been broken. Waited for my father to walk back in. He never walked in. The chair stayed empty.
I grip the wheel harder. Leather groans under my palms. I will not lose my family. I will not lose my woman.
The North Side approaches. The scent of ozone and burning rubber filters through the vents. Smoke is rising above the tree line. Black plumes staining the morning sky.
I slam the SUV into park outside the wall. The wrought-iron gates are twisted. Scorched black. A Bellanti vehicle burns on the lawn, smashed through the stone barricade.
The breach is still live. Muzzle flashes strobe through the smoke. Two shooters are dug in behind the shattered barricade, raking the courtyard with fire.
I move. A round screams out of the smoke and tears across my shoulder. The fabric splits. The burn is instant. I don’t slow down.
I hit the first shooter at a dead run. We go down hard against the broken stone. Brick dust chokes the air. I drive my fist into his throat, then his temple, until he stops moving. The second one swings his barrel on me. I catch it, wrench it wide, and put three rounds through his chest.
Then it’s quiet. Just the fire crackling and the ringing in my ears.
I lower my rifle. The perimeter is secure. Cordite and copper coat the back of my throat. My knuckles are split. The graze on my shoulder weeps through the scorched fabric.
Matteo stands near the fountain, barking orders into a handheld radio. His suit jacket is gone. Blood stains his white shirt. Not his blood. Costa soldiers drag bodies toward the extraction vans. Cleaners, erasing the strike before the morning commute.
Santi melts out of the smoke like a ghost. “Clear.”
"Nico." Matteo turns. His eyes scan me. Assessing the blood on my clothes. The fatigue lining my face. "You handled the armory."
"The first team inside the armory is dead. Their immediate cache is neutralized. " I state the fact. No pride. Just math. "But they had other teams moving while I was in there."
"This was a distraction." Matteo wipes ash from his jaw. "They pushed us here while they moved assets through the South Side armory network. It was too coordinated. They knew our shift change."
The leak. The ghost in our system. The rat in the walls.
"Where is Vincenzo?" I ask.
"Sub-basement. Tracking the data."
I bypass the kitchen. I don't look at the reinforced glass. I head straight for the steel door of the war room. Down the concrete stairs. The temperature drops ten degrees. The sub-basement is a sensory deprivation tank compared to the chaos outside. Concrete walls. Soundproofed ceiling. The only noise is the hum of the servers.
Vincenzo sits in front of a wall of glowing monitors. The blue light casts harsh shadows across his face. He looks exhausted. Lines of green code reflect in his eyes.
"Talk to me," I say. My voice echoes off the concrete.
Vincenzo types a rapid sequence. A map of the city appears. Red nodes flashing. "The data packet routing the strike team bounced through three dummy servers, but the access pattern matches internal credentials."
I step closer. The servers hum. A steady, oppressive drone. I stare at the origin timestamp. The access logs.
The weight of a generation drops onto my shoulders. Old access. Elder-level permissions. Someone close enough to know our routes, our shifts, and our blind spots
"The pattern you found." I keep my voice dead flat. Stripped of any inflection. "It points to someone who has been inside for a long time."
