The structure is already compromised.
Nico is in the walls.
2
NICO
The red taillightsof her sedan bleed into the Chicago darkness. I watch them until they turn the corner, merging onto the highway I ordered her to take. My boots stay planted on the concrete. The freezing wind whips off the river, carrying the stench of exhaust and rotting garbage, but it cannot cut through the lingering scent she left behind. Jasmine and warm cardamom. It doesn't belong in this neighborhood. It doesn't belong on this street.
Mine.
The certainty of that fact rearranges the foundation of my entire existence in a matter of seconds. I was supposed to be on rooftop overwatch, monitoring the Bellanti auto-shop armory pressed against her clinic wall. That was the mission. Then she walked out of the clinic doors. That was the only reason I was breathing the frozen air on this side of the city.
She paused on the sidewalk. She did not run.
My target was the auto shop armory. My target evaporated the second she squared her shoulders against the dark.
I turn away from the street, into the shadows of the alley. I catch my reflection in a shattered window. Six-foot-three. Salt-and-pepper hair, cropped close — darker than Vincenzo's. A matching beard, trimmed to the jaw. Dark brown eyes, fast and assessing. Lean athletic build. A soldier's economy.
No ceremony. Tribal and geometric sleeve tattoos wrap both my arms, bleeding down to my wrists. A sharp black neck tattoo cuts stark against my skin. A gold watch clamps my wrist. No chain. I stand still in the glass. Loaded. Not sleeping. I have been a soldier so long I do not know what I am outside of one.
Inherited violence. Sleepless since childhood.
Twenty years ago, my father Carlo was lured to a South Side warehouse and executed. His body was dumped in an alley much like this one. I was fifteen. Old enough to understand the shape of a massacre, young enough for everyone to decide what I was allowed to know. I wasn’t a child.
They gave me silence instead of answers while my family fractured. I spent the next twenty years becoming the most lethal version of myself so no one would ever mistake me for someone who could be managed again. When I close my eyes, I don’t see the warehouse floor. I don’t see the alley. I see the empty chair at the table where my father used to sit. I see the silence.
I drag my gaze away from the glass. I sling my rifle bag over my shoulder. The nylon strap digs into my trap muscle. I’m abandoning the overwatch post. The Bellanti armory beside her clinic is suddenly secondary.
I pull my encrypted phone from my vest. The line connects to the Costa compound server room on the North Side.
Vincenzo answers on the first ring. "Status."
"I’m shifting position," I say. My voice is gravel and stone. It doesn't waver. It gives nothing away.
"Negative," Vincenzo counters instantly. "The fourth-floor roofline gives you the only viable angle on the rear loading bay of the Bellanti target. You move, you lose the sightline."
"I’m moving to her apartment building across the city," I state, leaving no room for argument. "I'll maintain remote sightlines on their loading dock."
Compulsion drives me, absolute and clean. Moving my base to her building puts me directly in her walls. It puts me below her feet. It puts my guns between her and the street.
Vincenzo pauses. I hear the rapid clack of his keyboard over the line as he brings up the topographical map of the block. "The apartment building exposes you to the eastern skyline."
"I will manage the exposure."
Another pause. Vincenzo is a genius. He doesn't like deviations from the plan without mathematical backing. "Understood. Shifting your geolocation tag now. Watch your six, Nico. The chatter on the encrypted channels is escalating."
The war is tightening. The Bellantis are pushing back. The compound is on high alert. Which brings us to the rot festering inside our own walls.
"The pattern you found." My voice drops to a deadly register. My eyes track every shadow. "The data leak."
"What about it?" Vincenzo's keystrokes stop.
"It points to someone who has been inside for a long time."
The silence on the line stretches out. It’s a suffocating weight. It is the sound of two brothers staring into an abyss they are not ready to cross. We don’t name anyone. We don’t make accusations. The evidence is a ghost, a shadow in the code, a terrifying implication.
Vincenzo goes quiet. He doesn't confirm. He doesn't deny.
