You’d think that after five years working under Ezekiel’s command, shoulder to shoulder with his and the other families’ men, I’d be used to relying on others, but I’m not. Patience has never failed me, men have. And tonight, I have no other choice but to place the outcome of this mission in their hands and hope they won’t be the reason it all goes to shit.
“Relax,” theidiotmutters behind me, completely unconcerned and it’s enough to grate against my every nerve. “It’s only a bust.”
My body stiffens for half a second, subtle enough that the dark hides my obvious disdain for the bastard, but irritation still crawls up the back of my neck despite him not being worthy of the reaction.Only a bust.The words only piss me off. Does he have no concept of what we’ve been doing for the last five years? Does he think this is just routine? Another day at the office. Usually, I’d agree. But thesebustswill never be clean work. The bodies, the blood that we’vespilled. Hunting down the remnants of a society that fed and thrived on both. That’s not something even the coldest man in our outfit could ever get used to.
We’ve torn through The Royal like a damn apocalypse. Ripped them out of their fucked up sanctuaries and burned their attempt at building an uprising to ash that still hasn’t settled. Routine dies the second innocent people are dragged into this mess.Children. Women.Those who we’ve saved. Those we were too late to find. Does none of that mean anything to this prick, or is he just too damn fucking stupid to understand the difference between a job and the kind of aftermath that doesn’t go away? Aftermath that leaves an infinite stain deeper than anything our world has ever dealt in. Something that doesn’t justendwhen the bodies stop dropping. This? The Royal…will stain this earth forever. There is blood drying in corners of this shithole that should never have been spilled in the first place, in rooms reeking of ritual and rot, of symbols carved into skin for nothing more than power and depraved fucking lunacy. For every door we’ve kicked in, there was another we didn’t reach in time. Empty eyes. Cold bodies. That’s what he calls ‘only a bust?’
I’ve never cared for human filth. I don’t lose sleep over the men I put into the ground. But the innocent ones, the ones who never got out, they stay with me in a way nothing else does. They stay with Ezekiel too, even if he doesn’t admit much about it these days.
I don’t give the idiot behind me a second thought as I make my way forward. The port is already locked down, not by the authorities, but by us. Three black SUVs block the access road, engines cut, headlights dead, positioned far enough off the main line that no one will notice them unless they try to come through. Mortello has men posted on every corner, spaced with precision, radios clipped to their vests and weapons concealed beneath mafia black but ready to be drawn without hesitation.
Drago Vaelric’s men are feeding us movement through the comms while they monitor the dock’s systems remotely, tracking positions, calling movement, searching the shadows between the spaces we can’t cover ourselves from the ground. Nothing will slip through without being seen or detected. No gaps. We can’t afford gaps. I step out from the line of containers, keeping close to the steel where the floodlights don’t quite reach, using the thin strip of broken light to remain unseen. The sour stench of ocean filth sticks in the back of my throat. I fucking hate this shit. The tide has pulled back, exposing the underbelly of the docks, dark and slick with ice and buildup that hasn’t seen clean water in years. The lights that line the dock burn through the night in harsh angles, bleaching the pylons and concrete, forcing most of the gaps between the containers into full view, but not all of it. There are still dead zones, narrow cuts ofdarkness where the light doesn’t touch, just enough cover for me to move without being noticed.
“Perimeter?” I murmur into the comm, keeping my voice low as I move through the dead space across the dock, my leather jacket doing nothing to soften the bite of steel pressed cold against my back as I keep tight to the shadows hugging the containers.
“Locked down,” a low voice answers in my ear, calm and unshaken. “Road’s sealed, east end’s a choke point with four men holding it. The west side is covered from elevation. We’ve got eyes on every approach.” There’s a long, uncomfortable pause that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention, before he adds, “It’s a ghost town.” I don’t know whether that is a positive, or a negative. I am going to go with the latter. I keep moving, not bothering to see if the four other men are following behind me or not. Most of the work that happens here happens at night. But tonight, everything feels…silenced, not shut down. It’s like someone reached in and severed the sound completely. There are no engines turning over. No late-night crews shouting across the docks. No chains or anchors dragging across the wood.
No witnesses.
I slow my pace, letting my eyes sweep the open stretches once more, but the place is clear. Billy moves up beside me. Unlike the idiots Ezekiel dragged alongtonight, Billy actually knows how to fucking do his job without sounding like a SWAT team smashing through drywall with every step.
“Anything?” he asks, shifting closer beside me while his eyes track the loading yard ahead.
“Not a damn thing,” I mutter, finally cutting a glance in Billy’s direction. His jaw is locked tight as he gives a single nod, noticeably on edge. The man’s built like concrete and usually just as hard to read. I’ve watched him walk through gunfire without a single ounce of fear, taken on some of the bloodiest jobs we’ve somehow managed to survive over the years without losing composure once, and tonight, something about him feels off. Subtle, but noticeable. Working beside someone long enough teaches you things. The small tells. The minute changes most people miss because they’re too caught up in themselves to listen or pay attention. Billy gets quieter when something isn’t right. While he may be a bit of a jokester on the exterior, he sure as shit has instincts that you can always count on being dead fucking accurate. If Billy feels tension creeping in, there’s a reason for it.
“It would make me feel a whole lot better if the place didn’t look like someone scrubbed it clean before we got here,” he whispers, exhaling slowly through his nose. “Doesn’t sit right.”
“No. It doesn’t.” My grip tightens around myweapon as I listen past the crash of the waves. I strain to hear anything that doesn’t belong here. Footsteps, voices, but there’s no sound but the water, the wind and the creak of the cranes above us like rusted skeletons waiting to collapse. The feeling crawling up my spine only gets worse with every passing second. Then, a faint noise carries over the winter wind. I’m not entirely sure where it came from at this distance, but I hear it. Metal shifting against metal. Quick and sharp.
“You hear that?” Danny appears on my opposite side, his voice barely audible. I nod once, all three of us going rigid as we stay buried within the shadows. Billy slowly raises his rifle, eyes narrowing toward the slim cargo lane stretching ahead of us while Danny reaches behind his back and pulls the knife from its sheath in one smooth movement.
My gaze flicks to him briefly. A few months ago, the idea of Danny anywhere near my sister would’ve earned him a bullet. Katia deserved better. Better than a man who carries death with him everywhere he goes. Then again, I could say the same thing about myself. The truth is, Katia isn’t some naive little girl waiting to be protected. This world got its claws into her the same way it got into the rest of us. She understands the violence. The blood. The sacrifices that come with surviving it. I hadn’t liked it when I first found out they’d been seeing each other. Hell, I damnnear put Danny through a wall over it. But somewhere along the way I’d noticed the little things. The way he watched her when he thought nobody was paying attention. The way he puts himself between her and danger without a second thought. And Katia… Katia smiles around him. Not the guarded ones she’d learned to wear growing up. It makes me sick, but I also remember a time when she didn’t smile at all.
Growing up the way we did, happiness was an unaffordable luxury. We spent our childhood trying to survive it, let alone enjoy it. If there was one thing I trusted more than Danny’s ability to protect her, it was my sister’s ability to make her own choices. She’s smart. Not just because she’s a doctor. She’s survived things that would’ve broken most people. She knows what she’s doing. I just have to accept it. Still doesn’t mean I won’t bury the asshole myself if he ever hurts her.
Danny catches me looking and arches a brow.
“What?”
“Just be careful tonight, alright? Katia will kill me if anything happens to you.” A grin tugs at the corner of his mouth.
“Good to know where I rank.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
I look back over my shoulder into the darkness behind us before raising two fingers toward the menwaiting further down the cargo lane. I barely make the signal before they spread out, slipping from cover in complete silence this time, weapons drawn and ready as they take their positions along the containers that surround us. Billy moves from my left to cover the wider opening, while Danny stays close to my right as we slowly creep through the dark, and closer to the far side of the dock.
The noise comes again, dragging upward from somewhere beneath the docks before a deep vibration rolls through the concrete, hard enough that I feel it travel beneath my boots a second later. Billy reacts instantly, rifle snapping toward the darkness ahead while Danny slows beside me. I flick my gaze toward him, catching his expression the second it sharpens, his attention dropping to the ground where we stand as another faint tremor passes through the loading lane.
“Tell me you feel that too.” Danny murmurs, the words barely leaving his mouth before Billy’s hand slices through the dark from across the yard. My pulse slows as instinct takes over, another tremor rolling beneath the dock, much slower than before. Hidden under layers of concrete and rust where nobody walking these docks would ever think to look twice. That’s where they are. I lift my gaze ahead, eyes sweeping across the flurries of snow falling through the darkness, placing each of our men, blendingwithin the shadows as they take cover against the containers. Danny peels away from our position first, keeping low as he crosses the dock to where Billy is situated. I cover his flank, preparing for literally anything and every nerve in my body hums violently beneath my skin from adrenaline.
“Ready. Got you covered,” Danny’s voice crackles through my earpiece, and I waste no time, closing the distance and flattening myself against the steel the second I make it across. Within a heartbeat, we’re stepping into an open container. We’re definitely not alone here. We switch on our headgear lights, the beams sweeping across the rusted walls and empty space, before the light catches on something concealed beneath us. Concrete.
“What the fuck is that?” Billy mutters. The entire center of the container floor has been gutted, revealing a massive concrete bunker hidden beneath the steel shell hovering like an awning above it. A thick reinforced hatch sits open within the floor itself, its heavy metal door wedged back by an industrial anchor bolted against the steel wall beside it. The staircase descending below looks endless, disappearing straight into darkness beneath what I assume is the harbor. A fucking tunnel. An underground rat hole hidden in plain sight.
The acrid smell hits first.
Bleach.
