Chapter 12 Gianni
Gianni
The monitors flickered. One camera blinked out. Then another.
One by one, the feeds went dark until the house disappeared into silence and shadow.
That wasn’t an accident.
My houses were built to survive incompetence, weather, and arrogance—especially arrogance. Power lines were redundant. Systems were isolated. Fail-safes layered over fail-safes. Cameras didn’t fail unless someone made them fail.
Which meant this wasn’t merely a glitch.
We’ve been made.
The thought arrived fully formed, calm and immediate. But I didn’t panic. Panic was for men who…feared fear itself. That was not me.
Enzo was beside me within seconds, already confirming what my instincts had flagged the moment the feed stuttered.
“Two unknown vehicles slowed at the perimeter,” he said quietly. “Did a loop. Then pulled away.”
I felt irritation first—sharp, immediate. Then the colder calculation slid into place and shut everything else down.
I reached for my gun out of habit. Weight right. Slide clean. Chamber loaded. Exactly as it should be.
“Any idea who they were?” I asked.
My attention stayed on my phone as I called IT, already anticipating the answer. If this was a system failure, I’d know in minutes. If it wasn’t—
Then someone wanted me blind. And no one did that without a reason.
“Wake everyone,” I said quietly. “Minimal noise.”
Enzo didn’t hesitate. He pivoted immediately, already relaying the order as he moved.
“And I want two men outside Mikayla’s room,” I added. “Now.”
His jaw tightened—not in disagreement, but recognition. He nodded once and went.
The house responded at once with controlled motion.
We didn’t do chaos or panic in our world.
Doors opened without sound. Men moved with purpose, footsteps measured and precise as they took their positions.
It was the kind of efficiency that came from years of training and didn’t announce itself unless you knew how to listen for it.
Whatever was coming, we’d be ready.
Glass shattered.
The sound ripped up from downstairs—sharp, violent, impossible to mistake. For half a second, the house went still, like it was holding its breath.
Then I moved. I stepped into the hall at a controlled pace that didn’t match the surge of adrenaline tearing through me. Running created chaos I didn’t need.
My hand settled on my weapon as I advanced, every sense narrowing, every thought stripped down to angles, distances, exits. Whatever had just broken through my house hadn’t done it by accident. And it hadn’t come quietly.
Mikayla stood barefoot in her doorway, her robe pulled tight at her waist, dark hair loose and falling around her shoulders. She was too still, too aware—eyes already focused despite the hour. This wasn’t someone dragged awake by noise.
She’d felt it. The same way I had.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
Her voice was steady. There was no tremble or sense of panic, for which I was grateful. I couldn’t deal with a hysterical woman at the same time that I was trying to defend my home.
I didn’t soften the truth. But I wasn’t going to offer comfort I couldn’t guarantee.
“Go back into your room, Mikayla,” I said. “Stay there.”
She studied my face for a brief second—long enough to read what I hadn’t said. To understand the risk without me spelling it out. Then she nodded once.
She stepped back, closed the door quietly, and vanished from the hall as if she’d never been there.
That restraint lodged somewhere in my chest, sharp and unwelcome—but there was no time to examine it.
The house responded instantly.
Doors opened and closed without a sound.
Men moved the way they’d been trained to move—quiet, purposeful, already halfway to their positions before the order fully left my mouth.
Munitions bags appeared from nowhere. Weapons were checked by feel alone.
Slides racked. Chambers confirmed. Safeties came off.
Comfort was discarded without discussion. There was no space for it now.
Then the gunfire hit.
A sudden burst at the front of the house—sharp, violent, concussive. The sound tore through the walls and ceilings, amplified by stone and glass. It was too close and too loud.
We dropped as one. Bodies hit the floor, smooth and practiced, crawling toward the sound with weapons up and eyes forward. Training took over completely. Without panic, we covered all angles in our controlled advance toward the front door.
And then—just as abruptly—it stopped.
The silence that followed was wrong. Heavy. Foreboding.
A second later, car doors slammed. Tires shrieked against asphalt. An engine surged and disappeared into the dark.
It sounded like a drive-by. This hadn’t been an attempt to breach, but a warning.
We stayed down for long seconds that stretched into something denser, heavier—guns fixed on the door, bodies coiled, waiting for the second wave. The follow-up. The part where more unexpected gunfire erupted.
But nothing came.
I rose slowly, keeping my weapon trained ahead of me as I moved toward the front door. Every step was measured. Every sound catalogued.
The wood was torn apart. Bullets buried deep, splintering the frame, gouging the surface like bite marks. This wasn’t random or rushed. Whoever shot at my home knew exactly what they were doing.
The damage was ugly. It was also intentional. And it meant to intimidate.
I stood there with the weight of the gun steady in my hand, the house breathing quietly around me, already stripping the moment down to its meaning and mapping what came next.
“Who shoots up a house then runs?” Enzo said, coming up beside me at the door. His voice was careful, but I could hear the unease threading through it. I was already thinking the same thing.
Three feet from the front door, the window lay shattered—glass glittering across the stone floor like ice. It had been broken deliberately, violently… but not breached.
That was when I heard Dunn.
“Boss?”
I turned.
Dunn stood near the broken window, staring down at his hands. One of them was clenched around something dark and heavy, his knuckles white. For a moment, my brain refused to finish the picture.
Angelo looked too.
“What the fu—” he started. Then he gagged. He turned and bolted down the hall, the sound of retching echoing behind him. Picking up strays in this life always came with a learning curve. It took time to build the kind of stomach this business required. Some never did.
Dunn didn’t move. I’ll give him that. Whatever he was holding, he held it steady.
It was a human arm. Severed at the elbow. The cut was crude—jagged bone, torn muscle, tendons hacked through with something rough, which could have been a hacksaw.
The arm was bare. Male. The hand still intact.
On the pinky finger sat a small gold ring set with a green stone.
I knew that ring.
“I know this hand,” I said quietly, stepping closer.
Dunn’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t look away. “Whose?”
“George Gregory.”
Larry swore under his breath. Enzo went completely still.
The house seemed to inhale around us, like it understood what had just been brought inside its walls—and was deciding whether to reject it or swallow it whole.
“So he’s confirmed she’s here,” Enzo said slowly. “But if he knows, why not raid the place? Why not come in guns blazing?”
I didn’t answer right away.
My eyes drifted back to the shattered window. The glass scattered like frozen rain. The threshold untouched. And just inside it—deliberately placed, carefully positioned—the arm.
Like he was presenting me with a gift.
“Because this isn’t an attack,” I said at last. “It’s an invitation.”
They waited.
“An invitation to what?” Enzo snapped, his composure finally cracking. I loved the man, but fear always got the better of him.
“An invitation,” I said. “To sit at the table. He wants a conversation.”
Enzo stared at me. “This is how he asks?”
“I’m just grateful it was an arm and not a horse’s head,” Dunn muttered, glancing down at what he was still holding. “Very old-school. Very dramatic.”
The Godfather reference landed and died in the air between us.
“I need proof of life,” I said, my gaze settling on Dunn. “Do whatever it takes and find out whether her stepfather is alive or dead.”
The silence that followed was heavy and complete. It pressed in on the room, turning every breath into a conscious choice.
I already knew the answer. There was no realistic way George Gregory survived something that brutal. But knowing wasn’t enough. I needed confirmation. Facts. Certainty.
Dunn would get it. He was thorough, discreet, and faster than anyone else I trusted with something this sensitive. Now it was just a matter of waiting.
And waiting told me everything else I needed to know.
There was only one reason Archie hadn’t come through my front door tonight.
Only one reason he’d chosen intimidation over bloodshed—symbolism over slaughter—even knowing I was sheltering something he believed belonged to him.
Because Archie Popovich followed one rule without exception. One rule that sat above ego, rage, and even bloodlust: you don’t storm an Italian stronghold unless you’re prepared to start a war you can’t survive.