46. Lorenzo
LORENZO
The wipers drag heavy Chicago rain across the windshield, filling the sedan with a steady scrape.
Salvatore keeps both hands on the wheel; his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
He rarely leaves the security room beneath the estate and the lab, preferring cameras and monitors to the streets, but I choose my men carefully.
When I walk into uncertainty, I bring the ones I trust without question.
In the passenger seat, my phone glows against the dark leather interior.
The blue dot has not moved.
It rests on an isolated residential road near the western edge of the city, tucked behind overgrown pines and old money.
“Kill the headlights.”
The road drops into shadow.
Salvatore slows three houses away from the coordinates and pulls against the curb beneath a dead streetlamp. The engine settles into a low growl.
Through rain-speckled glass, Marie Volkova’s old estate rises behind a wrought-iron gate.
Brick.
Stone.
Black windows.
A house built to keep secrets.
Headlights cut through the dark farther down the driveway.
“Down,” Dante mutters from the back seat.
I lower my shoulders as a black SUV and two unmarked silver sedans roll out through the gates. They turn onto the main road and speed past us, tyres hissing over wet asphalt.
Too many men.
Too much hurry.
I watch their taillights vanish into the rain.
My watch reads 8:23 p.m.
Mikhail’s main force is headed for Old Port Road.
Straight into the decoy.
The trap has sprung.
He does not know the teeth are empty.
“Salvatore, stay with the car,” I say, reaching for the door. “Keep the engine running. If anyone comes back before I call, hold them long enough for us to move.”
He nods.
“Dante, with me.”
Cold air hits my face.
Dante and I slip into the shadow of the brick wall, moving fast past the gate. Rain softens the gravel beneath our boots, swallowing the sound of each step.
My left hand stays inside my coat, wrapped around the grip of my gun.
We clear the bend in the driveway.
The house spreads wide before us, two stories of dark windows except for one amber glow on the ground floor near the side entrance.
Then a voice cuts through the rain.
Mikhail.
I freeze, flattening my back against a stone pillar.
Dante drops low behind the hedges.
“They’re coming,” Mikhail rasps into a phone, his voice tight with old venom. “I sent three cars full of men. I want Lorenzo dead or alive. Dead is better.”
A pause.
Rain drips from the porch roof.
“If they have more men, double ours. I want complete extermination. That ground should stink of Nero’s blood before dawn.”
The line goes dead.
His shoes scrape against stone.
A second later, the oak door shuts behind him.
I look at Dante.
“Back door,” I whisper. “Clear the kitchen and lower level. Quietly.”
His jaw tightens.
“Boss, out of loyalty, let me take the front. You don’t go in blind without a shield.”
“I need him breathing until I know they’re alive.” I hold his stare. “But I want his teeth pulled. Move.”
For one second, he looks ready to argue.
Then he disappears into the rain.
I count five beats of my own pulse.
Then I step onto the porch.
The front door handle is heavy brass.
I turn it slowly.
Unlocked.
Mikhail still believes his plan is protected by the men he sent away.
That is his final mistake.
The foyer is warm, carpeted, and thick with old wood and stale air. A grandfather clock ticks against the wall, steady and indifferent.
I move toward the amber light.
A shadow stretches across the hardwood ahead.
A guard turns the corner with a submachine gun slung over his chest.
Before he lifts the barrel, I close the distance and drive my forearm into his throat. He hits the wall with a muffled thud, eyes bulging, hands clawing at my sleeve.
I slam the butt of my pistol into his jaw.
Bone cracks.
His knees buckle.
I catch him before he falls and lower him onto the rug without letting his weapon clatter.
A door splinters open at the back of the house.
A shout echoes from the kitchen.
Two suppressed pops follow.
Dante is working.
I move faster.
The amber light spills from a wide study at the end of the hall.
Victoria is inside.
Her hands are bound with plastic ties. Her face is pale beneath the lamp. Her hair hangs loose around her shoulders, and blood darkens the corner of her mouth.
Beside her, Isabella sits on the floor, weeping into her hands.
Mikhail stands near the desk, grey hair dishevelled, dark coat open.
The moment he sees me, his hand dives toward an open drawer.
I fire once.
The bullet tears into the wood an inch from his fingers, spraying splinters across his sleeve.
He freezes.
“Step away from the desk.”
“Lorenzo,” Victoria whispers.
Her voice is raw.
Her eyes flick to the blood on my cuff, then back to my face.
Alive.
She is alive.
Relief hits hard.
Mikhail slowly raises his hands. A bitter smile twists his mouth.
“Fuck,” he murmurs.
The word slips out before he can stop it.
Surprise flashes across his face, then vanishes beneath contempt.
“You’re too late, boy. My men are already at the docks. Your entire crew is walking into a graveyard.”
“Your men are watching four empty trucks on public asphalt,” I say. “And they’re looking at faces they thought they buried last week.”
His smile falters.
Before he can answer, another guard charges through the side door and slams into me.
The impact drives the air from my lungs as we hit the floor. My gun skitters across the polished boards toward the sofa.
The guard is younger.
Heavier.
His fingers dig into my throat, trying to pin me down.
I roll my hips and drive my knee into his ribs. He grunts. His grip loosens. I swing my fist into his temple hard enough to make his head snap sideways.
He reels back, then lunges again, clawing for the knife at his belt.
From the corner of my eye, I see Mikhail move.
Not toward the desk.
Toward Victoria.
He grabs her by the hair and yanks her up from the sofa, pulling a small silver derringer from his waistcoat pocket.
He presses the barrel beneath her chin.
“Get off him!” Mikhail roars at the guard. “Get back, or I open her throat right now!”
The guard scrambles away from me.
I rise slowly, chest heaving, eyes locked on Victoria.
She is not crying.
Her body is rigid. Her teeth are clenched. Her bound hands twitch against her jeans.
Even now, she is thinking.
“She dies first,” Mikhail spits. “Then her mother. I will watch the bloodline end in this room. Francesco was a fool, but I am not. You will bleed out in front of me.”
“You don’t have the stomach for it,” I say, taking one slow step forward. “You’re a banker, Mikhail. You pay for lives. You don’t take them.”
His face reddens.
“I took her father’s.”
The room goes still.
Victoria’s breath catches.
Isabella releases a broken sound, the truth crashing over her all at once.
She has been fucking the devil.
Mikhail’s eyes brighten with madness.
“A little poison in his tea after Moscow. He died a few days later, just as I wanted, and his foolish wife thought it was a stroke.”
Victoria does not look away from him.
I see the truth enter her.
I see it cut.
Then I see it harden.
“You killed my father,” she whispers.
“I removed a problem.”
Her lips part, but no sound comes.
Mikhail tightens his grip in her hair.
“You lived because your mother knew how to mind her business. Then you found Lorenzo Nero and became inconvenient.”
My finger rests against the trigger of the gun I no longer hold.
Victoria’s gaze shifts downward.
My pistol lies three inches from her foot, half hidden beneath the edge of the rug.
Her bound fingers twitch.
Mikhail does not notice.
I do.
“Look at me,” I say.
His eyes snap back to mine.
“You’re a dead man, Lorenzo.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But you’ll see me coming.”
Victoria drops.
She throws her full weight backward into Mikhail’s shins.
The sudden force knocks him off balance. His shot goes wild, blasting into the ceiling. Plaster rains down as Victoria rolls across the floor, bound hands reaching.
Her fingers close around my gun.
The remaining guard lunges toward her.
I step in and drive my boot into his chest, sending him crashing into the bookshelf. Wood cracks. Books spill around him.
Mikhail scrambles to his knees, rage twisting his face. He raises the derringer toward Victoria’s chest.
“You little bitch?—”
Bang.
The sound tears through the room.
Mikhail stops.
The silver gun slips from his fingers and lands on the rug.
A dark red circle blooms in the centre of his wool coat.
He looks down, eyes wide with almost childlike confusion, as though the world has betrayed him by allowing the bullet in.
Then his knees give out.
He falls forward, forehead striking the floor with a hollow thud.
Silence follows.
Only the clock ticking in the hall.
Only the rain tapping softly against the windows, while the world outside has no idea what ended here.
Victoria remains on her knees; the pistol held in both bound hands.
Smoke curls from the barrel.
Her chest rises and falls in shallow, broken breaths. She stares at Mikhail’s body without blinking.
The innocence in her face does not vanish.
It sets.
Hardens.
Becomes survival.
I cross the room and kneel in front of her.
“Victoria.”
Her eyes move to mine.
For a moment, she looks at me while still trapped inside the shot.
“I killed him,” she whispers.
“I know.”
Her hands begin to shake.
“I killed him.”
“I know, baby.”
The word leaves me rougher than I mean it to.
Her face crumples.
I take the gun gently from her grip and set it aside. Then I slide my knife beneath the plastic tie and cut her wrists free.
Red marks circle her skin.
I touch them with my thumb, careful and furious.
Her breath breaks.
“I didn’t want to,” she whispers. “But he moved. He was going to?—”
“I know.”
“He killed my father.”
“I heard him.”
“He made my mother call me.”
“I know.”
Her body folds into mine.
I catch her before she hits the floor.
She breaks against my chest, not softly, not prettily, but fully. Her hands clutch my coat as though I am the only solid thing left in the room.
I wrap one arm around her shoulders and the other around the back of her head, holding her so tightly nothing else can reach her.
No words can clean this.
No kiss can make it pure.
No lie can give her back the woman she was before she pulled the trigger.
So I give her the only truth I have.
“You’re alive,” I say against her hair. “You’re alive, and you’re coming home with me.”
She shakes harder.
Behind us, Isabella sobs into her hands.
Dante steps into the room from the hallway, his sleeve torn, knuckles split, expression grim.
“Lower level is clear, Boss.”
I nod once but do not release Victoria.
Mikhail’s phone begins to ring.
The sound cuts through the room, ugly and loud.
I ease Victoria back just enough to look at her face. Her eyes are wet, shattered, but open.
“Stay with me.”
She nods once.
I reach into Mikhail’s coat and pull out the vibrating phone.
Unknown number.
I answer without speaking.
“Mikhail?” a frantic voice says over the line. Gunfire cracks in the distance. Car horns blare. “We have a problem here. This is strange. Some of Francesco’s goons are with the Neros. We had a little shootout, but they aren’t trying to breach the yard. They’re just holding the asphalt.”
I look down at Mikhail’s body.
The man on the phone keeps talking.
“I can see at least three men I recognise from our last meeting with Francesco. They’re pulling back into the trucks now. Sir, I think?—”
I end the call.
Then I drop the phone beneath my heel and crush it.
The screen splinters.
The room falls quiet again.
Dante moves to Isabella and helps her stand. She clings to him, trembling so hard her knees nearly fail.
Victoria wipes her face with the back of her hand, but the tears keep coming.
She looks at Mikhail one last time.
Not with triumph.
Not with regret.
With understanding.
Then she turns away.
I put my gun back inside my coat and take her hand. Her grip closes around mine with surprising strength.
Still shaking.
“We’re going home, ladies,” I say.
Victoria closes her eyes.
Isabella breaks down again.
Dante checks the hallway, then signals clear.
I nod at Dante. “Ring the men on the other side,” I order. “Call off the detour. And make damn sure nothing can be traced back here.”
I guide Victoria toward the door, keeping her tucked against my side.
She does not look back.
Behind us, Mikhail Volkov lies bleeding into the rug of his sister’s old house, surrounded by the ruins of every lie he thought would outlive him.
It does not.