Chapter Four
Tirana wasn’t a city that slept—it simmered.
Even under the gray press of dawn, the place pulsed with life in a way that felt .
.. off. Like everything moved two beats behind real time.
Neon signs still glowed from bars long closed.
Traffic lights blinked over empty intersections.
Stray dogs barked somewhere in the distance, sharp against the constant hiss of tires over damp asphalt.
The safehouse Kai had directed them to was tucked above a shuttered tobacco shop that had clearly seen better decades. The awning hung half-torn, letters faded to ghost script. A rusting security gate guarded the front door—not locked, just stuck, like it knew better than to welcome visitors.
The interior was no better. Stale air, plaster walls with peeling paint, one light fixture flickering like it owed someone money.
The stairs creaked like warning shots. Ricky clocked six vantage points, three entry breaches, and zero fire escapes on the way up.
Standard eastern bloc paranoia chic. Kai had sent through images of the hotel Ezra had been staying at, and it was the same, run down, crumbling facade.
He wasn’t worried. Not about the place.
But even he noticed how Marsh moved through it—methodical, like every shadow might cough up a ghost.
The team said nothing. They didn’t have to.
Years of muscle memory kicked in. Bags were dropped and sorted.
Weapons laid out. Comms systems unpacked, synced, encrypted.
Dale checked locks, then started going through all the data Kai had sent over.
Hogan tested power grids. Marsh dove into the surveillance network with fingers twitching and jaw set like stone.
Bateman was in the corner, speaking low into his secure line with Kai. No raised voices. Just quiet, layered precision.
And Ricky—
Ricky sat on the edge of a ratty couch that smelled faintly of vinegar and smoke, elbows on his knees, Ezra’s message trembling faintly in his fingers. Not from nerves. Just too much adrenaline with nowhere to go.
He’d read it a hundred times. Maybe more. Each pass left a deeper groove in his chest.
Didn’t know how to say it before... Love, E.
He could still hear Ezra’s voice saying it. Could almost feel the heat of his breath against his neck. It pissed him off more than it hurt, now.
Mostly.
They had the list now. Names. Photos. Kids caught in the web of some cartel-backed orphanage scheme. The kind of polished humanitarian front that sold saviors to the public and shipped souls through the back door like inventory.
Kai’s data packet arrived an hour ago. Encrypted.
Dense. Data that linked donor organizations to shell companies, shell companies to off-the-books relocation networks.
Most of it was noise. A handful of camera feeds from known safe zones, a few old hits on customs manifests.
A line of breadcrumbs with no end in sight.
And not a single whisper of where Ezra had gone.
Just enough to feel like the ground was cracking underneath them.
Ricky didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
He just kept reading the message.
“Got him,” Marsh said suddenly, voice low but sharp.
Ricky was on his feet before he realized it. The others clustered fast—Bateman moved in behind Marsh’s shoulder, Hogan crossed the room in two strides, and Dale paused just long enough to set his sidearm down on the crate before joining them.
On the laptop screen, grainy black-and-white footage flickered into life.
A café. Narrow street. Low awning sagging over chipped tile tables. The resolution was garbage, but the figure seated alone under the awning was unmistakable.
Ezra.
Hood up. Shoulders hunched. Coffee cup barely touched beside him. Every line of his posture screamed nothing to see here, not now, not safe. Ricky felt it in his gut. That tight, coiled tension like Ezra was trying to be invisible in plain sight.
Then, the man at the table near him leaned in to talk to him.
Suit jacket. Clean lines. Casual confidence like he’d walked off a runway and into espionage.
They conversed for a moment, and then there was a shift in Ezra’s body, barely visible—just a minute recalibration of muscle and instinct.
But Ricky saw it. The movement of his head.
The weight in the shoulders. Ezra wasn’t flirting.
He was reading danger. The man leaned in. Said something. Ezra didn’t move.
Then—something changed. Ezra’s head turned, jaw clenched, and just like that, he stood and walked out. Not fast. Not slow. Measured.
Marsh toggled the feed.
“Next angle’s two streets over. Hotel front camera.”
It blinked in.
Ezra moved toward the hotel entrance—a narrow, crooked building with a busted neon vacancy sign and graffiti so old it had become part of the paint.
“That’s his hotel,” Ricky said. “I remember the door.”
Then the ambush.
Two figures emerged from the shadows like wraiths. One came in from behind, slamming a hard fist into Ezra’s ribs. The movement was brutal, practiced. Ezra spun—elbowed high, caught the attacker in the chin—but a second figure surged in from the left.
It turned ugly fast.
They disappeared into the alley between buildings. Light flared once—a reflection off metal. Knife. Ezra staggered. A gun fired—a flash of light and then shadows swallowed everything.
No one in the room spoke.
Marsh clicked forward. “Another camera. Second floor, side hallway. Storage closet, just outside 203.”
There he was—Ezra stumbling into frame, blood already soaking through his shirt. His hands fumbled at the storage closet door. He yanked it open, barely managing to slip inside. The door clicked shut behind him.
Then ... nothing.
The time stamp ran.
Seconds. Minutes. Eleven of them. Then movement.
Two new men entered the frame. Taller. Broader. Gloved hands. No panic. Just precision.
They went straight to the closet like they had a map. One twisted the knob. The door opened.
Ricky felt his breath catch.
Ezra was unconscious, slumped at an angle like he’d tried to brace himself and failed. One of the men crouched, checked his pulse, then nodded.
They lifted him between them like a sack of grain. Head lolled, one shoe missing, blood trailing behind them.
Down the stairs. Out the back.
Then they vanished into a dark sedan with no plates that merged into early morning traffic like it had done it a hundred times before. The screen went black.
“Time stamp?” Bateman asked, voice like gravel.
Marsh checked. “04:05.”
He pulled up the message metadata.
“Sent to Ricky at 03:58.”
Ricky’s jaw locked so tight it ached. He stared at the dark screen, at the empty stairwell frozen in time.
“He was bleeding out,” he muttered. “But he still made sure I got the file.”
There was something tight in his throat, something raw and splintered, but he shoved it down.
Bateman’s voice was quiet. “That’s Ezra.”
The comms tablet on Hogan’s belt chirped. He pulled it free, scanned the message.
“Kai just dropped a location. Former textile warehouse. Nineteen clicks east. Says it’s been flagged in trafficking ops for years. Arms, bodies. Locals call it the ghost house. Cops won’t go near it.”
Bateman looked at the team. “That’s our next stop.”
Ricky didn’t wait.
He was already moving, already pulling on his tac vest and checking his sidearm. Ezra had opened a door. Bought them time with his blood.
Now, it was their turn to kick it down.
****
Pain was all Ezra knew. Not just the sharp, screaming kind that stabbed through his side like heated wire—but the deeper kind. The kind that took root in marrow and wouldn’t let go. It radiated from his ribs and laced down his spine, crawling into every shallow breath like fire in reverse.
Cold. Sharp. Inevitable.
His head felt submerged, like someone had shoved his brain into a barrel of syrup. Every thought dragged. Every blink stung. Blood—he could taste it, thick and coppery on the back of his tongue.
Somewhere beyond the haze, footsteps echoed—measured, deliberate. Voices murmured, low and calculated. He couldn’t make out the words at first, not through the pounding in his ears.
But then—
“He knows too much.” The voice was calm. Emotionless. Clinical in the way someone might discuss trimming weeds.
Ezra blinked, dragging the world back into focus by sheer force of will. Blood pooled beneath him, sticky and hot. His arms were stretched wide, bound in rusted cuffs bolted into a wall of cracked concrete. Cold stone pressed into his spine like it was trying to etch itself into his bones.
Fuck.
“He’s got files,” the voice continued. “Pictures. Names. All of the kids. Even the fucking DNA profiles. One of them is highlighted in the file.”
Ezra’s breath caught. His stomach lurched as understanding slammed into him. They knew. Not just about the list—but about the girl. About her.
Van’s daughter.
He’d kept her name off every file. Scrubbed metadata. Hidden it six layers deep in encryptions only someone who thought like him—or like Van—could follow. But they had her name anyway.
His heart thundered so loud it drowned everything else.
“Don’t do this...” he rasped. His voice cracked on the words, shredded by pain and dehydration. “You don’t have to—”
A shadow loomed. The man leaned in close, breath warm and stale. “You think it matters? You’re not a hero. You’re not even a name. You’re just another ghost in the system.”
Ezra met his eyes. “Then why are you so scared of me?”
The blow came fast. A fist drove into his ribs with a sickening crack. He felt it more than heard it—bone giving way, cartilage shredding. He gasped, air turning to glass in his lungs. Another hit—lower this time. Sharp. Deep.
A blade.
He didn’t scream, he had no air for that. Just sagged in the restraints, jaw clenched, eyes screwed shut against the tide of agony. Hot blood soaked through the makeshift bandage someone had slapped on him two days ago. He barely felt it now.