5. Eva
Eva
T he desert night is a blanket of ink, so complete and absolute that it seems to swallow our convoy whole.
It reminds me of one horrible night I spent out on the black lake as a girl with Dimi in a rowboat, after we made a few foolish decisions.
The darkness under a cloudy sky was so complete that we couldn’t judge direction, and after hours of rowing around in an endless night, we gave up and waited for the dawn.
Here, at least, we have the headlights carving out a narrow path of visibility in the Nevada wasteland. But beyond their reach, the world simply ceases to exist.
I sit ramrod straight in the backseat of an armored army vehicle, one of the Consortium’s own that we sold to the Colombos, and donated to this mission by Brie.
Opposite me are Nik Kusek, Lyssa, and Scarlett.
Beside me sits Hadria Imperioli to my left and one of my own soldiers to my right.
Leon sits in the front next to the driver.
He insisted on that position, pointing out that I shouldn’t expose myself in the front to sniper fire.
My hands move methodically as I check my handgun.
The familiar motions are soothing in their repetition, and I need to be soothed.
The grip feels perfect in my hands, molded to my palm through years of training.
Leon insisted I learn to wield and maintain my own weapons from the beginning, back when I was still a teenager who thought running a criminal empire would be all boardroom meetings and power suits.
“A gun that jams gets you killed,” he’d said in his gravelly voice. “And a leader who can’t rely on her own weapon has no business leading anyone.”
I’ve never been in the front line of a battle, but I have killed before. And I’m prepared to kill a thousand Gattos if that’s what it takes to get Robin back.
My hands shake a little as I contemplate the stakes once more, but this is not the time for fear. Fear makes you hesitate, makes you second-guess, makes you dead. I’ve built my entire life on the principle that emotions are weaknesses to be controlled and channeled, not indulged.
Robin makes me feel everything too much, too deeply. The memories of her that flood my mind are not helpful, threaten to undo me, so I focus instead on the cold weight of the gun in my hands.
Robin is alive until proven otherwise.
Across from me, Lyssa catches my eye and grins with obvious amusement.
Her blonde hair is pulled back in a ponytail, just as mine is, and there’s something glinting in her brown eyes as she watches my hands move over my gun.
“Impressive,” she drawls, her voice carrying that hint of mockery that seems to be her default mode. “The princess knows how to load a gun.”
Scarlett, seated beside her, stifles a smirk as she checks her own weapons, including a nasty-looking tactical knife that she spins between her fingers with casual ease.
I don’t respond to Lyssa’s barb. There’s no point in engaging. Words are cheap. Actions speak louder. In a few hours, she’ll see exactly what Eva Novak is capable of when someone she loves is threatened.
Nik Kusek is sitting nearest the doors, her tall frame somehow managing to look both relaxed and coiled for action. She’s been silent for most of the drive, eyes fixed on the darkness beyond the bulletproof windows. But now she speaks, her low voice making all of us stop to listen.
“Don’t underestimate her. Eva Novak is ruthless. She’ll do what needs to be done.”
The memory of my father’s voice drifts through my thoughts, as clear as if he were sitting beside me.
“A Novak does not flinch,” he’d said during one of my early lessons in leadership.
I’d been fourteen, maybe fifteen, watching him negotiate with a particularly brutal militia leader from Eastern Europe.
The man had shown us pictures of his work, and I’d made the mistake of letting my horror show on my face.
Afterward, my father had taken me aside and delivered one of his characteristic lectures. “A Novak does not flinch. A Novak does not apologize. We are not in the business of moral judgment, Eva. We protect our own and let others protect themselves. Remember that.”
I took those words to heart, built my entire worldview around them. Conscience was weakness. Emotion was vulnerability. Power was the only thing that mattered, and power came from being willing to do what others wouldn’t.
But sitting here now, with Robin’s life hanging in the balance, I wonder if my father was wrong. If maybe conscience isn’t a weakness. Maybe emotions are simply what make us human.
After all, love has made me more dangerous than I have ever been.
The SUV begins to slow, and I snap back to the present like a rubber band.
We’re approaching a warehouse complex, an industrial sprawl of concrete and steel that squats on the desert flat.
A faded sign out front declares it to be private property.
Most of the buildings are dark at this hour.
But somewhere in this maze of structures, Robin is waiting for me.
I know it. I can feel it.
Beside me, Hadria murmurs commands through a nearly invisible earpiece. Her voice is barely audible, but I catch fragments—coordinates, timing, contingencies. She’s orchestrating this assault like a conductor leading a symphony, every note planned and practiced and deadly.
I’m relieved I didn’t let my ego get in the way of letting her lead this assault.
Lyssa stretches her neck with a soft crack of vertebrae, a lioness limbering up for the hunt. She shows no nervousness or hesitation. She’s done this more times than I can imagine.
My own heart rate remains steady—a byproduct of years of training and an iron will that refuses to bend even in the face of terror.
But I can feel the sweat beading at my temples, the slight tremor in my hands that has nothing to do with fear now, and everything to do with the adrenaline coursing through my system.
We pull up at the side of the compound, and Leon appears at my shoulder at once after climbing out of the front. His presence is comforting and familiar. “Eyes sharp,” he mutters in our own language.
I take a slow breath, centering myself the way he taught me all those years ago. In through the nose, hold for three counts, out through the mouth. Let the chaos of emotion settle into something cold and focused and useful.
The night is silent, almost too silent. No traffic, no sirens, no sounds of life.
Just the whisper of desert wind and the distant hum of electrical transformers.
It’s the kind of quiet that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, the kind that suggests dangerous things moving somewhere out in the shadows.
With a hand signal from Hadria, everyone moves to their assigned places. One team, made up of Colombos and Bianchis, slides silently and quickly around the perimeter to the right, while a team of Styx Syndicate members, headed by a woman named Sarah, glides off to the left.
We wait as Lyssa quickly dismantles the padlock and chain on the front gate, and then follow Hadria’s lead into the complex. “Catch you on the flip side,” Lyssa murmurs, and she moves off with her team.
Our team is led by Hadria, and consists of Leon, Sunny, Nik, two more of my Consortium bodyguards, and me. I’m determined not to be dead weight, keeping my senses alert as we move further in.
“This place is fuckin’ creepy,” Sunny declares.
Hadria shoots her a look. “Contain yourself, Santiago. Sound travels.” She glances back. “Diamond formation. Eva, you stay in the pocket. Let us clear the path.”
We move deeper into a maze of corrugated steel and concrete, warehouse after warehouse, all connected, none protected.
Until suddenly we make contact, as a group of Gattos comes around a corner like they’re sleepwalking.
They’re not expecting us—that much is clear from their slack postures and casual conversation. Three men in suits flanked by two thugs who look like they bench press small cars for fun.
Leon moves first, bulldozing through them like a human battering ram. His shots are thunderous in the confined space, and one of the suits drops immediately, clutching his throat.
Sunny darts to the right, fluid as quicksilver, her blade finding the gap between ribs and lung before her target can even raise his weapon.
Hadria and Nik are surgical. They take clean, precise shots, center mass, no wasted motion.
The remaining thugs crumple before I’ve even had time to line up a shot in my sights.
A moment after first sighting, five bodies litter the ground.
“I’ll clear ahead,” Leon says, already moving toward the next corridor. “Santiago, with me for reconnaissance.”
Sunny follows him into the shadows, her earlier irreverence replaced by professional focus.
Their footsteps fade into the dark, leaving the rest of us in a tense lull.
I wipe blood from my cheek—not mine—and try to steady my breathing.
The air feels thick, oppressive, humming with the kind of electric tension that precedes storms.
Nik moves closer to me. I wonder if her old training from before she met Brie is kicking in. Protect Eva Novak .
Hadria checks an old, faded map screwed into the wall, her fingers tracing possible routes.
But something feels wrong. Off-kilter.
We haven’t reached the heart of the beast yet.
The Gattos are many things—brutal, ambitious, territorial—but they’re not stupid. This feels like the outer ring of a much larger operation, and that means?—
Nik lunges toward me.