16. Amara #3
"We have to go to the secondary safe room," Natalia says, grabbing my arm. "The inner perimeter has been breached."
"Not yet," I say, my eyes fixed on the remaining monitors. "If I leave this feed, he loses the courtyard blind spot."
"Amara, you can't help him from here if the ceiling collapses."
"I'm not leaving," I repeat.
I look at the last active camera, showing the hallway just outside the Vault. A shadow passes. Then another.
They’re inside.
I reach into the drawer of the desk and pull out the small, sleek handgun Alessio insisted I carry. I’ve never fired it at a person. I’ve only ever used it on paper targets in the compound’s range, my ears protected by heavy mufflers, my heart rate steady.
Now, my heart is a frantic bird in a cage, and the only sound is the rhythmic thud of my own blood in my ears.
"Get behind the reinforced console," I tell Natalia.
She doesn't argue. She knows when a person has crossed the line from observer to participant.
I stand by the door, the cold steel of the weapon in my hand. I think of Curtis. I think of the alley. I think of the ten years I spent running from the shadows, terrified that they would eventually catch up to me.
I’m not terrified anymore. I’m just waiting.
The door groans, the electronic lock sparking. Someone is using a Costa override from the outside.
I raise the gun. My hands are perfectly still.
Come on, I think, the feral energy of this house finally settling into my bones. I’ve been waiting ten years to show you what happens when you corner a runner.
The door begins to slide open.
I take a breath. I focus on the sights.
The door opens on the Costa emergency code. It’s not a Bellanti soldier who steps through.
It’s Alessio.
He’s covered in more blood now, a jagged cut above his eye dripping red down his cheek. He looks like he’s been through hell and decided he liked the scenery. He stops when he sees the gun leveled at his chest, a ghost of a smirk playing on his lips.
"Good form, Amara," he rasps, his voice sounding like he’s been swallowing glass.
I lower the weapon, my knees finally giving out. I sink into the chair, the adrenaline leaving me in a rush that makes my head spin.
"You're alive," I breathe.
"Hard to kill," he says, stepping into the room and pulling me into his arms. He smells like sweat and iron and survival. "The inner perimeter is secure. Stragglers are being hunted down."
I lean into him, letting his strength hold me up. Outside, the sirens are still wailing, and I know the cleanup will take days. The scars on this building, and on this family, will last much longer.
The victory cost more than the radio could say. Turi is still unaccounted for. The family is shattered. My brother is still gone.
But as Alessio holds me, his heart beating hard and steady against mine, For once in my life, I don’t want to be anywhere else.
The hunt is over. The war is changing shape. And for the first time, I don’t want to leave.
I pull back just enough to look into his dark, tortured eyes. I reach up, wiping the blood from his brow with my thumb.
"We need to find him," I say softly. "We need to find Turi."
Alessio’s expression hardens, the shadow of the traitor falling over us once again. "I know. Dominic has called for a gathering. The truth is coming out, Amara. All of it."
"Are you ready?"
"No," he says, his grip on me tightening. "But I have you. And for once, that means I don’t have to face the truth alone."
He leads me out of the Vault, out of the red light and into the gray, smoke-filled hallway. We walk past the wreckage of the morning, past the broken glass and the spent shell casings.
We walk toward the courtyard, toward the confrontation twenty years of secrets have been building toward.
The financier is dead. And the money—the money is gone in a way even Vane never planned for.
Natalia’s injunctions hit fifteen jurisdictions at five past six this morning, court orders raining down like artillery, and by the time the strike team breached Wabash, every Bellanti account on three continents had frozen solid.
The empire died on paper before its ghost finished dying in person.
Now, all that’s left is the blood.
As we reach the doors leading toward the courtyard, I take one last look back at the hallway. I see a charred strip skid across the floor—a fragment from Alessio’s burned suspect list, the edges blackened by fire.
I don’t pick it up. For once, I know the numbers are not the only truth in the room.
I turn my back on the past and walk toward the library, where the future of the Costa family waits to be decided.
I make it four steps.
Alessio stops mid-stride. His hand flies to the comm at his ear, and every line of his body turns to stone.
"Perimeter breach. North wall." His voice drops into a register I’ve never heard. "GET HER INSIDE—"
He’s already moving me—not toward the library, toward the reinforced room, his body a wall between me and every window we pass. The panic-room door swallows me before I can even say his name.
The outer lock turns, and the inside release blinks green under my hand.
And then the world explodes.