6. Santi
Santi
The wind hits like a wall of solid ice the second I kick the bark barrier away. Snow blasts into the tiny cavern we built. The storm does not care what just happened between us. The mountain only wants us dead.
I step out into the waist-deep drift. It immediately bites through my layers, vicious and absolute. I do not care. The cold is irrelevant. Every function I have narrows to a single objective: keep the woman behind me breathing.
Reese crawls out of the shelter without complaint or hesitation, securing her jacket and pulling the collar up over her bruised mouth. Her hands shake. She hides it quickly, stuffing them into her pockets. She is bleeding, exhausted, and running on nothing but stubborn defiance.
She survives with me.
I turn my back to the gale. I plant my boots in the unbroken powder. I become the windbreak.
"Step exactly where I step," I command over the roaring wind.
She nods once. A sharp, jerky motion.
We begin the march. Every movement requires agonizing effort.
The snow is wet and relentlessly deep. My thighs burn.
The muscles in my back strain against the weight of the survival bag and the brutal resistance of the elements.
I ignore the toll. My body is merely a tool required to transport her to safety.
A low, guttural howl cuts through the scream of the blizzard.
The wolves are tracking us. They are hungry.
My grip tightens on the Glock hidden in my coat pocket.
Let them come. I will put them down one at a time.
The violence in my head is not a tactical response.
It is a deep, territorial rage. I have spent my adult life watching from a distance.
That man died in the shelter. The man walking through this snow only cares about the curvy, infuriatingly competent pilot following in my wake.
We push through a dense thicket of frozen pine. The branches whip at my face. Ice slices my cheek. I do not flinch. I break the branches back, snapping thick wood to clear a path for her.
For two decades, I have simply existed.
I swallowed the grief whole that night. I have been the silent watcher ever since.
I stopped living that night. I became a function. I cataloged threats, ran operations, charted the enemy’s moves. A machine powered by vengeance and duty.
Then this extraction helicopter fell out of the sky.
Reese stumbles. Her boot catches on a hidden root beneath the snow. She pitches forward.
I spin. I catch her before her knees hit the ice. My hands grip her waist. The layers of our coats do nothing to mute the electric shock of her proximity. I pull her flush against my chest.
She pants, her forehead dropping against my chest for a fraction of a second. "I'm fine. Just tripped."
"You’re exhausted." My voice grates, rough.
"I'm walking." She pushes back. She does not want to be carried. She refuses to be weak.
I let her step back, but my hands stay on her hips for a brutal, lingering second. We’re locked in this frozen hell, tethered by the cold and by what happened in the shelter.
"Ten miles," she says, her voice rough but firm. "The map in my head says the station is ten miles north of the crash site. We drifted slightly east."
"We keep moving." I turn back to the unbroken snow.
We march for hours. The sun is a pale, useless smudge behind the churning grey clouds. The temperature plummets further. My beard freezes solid. My skin burns beneath my frozen clothes.
I monitor her pace. I listen to the cadence of her boots crunching in the snow. She is slowing down. The pauses between her steps grow marginally longer. She is freezing. Her core temperature is dropping.
I halt. I turn.
She stops, swaying on her feet. Her lips have a dangerous blue tint.
I close the distance. I yank her against me, wrapping my arms around her small, curved frame. I envelop her in my heat. I bury my face in the crook of her neck, ignoring the snow piling on my shoulders.
"Santi," she mumbles, her voice slurring.
"Do not speak. Conserve your energy." I press my jaw against her pulse point. It beats strong. Stubborn.
"I can keep walking."
"I know you can. You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever met." I state it as a simple, undeniable fact.
She goes still against me. She does not deflect the compliment. She just breathes me in.
I step back, keeping one hand locked around her wrist. "Half a mile. We push for half a mile. If we don’t see a structure, I’ll dig us into the snow."
She nods. We move.
The terrain begins to incline. The trees thin out, giving way to a rocky ridge.
The wind howls over the exposed stone, driving ice particles into our eyes.
We hit the small wooden porch. I try the heavy timber door.
Locked. The wood is swollen with moisture and ice.
I welcome the pain. Every strike of ice against my skin is a reminder that she is shielded.
Then, through the blinding whiteout, a shape emerges.
Straight lines. Artificial angles. A roofline of untouched snow.
"There." I point through the gale.
Reese squints. A sudden, sharp burst of adrenaline hits her system. Her grip on my coat tightens.
It is a small, heavy timber cabin tucked against the base of a massive granite cliff. The abandoned ranger station. It looks neglected, battered by decades of brutal winters, but the walls are solid. The roof is intact. It is shelter.
We move toward it. We clear the final fifty yards in a stumbling, desperate sprint.
We hit the small wooden porch. I kick the heavy timber door. It is locked. The wood is swollen with moisture and ice.
I do not hesitate. I back up one step. I drive my boot directly into the door frame near the latch.
The wood splinters and the bolt plate tears free. The door flies open, crashing against the interior wall with a violent thud.
I pull Reese inside. I shove the door shut against the howling wind. I drop the iron crossbar into place.
The wind cuts to a low, distant roar behind the walls. The air inside the cabin is stale, freezing, and thick with dust. But there is no snow. There is no biting gale.
I drop the survival bag. I turn to Reese.
She stands in the center of the dark room, shivering violently. Her teeth chatter. Fine tremors wreck her frame. The adrenaline is crashing out of her system, leaving nothing but cold and exhaustion.
I strip my outer coat off and toss it onto a dusty wooden table. Then I step into her space.
"Arms up," I command.
She obeys, too exhausted to argue. I unzip her soaked, frozen jacket. I peel it off her shoulders. I toss it to the floor. I strip her damp sweater over her head. She stands before me in a thin thermal shirt, shivering so hard her knees buckle.
I catch her. I lift her off her feet. I carry her to a small cot pushed against the far wall.
I lay her on the mattress. I crouch and pull her snow-caked boots off, one at a time.
Her socked feet are ice-cold against my palms. I rub heat into her feet, then tuck them under the wool.
I grab a dusty wool blanket from a nearby wooden chest. I wrap her in it tightly, sealing the wool around her.
"Stay," I say.
I move through the cabin. My eyes adjust to the gloom.
I scan the room. Single room with a small loft accessible by a wall ladder.
One window, heavily shuttered from the outside, and a timber back door that looks like it leads to a storage lean-to.
An iron woodstove sits in the corner beside a stone hearth blackened by decades of fires.
A stack of dry, split logs piled between them. A heavy oak table in the center of the room, an old bearskin rug stretched in front of the hearth. A wooden desk on the opposite wall. A rusted metal cot pushed against the far wall, a thin mattress laid across the wire springs.
I go to the stove. I find a tin of waterproof matches and some dried kindling inside the firebox.
A ranger left this prepped years ago. I strike a match.
The flame catches the dry pine needles. I feed the fire quickly, methodically.
Within minutes, a thick, rolling blaze roars to life behind the iron door.
Heat begins to radiate into the freezing room.
I stand up. I look at the desk.
Resting on top of the scarred wood is a heavy, military-grade ham radio setup. A long antenna wire snakes up the wall and disappears through a sealed hole in the ceiling.
I walk over to the desk. I brush a thick layer of dust off the metal casing.
My mind immediately clicks back into the cold, steady focus of the watcher.
Before the helicopter crash. Before this mountain. Before Reese.
I was hunting a lead.
A physical lead buried in a Bellanti blind trust. A name connected directly to the massacre that took my family long ago. I boarded the extraction helicopter to chase the lead in the northern territories. But before I left the compound, I caught an anomaly.
I stare at the dials on the radio. My brain processes the timing.
The intelligence file containing the ghost's digital signature had leaked. Only a handful of people at the Costa compound had clearance to access that specific server. I checked the biometric logs hours before my flight.
Someone accessed the file thirty minutes before the external leak triggered the alarm.
I picture the war room in the basement of the Chicago mansion. The reinforced steel door. The screens. A color-coded legal pad in Clara's handwriting at Matteo's station — the only thing on that desk that does not look like a weapon. Matteo cooking upstairs. Dante brooding. Enzo analyzing data.
Turi.
Turi had walked into the war room with fresh espresso right at that timestamp. He had stood near the terminal. He had a keycard. Turi raised us. Turi is our uncle Carlo's best friend. He calls Dominic his son.
I file the anomaly away. I do not name it betrayal. I do not jump to conclusions. I observe. I catalog. The thread is paused. When I get back to Chicago, I will pull the security footage. I will verify.