8. Santi #2
"Let them move assets," I reply smoothly. "They are delaying the inevitable. I will handle it when I return."
"The pilot overheard the flight manifest," Dominic says. His tone shifts. The Don is speaking now. The executioner. "She was chartered by Costa Logistics. She has seen your face. She knows your operational capacity. She is standing next to you while you communicate on an encrypted mafia frequency."
"She is."
"Is she a liability, Santi?"
The question hangs in the air. A death sentence wrapped in a bureaucratic inquiry.
If I say yes, the extraction team will arrive with a body bag for her.
If I hesitate, Dominic will assume she is compromised and order her elimination anyway.
The Costa family does not leave loose ends. We do not leave witnesses.
I turn my chair around. I face Reese. I look directly into her sharp, beautiful eyes.
"She is untouchable," I say into the microphone. My voice leaves no room for interpretation. "If a single member of your extraction team looks at her incorrectly, I will slaughter them all and walk her out of this wilderness myself. Do you understand me, Dominic?"
The speaker goes quiet. The challenge is immense. I am threatening the Don's men. I am breaking protocol. I am tearing up the rulebook that has kept us alive for years.
"Understood," Dominic finally replies. A faint trace of dark amusement colors his tone. He recognizes the shift. He knows what I have found. "Hold your perimeter, brother. Command out."
The line goes dead. The red encryption light blinks off.
I drop the microphone onto the desk. The plastic clatters against the wood. I stand up.
Reese does not move. She stares at me. Her chest rises and falls with a steady, measured rhythm. She is processing the reality of the situation. She is processing the violence I just promised my own family on her behalf. She is alone in a cabin with a hitman, a monster, a shadow.
I walk toward her.
I move slowly, deliberately. Every step is measured. The thud of my boots against the floorboards echoes in the small room. I stop several feet away, leaving the door clear behind me.
My shoulders square. My boots plant firmly on the floor. I need her contained. I need her space restricted to the parameters I command. My darkest instincts demand total possession of her environment.
But I do not reach for her.
I keep my hands strictly at my sides. My palms rest flat against my thighs.
I do not invade her immediate physical bubble.
The tension in the room ratchets up to a blinding, suffocating level.
The room tightens around the silence. The heat from the woodstove is nothing compared to the blistering heat radiating from my skin.
Reese looks at the door behind me. She looks at the expanse of my chest. She looks at my hands, resting empty at my sides. She understands the tactic instantly. She is a pilot. She understands spatial awareness. She knows she is trapped.
She holds her ground.
She tilts her chin up and meets my gaze head-on.
"Your brother," Reese says. Her voice is incredibly steady. No tremor. No fear. Just unadulterated steel. "He asked if I was a liability."
"Yes."
"Because you are hunting someone. The ghost signatory."
"Yes."
"Because you are not a corporate consultant. You are not a logistics manager." She takes a slow breath. Her eyes narrow. "You are the mafia."
I do not blink. I do not look away. "Yes."
Reese absorbs the confirmation. She does not back away.
She stands her ground in the center of the room, holding my weapon.
She has lived alone for years. She has built an impenetrable fortress around her heart to survive a world that took her father and left her with nothing.
She trusts no one. She relies on no one.
And now, she stands across a small room from a man who murders without hesitation.
"Until dawn,” Reese says, her tone clinical. “Until your heavily armed tactical team breaches this cabin."
"Correct."
She takes one step toward me. Just one. But it is a massive shift in the dynamic. She is advancing on the predator.
"I have a question," Reese says.
"Ask it."
She tightens her grip on the Glock. She points the muzzle down, non-threatening, but the physical presence of the weapon is a clear reminder of her autonomy.
"When they get here," Reese says, her voice dropping to a low, intense register. "When the extraction team lands. When the snowcats pull up and your men step out with their rifles. Am I walking out of this cabin as your pilot, or your prisoner?"
The question is a scalpel. It cuts straight through the muscle and strikes bone. She is not asking about her physical safety. She is asking about her agency. She is asking if she is merely a possession I have claimed, a hostage I am keeping, or if she has a choice.
The rage inside my chest thrashes against my ribs. It wants to roar that she belongs to me, that she has no choice, that she will never leave my sight again. It wants to rip the gun from her hand, pin her against the wall, and prove my dominance.
I force the beast down. I force long years of calculated restraint to the surface. She needs honesty. She needs devotion. She needs the man, not the monster.
"Neither."
I take one half-step forward, closing the distance between us to mere inches. The scent of aviation fuel and cold wind hits my lungs like a physical strike. I stare down into her beautiful, fierce eyes.
"You are not my pilot anymore, Reese. The contract ended the second that helicopter hit the ground.
" I keep my voice dead steady. A vow spoken into the marrow of her bones.
"And you are not my prisoner. The door is behind me.
You have the weapon. You know how to survive the cold.
If you want to walk out into the blizzard and take your chances with the wolves, I will step aside. "
She stares at me. Her chest hitches.
"But if you stay," I continue, my voice dropping to a rough rasp. "If you choose to stay in this room. If you choose to leave this mountain with me. You do it as my woman."
I simply raise my hand and press my palm flat against my own chest, right over the heavy thud of my heart.
"Untouchable," I say. "A queen in a city of monsters. You will not be a liability, because anyone who questions your place by my side will not live long enough to finish the sentence. I will burn Chicago to the ground before I let my world destroy you. That is my vow. That is the truth."
I drop my hand back to my side. I step backward, retreating until my spine hits the timber door again. I restore the physical space between us. I give her the room to breathe. I give her the room to choose.
Reese does not look away. The cabin goes quiet under the weight of my confession.
The woodstove crackles. The wind howls against the frosted glass of the small window.
She holds all the power. I have laid my throat bare to her.
I have surrendered to a pilot with a bleeding forehead and an unyielding spine.
Her eyes search mine. She is looking for the lie. She is looking for the trap.
She finds nothing but absolute devotion.
Reese slowly lowers her arm. She places the Glock on the small wooden table next to her. She releases her grip on the weapon. She releases her grip on the fortress she has lived inside for her adult life.
She takes a breath to speak.
The HAM radio sparks.
A loud, piercing burst of static shatters the quiet intimacy of the room. It is not a hiss. It is a violent, aggressive screech of interference.
I snap my attention to the desk. The red encryption light is off. The frequency dial has not moved, but a signal is overriding the channel. A brute-force transmission bleeding through the dead zone.
"Target localized," a voice crackles through the speaker. It is heavily distorted, buried under layers of static and wind noise, but the words are legible. "Blackwood grid. Moving in on foot. Prepare the breach."
My pulse spikes.
That is not Dominic. That is not the Costa family extraction team. They are grounded at the border of the park, waiting for the storm to break.
"Confirm thermal signatures," a second voice responds on the open channel. "Two bodies inside the main structure. Move the ordnance to the tree line."
The voices are not Costa.
They are Bellanti.
They are not two days away. They are on the mountain. They are outside the cabin.
I look at Reese. She looks at me. The war has reached the cabin.