Seventeen #2
The black convoy rolls up like clockwork—first the lead SUV, then the car holding Don and his heir, and finally the tailing sedan. Their security team fanned out, barking orders in rapid Italian. They don’t notice us yet. That’s good. They won’t.
The Don steps out first. He’s thinner than I remember, older, but no less poisonous. Gianni follows—young, arrogant, cold-blooded. He thinks this city is his playground. He believes the name Salvatore still carries fear.
It doesn’t. Not tonight.
“On my mark,” I say quietly.
I track Don’s every step. His posture. His surroundings. He’s oblivious. Still convinced this city will kneel to his bloodline.
Three... two... one.
“Now.”
A flashbang launches first—Bellamy’s doing. It explodes midair with a deafening crack, flooding the tarmac with blinding white light. The Salvatore guards panic, reaching for weapons as confusion erupts.
Then come the shots.
Precise. Ruthless. Mine.
The first round hits the driver of the second car square in the neck—clutches his throat, but it’s no use, he’ll bleed out in minutes. The next catches a guard trying to rally. Bellamy’s team opens fire from their perch, bullets slicing through the air with deadly choreography.
Chaos breaks loose. Screams. Gunfire. Bodies dropping.
I switch targets—Don Salvatore retreating behind the open car door. I adjust and fire. The bullet clips his shoulder, sending him spinning backward with a howl.
“Bellamy, secure Gianni. I want him alive,” I bark into the comms.
“Copy.”
Brick makes his move—fast and brutal. His ass moves like he ain’t pushing sixty, more like he’s been waiting his whole damn life for this moment.
One blink and he’s already halfway across the lot, crouched low like death itself, a reaper in motion.
Before I can even lock down my rifle, he’s in it—silent, controlled violence.
Two guards don’t even get to breathe right.
One drops with a blade in his throat, the other stumbles back with a hole in his gut.
Quick. Surgical. No hesitation. Brick doesn’t flinch.
Doesn’t slow. He’s not here to send a message—he is the message.
I follow, slinging my rifle across my back, boots slicking through fresh blood as I stalk the tarmac. The jet sits behind us like a forgotten monument, but all I focus on the man slumped near the armored car.
Don Salvatore.
He’s bleeding out, groaning, trying to crawl toward salvation like it’s owed to him. His white dress shirt is soaked in red, a smear of a dynasty that’s just been gutted.
He sees me.
And for the first time in his smug, bloated life, he looks afraid.
“Gabriella,” he rasps, voice thin and wet.
I crouch beside him, slow and deliberate. Close enough for him to see the truth in my eyes—everything I’ve lost, everything I’ve learned, everything I’ve become.
“You came for my family,” I say, voice flat and sharp like broken glass. His eyes twitched at that. Good. Let it sink in.
“You should’ve done your research. The Barones made it clear—the Mastersons were off-limits.” His pupils widen. That hit landed. “You knew who we were. You know what we are. And you chose to test us.”
I lean in, my voice dropping into something colder than winter steel.
“Now you get to find out what happens when you come for the father of my children.”
His eyes buck, another gut punch of revelation. He tries to lift his chin, laugh, act like he’s still in control—but pain short-circuits the act. He winces, breath hitching, then coughs up a broken sound that might’ve been a chuckle once.
“You were always your father’s savage little girl.”
I blink once. No smile. No emotion.
“No,” I whisper. “I’m worse.”
Behind me, chaos tightens its grip. Brick hauls Gianni across the pavement, dragging him like trash. Gianni kicks, curses, and tries to fight. It’s pathetic. Brick ends it with one blow—smashes the butt of his pistol into Gianni’s jaw. Bone cracks. Gianni drops like wet meat.
“Shut him up,” I say without looking.
Brick nods. Bellamy moves in, zip-tying Gianni’s hands behind his back with efficiency. The air smells like smoke and blood. Like fire and old sins. It smells like retribution. Don Salvatore coughs again, spitting blood, blinking up at me with glassy eyes.
“This doesn’t end here,” he croaks.
I rise to my full height, towering over the man who once tried to write my family’s ending.
“You’re right,” I say. “It doesn’t.”
I raise my gun.
“But you do.”
One shot. Clean. Final. Blood spatters across the pavement like a signature. I turn my back on the corpse. No hesitation. Just closure. Clean. Between the eyes. Silence descends, heavy and final. Brick exhales slowly beside me, and I feel the shift.
“You good?” I ask, not taking my eyes off the dead man at my feet.
“Never better.” He says with a nod and smirk.
We look out over the airstrip, watching Bellamy’s team sweep the area, securing what’s left. My kids are already in their SUV heading home, their job here is done. They wave at me and I give them a nod.
Behind us, Gianni is threatening death on any and everyone. Let him. He’s going to learn what it feels like to be powerless, what it means to be a prisoner to the sins of your bloodline.
Because this night?
It’s far from over.
The Warehouse
The room is cold. Industrial. Designed to strip a person down to their last nerve.
Cinder block walls, exposed piping, the sharp hum of one flickering overhead light.
It's not just bleak—it’s surgical. A place meant to erase ego and extract truth.
And in the center of it, chained to a steel chair, sits Gianni Salvatore.
Bloody. Bruised. Breathing like it costs him.
Yet somehow, still trying to smirk like he hasn’t lost everything.
I step in alone. No Bellamy. No Brick. No backup.
This isn’t about strategy. It’s about clarity.
About ending the goddamn cycle. The heavy door shuts behind me with a dull metallic thud.
He lifts his head, and I smirk at the state of him.
His lip is split, blood dried at the corners of his mouth.
His left eye is nearly swollen shut, but the right one still carries that slick Salvatore arrogance. That smarmy, entitled grin.
“Cara mia,” he rasps, voice shredded. “Come to finish what your boyfriend started?”
I don’t answer. Just glide to the metal table and slide into the chair across from him.
Legs crossed. Arms folded. Calm as a bomb with a short fuse.
I hold his gaze, letting silence do what threats can’t.
He wants to pretend this is banter. A game.
But I’m not playing. See, I know exactly who Gianni is. Who he’s always been.
I know about the rift between him and Con—Constantine Belov, Pakhan of the Belov Bratva.
A man with no patience for snakes. No use for traffickers.
Especially those who target women and children.
That’s the part Gianni never understood.
Con doesn’t bluff, and he damn sure doesn’t forgive.
I was there once, just a shadow at the edge of their feud.
When this arrogant prick thought he could snatch my child to force compliance.
Thought he could twist me into submission.
He learned differently. But that’s not today’s story.
That’s for another war. Another reckoning.
Today is about the here. The now. The end.
“I came for answers,” I say, voice even, bored almost.
He chuckles. It’s wet. Hollow. “You always did enjoy playing Queen of the Pit. Even as a girl, you wanted a throne built from bones.”
I tilt my head slightly. “You handed me the bones, Gianni. You just didn’t expect me to build anything with them.”
His bloody grin twists wider. “Touché.”
I lean in just enough for him to see the darkness behind my calm.
“You came here to make a statement. Instead, your Don is dead. Your guards are fertilizer. And you? You’re a loose end with a short clock.”
His smile twitches. The arrogance stutters—briefly—but it’s there. “This was personal, huh? All this... because of Talon? Or is it about that beautiful daughter of yours?” He says it slow, deliberately, like he wants to be punched. I don’t take the bait.
Gianni laughs again, coughing hard enough to wheeze. “You’re all so fucking stupid. You think it ends here? My father’s cooling on some runway, and you think that’s it? You think this basement and blood make it over?”
He leans forward, chains rattling. And in his eyes, something changes—a cold glint of truth beneath the bullshit.
“You’ve stirred the wrong pool, Gabriella. You’ve been so focused on the Salvatores and the idiot Keepers, you haven’t looked past us. But they’ve been watching, always watching.”
I don’t blink. “Who?”
He licks blood from his teeth, tilts his head like a predator already dead.
“The Coumbassa family.”
My jaw locks tight.
I know that name. It’s been a shadow in whispers. A ghost in files even Bellamy couldn’t lock down. A network too well-hidden, too insulated. Until now, it didn’t connect.
But now it clicks.
“Your little war with the Mastersons? The attempted kidnapping, Valentina’s past, all that vendetta bullshit?”
Gianni’s voice breaks into a laugh that turns to a cough. “That wasn’t the end. That was the beginning. The Coumbassa made investments. Years ago. Before you. Before Talon. Before any of us. And you just blew up a pipeline they spent decades building.”
He’s spiraling now. His pain fuels him. Or maybe it’s his last act of defiance.
“They’ll come for you. The club. For your kids. For Talon. They don’t send warnings, Gabriella. They send coffins. They play in shadows. They play… the long game.”
His head falls back as he grins, blood slicking his teeth.
“So go ahead. Kill me. It won’t change a fucking thing. You just lit the fuse.”
I rise from my chair with slow, unbothered grace. Let his words hang like smoke in the air. I walk around the table, every step deliberate. My heels click against concrete. Echoes of judgment. I stop behind him, lower my voice to a whisper.
“Maybe you’re right.”
I pull the silencer from my coat and twist it onto the barrel with a steady hand.
“Maybe we did light the fuse.”
The muzzle presses behind his ear.
“But I’ve always loved fire.”
Pfft.
The shot is clean.
Gianni slumps forward, slack and silent. Still wearing that smug half-smile he didn’t earn. I breathe in. Slow. Controlled. Like I just reset something deep inside me. Then I look down at the blood pooling at my feet.
“Let the Coumbassa’s and whoever else wants to come,” I whisper, more to myself than anyone else.
Because if they think I’ll kneel...
They don’t know who I am yet.
But they will.