Chapter 4
SANTIAGO
The airlock screamed in protest as the última Bruto clamped onto the drifting cartel freighter.
A heavy, juddering clang reverberated through the derelict rig, a sound like a gavel striking a block of cosmic justice.
As The Sombra’s interim captain, Santi led the charge.
His gaze, hours earlier, had tracked the última X as it whisked away his mate and CO, Xander, and his new bride, Savvine.
The couple was headed to The Syracusia, a luxury liner traveling alongside their flotilla, for a sybaritic, long-overdue honeymoon.
Now, as the provisional Chief of the Signet Group, he prowled down the umbilical passage.
His Signet brothers, Kaal, Boaz, Zev, and Rigo, acting as his strong guard, moved in a silent, disciplined wedge at his flanks.
They advanced like a storm held in check, cloaked in spectral power and honed military precision.
No one uttered a sound.
The airlock hissed open.
Waiting on the other side was a thin-boned man in a ridiculous crimson velvet smoking jacket.
His argent hair was pulled taut from his temples, and silver-rimmed ocular implants framed his obsidian eyes.
His crew, an unsettling mix of jittery nerves and heavy weaponry, shifted beside him.
‘Don Oriel Salvatierra.’
Santi’s utterance conveyed the raw, abrasive quality of his uncompromising tone.
‘Alvarro,’ Oriel returned, his lips twitching into a forced, brittle smile. ‘Xander’s XO. Your reputation precedes you, as does your overweening confidence.’
Another man emerged at Oriel’s left.
He was broad-shouldered, draped in a frost-colored overcoat with baroque embroidery, chewing a cigar with blatant disdain.
‘Don Gavriil Dureshkin of the Koshari Syndicate,’ Santi acknowledged. ‘And here I thought I’d never meet a hero of mine.’
Gavriil’s only response was a baleful glower.
He spat a fleck of tobacco onto the deck plating. ‘I hope you brought more than hollow flattery and callow courage. This little intercept maneuver is costing me substantial commerce.’
Santi’s expression was calm and polite. Too much so.
‘Now I understand what they mean about never meeting your heroes. This isn’t a ploy, cabrónes,’ he rasped, letting the insult settle. ‘This is a formal enforcement initiative. Is there somewhere we can have a quiet chat?’
The two Dons exchanged tight-lipped glances. Oriel gave a subtle shake of his head.
‘You have no choice,’ Santi continued, a simple statement of fact. ‘I have six Signet Corvettes with their rail gun turrets locked onto your four other ships. We outgun and out-muscle you, so what’s your preference? A civilized exchange or an unplanned display of fireworks?’
Oriel’s fragile composure snapped. ‘You freakin’ mostro bastard.’
‘That sounds distinctly like capitulation, and it is music to my ears,’ Santi returned, allowing himself a slight, cold grin.
Oriel choked down a litany of curses, spun on his booted heel, and marched through the corridor.
‘After you,’ Santi encouraged Gavriil with a flourish of his hand.
The Koshari’s Don sneered, but he strode forward.
Santi followed, his strong guard forming a moving fortress around him.
They stepped into what appeared to be an ops room.
The walls crackled with flickering interface panels, and the long table sat squat, scattered with coffee mugs and the residue of a recent meal.
Santi ignored the slovenliness and selected a worn leather seat at the end of the desk.
He sank into the chair and propped his boots high on the table’s edge.
Oriel fixed him with a murderous glare.
Santi offered him a casual smile. ‘My apologies. Is this seat yours? It’s occupied now.’
Rigo and Boaz immediately secured the perimeter and established dominant guard positions.
Kaal blocked the central hatch, preventing any sudden forced entries.
Zev, a blur of silent efficiency, activated Miral’s uplink, and her holo-presence shimmered into view near the ops table.
Santi unrolled a digital manifesto onto the centre slab.
‘Let’s dispense with the pleasantries. You’ve been running shipments across three air lanes, all explicitly flagged for civilian transit.
You’ve neglected paying customs duties, paid no dock taxes, and masked your cargo manifests with forged Alliance tags.
That constitutes a triad of major felonies.
Five, if we include graft and black site labor. ’
Oriel scoffed, his voice laced with patronizing disbelief. ‘You mobilized all this Signet might for a consignment of powder and simple confectionery?’
‘Let’s not play that game, amigo. You and I are well aware you’re playing delivery man for mafia bosses and pirates such as the Red Skulls.’
Santi’s eyes darkened; the playful tone vanished.
‘That ‘candy,’ you’re carrying is koko laced with heaven knows what kind of chemical filth.
That has led to over two dozen fatalities a week across the flotilla.
My medics are scraping destroyed lungs off their beds, Oriel.
I’ve also disarmed a man crazed on your spiked product who was threatening to slice apart a seven-year-old child in The Sombra’s causeway.
Shall I go on? I’ve got a fokkton more cases I can share. ’
Gavriil grimaced, his discomfort evident, as his cigar was held suspended halfway to his mouth.
‘So what’s your demand? You seek retribution? A fee? A share of our fleet’s profits?’ Oriel’s tone was dismissive. ‘This seems like nothing more than political theater.’
Santi tapped his wrist comm. ‘In a manner of speaking. Here is a little spectacle he prepared earlier.’
The side panel behind him illuminated, displaying a live feed of a vessel mid-journey, The Azure Princess, racing past an asteroid belt.
‘That’s one of my auto-piloted cargo ships,’ Oriel sputtered, his silver eyes dilated with disbelief. ‘How did you locate it?’
‘How did we find it, given it was running dark? We’re resourceful. According to Miral’s intelligence, that ship is packed from nose to tail with koko bricks stored in refrigerated holds. Does that assessment align with your current perception of events?’
Oriel’s mouth dropped open, then snapped shut. His face flushed a deep, unhealthy red, his eyes flashing with frustrated fury.
Santi leaned forward. ‘Remember those fireworks I promised?’ he rasped, tipping his chin to both the Dons. ‘Here they come. Miral, please illuminate this party.’
The ops room stilled.
On the display, Signet drone interceptors, planted days earlier by Miral, initiated their sequence, firing thruster flares from positions latched onto the hull of Oriel’s craft.
The Azure Princess was forced into a sudden, drastic change of trajectory, accelerating through the dark toward the silent, hungry gut of a nearby black hole.
Onscreen, the vessel was pulled in without ceremony, twisting and stretching, its hull warping as it achieved high entry velocity.
A final, almighty flash of light, and then, seconds later, the barge was swallowed by the darkness.
Gone forever, no sound, not even a sensational explosion, just a simple deletion.
Oriel lunged forward, his eyes wild with financial devastation. ‘You, you insane kinai! That was my damn month’s payload! Eight million schills. I had financiers, invested individuals awaiting this freakin’ windfall, fokk! You’ve rained down ruin on me.’
‘You mean the Lombardis, and The Red Skulls, and their preference for violence. I’m well aware that thwarting them means a contract hit on you,’ Santi rasped, unconcerned. ‘However, you shouldn’t inflict pain and suffering unless you’re prepared to receive it.’
Gavriil’s cigar fell from his slack lips.
His hands opened, a gesture of almost prayerful resignation. ‘What the hell do you expect us to do? We’ll both be executed before dawn if word of this reaches our backers. Are you satisfied now?’
Santi slowly recrossed his feet on the table. ‘Nada.’
Oriel twisted back to face him, his tone hoarse, laced with pure, raw fear. ‘What the fokk else do you want? You’ve cleaned us out, so what more?’
Santi leaned in, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial murmur.
‘I am offering protection to you. This means Signet patrols for your vessels if you maintain clean shipments. No koko. Only legitimate produce and food from our hydroponic farms for the rest of the flotilla, all routed through the Wildlight passages. The deal stipulates absolute adherence to our agreement. You will declare your drops and pay tax. You will dismantle all your illegal koko and chemical labs. Fail to comply, and we’ll hollow out your entire supply chain piece by piece.
Leaving you trading outdated tech in Cybele’s bazaars like every washed-up smuggler in the fringe. ’
Oriel trembled, then spat on the floor. ‘This is tyranny.’
‘This is the new standard,’ Santi corrected, his tone lethal. ‘The Syndicate failed to regulate you. The Accord is fractured and crumbling. We are neither of those. We are the fangs that maintain the peace and ensure the innocent survive in this flotilla. Claro?’
Gavriil swallowed. ‘It’s fokkin’ clear. I’ll sign.’
‘A wise decision,’ Santi acknowledged.
He turned his attention to Oriel, who met Santi’s stare with fury but managed a clipped nod.
‘By making this move, you’re picking a confrontation with the Lombardis,’ he growled. ‘This is how you initiate that war.’
Santi confronted his glare without flinching. ‘Let them mobilize. They are largely in hiding, given how thoroughly we neutralized them a few months prior. If they dare challenge us, we’ll bury them beside your destroyed shipment.’
He nodded to Mak, the Signet Group’s chief legal genius, who stepped in, unfurling holo contracts onto the table.
Santi offered the pair of Dons an expansive smile that was equal measure lethal charm and cold sincerity.
‘If you break this covenant, you’ll join your cargo in the void. Welcome to the Signet family.’
As the two mafia bosses leaned with much reluctance over the glowing holo sheets, using e-pens to sign the pact, Santi crossed his arms over his chest, his mind drifting.
He hardly registered the final flourishes of binding confirmation.
The moment was, in every respect, historic. Game-changing. A forced coalition, tethering two power-hungry cartel empires to Signet’s cause.
Yet, his focus had already left the ops room. It reverted to her: Soleil.
The stunning woman who stumbled upon him in the lakeside showers.
Her essence somehow lingered around him, capturing his imagination and lodging itself in his damn spirit without effort.
He recalled the last time he laid eyes on her: dark brown hair tucked into a loose bun, a few rebellious wisps slipping free, curling down the nape of her neck.
Her skin, a clear, warm honey, smooth as sun-warmed silk.
So tempting that his lips craved to trail over it, if only to discover if the sensation was as sweet as the vision.
Her pert nose, that tiny constellation of freckles across her cheeks, and the delicate dip of a dimple that surfaced only when her guard lowered.
It was a rare, precious sight. Her chin tapered, fragile, a profile one might find on ancient tapestries, painted by artists who understood how to capture ethereal secrets.
Her physique. Fokk.
She was svelte, yet curvaceous in all the necessary places.
Her hips made his blood pulse with heat, and her thighs possessed a lushness that evoked in him fantasies of wrapping them around his waist.
She was voluptuous, profoundly feminine, sensual, the exact embodiment of his innate temptation.
Those eyes, hazel shot through with veins of burnished gold, framed by the longest lashes he had ever seen.
She had a way of glancing at him from under her lashes, as if she didn’t want him to glimpse what lay within, but he saw enough.
He recognized her fire, her spirit, and her freakin’ will.
What undid him was the quiet grace of her presence.
She didn’t seek attention; in fact, she seemed determined to avoid it.
Unlike the hyper-stylized women who roamed the flotilla, all painted lips and maniacal ambition for thrills or status, Soleil wasn’t hunting anyone, least of all him.
He sensed a profound need for anonymity.
Who was she hiding from? The intrigue beneath her shy glances drew him in, suggesting a hidden mystery that was by no means na?ve.
Nada. There were shadows in those golden eyes that indicated a murky past.
She was also damn familiar.
The feeling nagged at him. Had he encountered her on another ship? Had their paths crossed on Earth years ago?
He searched the depths of his memory, but the answer remained elusive.
He let the questions recede, still mesmerized by her beauty, consumed by the desire to unravel her story.
His inner wolf stirred, letting out a primal rumble that coiled through his muscles with an aching need.
He clenched his jaw as a shudder rippled down his spine.
His nostrils flared, remembering her subtle scent: soft musk and storm-soaked jasmine.
That unique fragrance made his blood thrum, and his lycan spirit clawed at the cage of his ribs with a hungry desire.
Impervious to the two terrified cartel Dons whispering furiously before him, he indulged in a fantasy of her in his bed, waking in the aftermath of intimacy.
Wearing one of his shirts, or nothing at all.
Her skin warm from sleep, her gaze sultry and overflowing with yearning for him.
Fokk, he wanted her.