Chapter 5 Leone #2
I should let go. I should step back, rebuild the distance, remember who I am and what I do and why caring about anything is a liability.
And yet… I don’t let go.
Aurelio calls me to the war room at 4 AM.
I leave Alexandra in my quarters, with two guards outside the door and strict orders: no one enters, no one exits, until I return.
The room is a graveyard of maps and coffee cups.
Aurelio sits at the head of the table, Claudio and Emilio flanking him.
The twins look roughed up but operational.
Claudio has a cut above his eye that’s already been butterflied.
Emilio is icing his ribs where the round hit his vest, grinning like he had the time of his life.
Aurelio doesn’t grin. His face is stone, eyes like steel.
“Eighteen mercenaries,” he says. “Professional. Well-equipped. Funded by someone with deep pockets.”
“Marco Castillo,” I say.
“Castillo doesn’t have this kind of money.” Aurelio taps a finger on the table. “Someone else is bankrolling this war. Someone we haven’t identified yet.”
The room goes quiet. There’s so much at stake. The shipping manifests, the gaps, the patterns Alexandra found. The third Tuesday. The off-books shipments.
“There’s a third player,” I say.
Aurelio nods. “That’s my suspicion. Someone funding them, equipping them with resources they shouldn’t have. Tonight wasn’t just a Castillo operation. It was a demonstration.”
“For us?”
“For us. For the city. For whoever’s watching.” He stands, moving to the map on the wall. “They wanted to prove they can reach us inside our own walls. The attack itself was secondary. The message was primary.”
I process this. “Renzo was feeding them everything. If the third player has access to that intelligence, they know more about us than the Castillo’s do.”
“Which is why Renzo is being dealt with tonight.” Aurelio’s voice doesn’t change, but anger darkens behind his eyes. “Carmelo is handling it.”
Renzo Marchetti, dead man walking. By dawn, there won’t be enough left to bury.
I push the thought aside. “What do you want me to do?”
“Find the third player. Use every resource we have. Pull financial records, communication intercepts, anything that traces the money behind tonight’s attack.” He pauses, studying me. “Use the girl, if she’s willing. She found Renzo when my analysts couldn’t. She might find this too.”
I nod. “I’ll brief her in the morning.”
“Leone.” Aurelio’s gaze holds mine. “This changes the war. We’re not fighting the old rivals anymore. We’re fighting whoever’s behind them, and we don’t know their face, their name, or their reach.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” He steps closer. “Because I need you sharper than you’ve ever been. No distractions. No divided attention. The next mistake could be our last.”
The word distraction is sharp and unsettling. I know what he means. Who he means.
“She’s not a distraction,” I say. “She’s an asset.”
Aurelio watches me for a long time. Then he nods, once, and turns back to the map. “Make sure it stays that way.”
I leave, but the conversation follows me down the corridor.
No distractions. No divided attention.
He’s right. I know he’s right. The smart move—the only move—is to lock Alexandra down, put her to work, and treat her like what she is: a tool. An analytical mind strapped to a body that happens to make my chest tight when she’s too close.
I pass the medical wing. Through the open door, I see one of our wounded soldiers. Dante, the kid who replaced Renzo, sitting on a gurney while a medic stitches a gash across his forearm. He’s twenty-two, twenty-three. Pale. Trying hard not to shake.
He sees me and straightens. “Sir.”
“At ease.” I step inside, scanning the wound. Deep, but clean. “You held the east gate.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good work.”
The kid nods, jaw tight, trying to look tougher than he feels.
I remember being that age. I remember sitting on a gurney just like this one, my first real wound…
a knife across the palm, earned in a warehouse fight I barely survived.
Aurelio sat beside me and said nothing. waited until the medic finished, then handed me a glass of whiskey and told me to sleep.
I didn’t sleep for three days.
“Get some rest,” I tell Dante. “You earned it.”
“Sir.” He hesitates. “The girl. The one you moved to the panic room. Is she—is she okay?”
I go still. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason.” His eyes flick sideways. “Some of the guys were talking, that’s all. Saying she’s the one who found the mole. Saying she’s—” He stops. Smart enough to read my expression.
“She’s fine,” I snap. “And what the guys say about her is none of your concern. Clear?”
“Clear, sir.”
I leave before I say something I’ll regret. The hallways are empty at this hour, lit by fluorescent strips that hum and flicker. My footsteps echo. I count them out of habit, a rhythm that grounds me when everything else is spinning loose.
The men are talking about her.
Of course they are. A compound full of soldiers, a war raging outside the walls, and the Don’s right-hand man has moved a civilian woman into his personal quarters. The rumor mill doesn’t need fuel when the fire’s already visible from orbit.
I need to be more careful. Not with Alexandra—with everything around her. The way I move, the way I react, the way I look at her when I think no one’s watching. Because someone is always watching.
Dawn turns the compound grey.
I walk the perimeter, stepping over bloodstains that the cleaning crews haven’t reached yet.
Shell casings glint in the early light. A section of the east fence is torn open, the metal twisted by the force of the breach.
Two SUVs still sit in the courtyard, their windows shattered, tires flat, riddled with holes.
One that we can repurpose and scrub for information.
Eighteen bodies, now bagged and stacked in the basement cooler. Eighteen families who’ll never get a call, never get a grave, never know what happened. That’s the cost of hiring yourself out to men like Marco Castillo.
I feel nothing for them. I’ve never felt anything for the dead. That’s what makes me good at this. The emptiness, the disconnect, the ability to separate the act from the aftermath.
But tonight, something was different.
When the shooting started, I wasn’t thinking about the compound. I wasn’t thinking about Aurelio or the war or the Bonaccorso empire. I was counting floors. Three levels above the panic room. If they breach the west side, they reach the lower corridors.
They reach her.
I fought tonight like I had something to lose.
That’s new. That’s dangerous. And I don’t know how to make it stop.
I finish my sweep and head back inside, my boots leaving prints in the wet concrete. The compound is quieter now—soldiers standing down, adrenaline fading, the post-battle exhaustion settling in like fog.
Outside my door, the guards snap to attention. I wave them down and step inside.
Alexandra is asleep on my bed. She’s still wearing the clothes from yesterday, curled on her side with one arm tucked under the pillow. Her breathing is slow, even. Peaceful in a way she never manages when she’s awake.
I stand in the doorway and watch her.
This is the part Dahlia warned me about. The part where wanting something becomes needing it. The part where need becomes weakness, and weakness becomes a weapon your enemies can use against you.
The part that she could never give herself until she found her other half.
If I were smart, I’d put distance between us. Reassign her to another handler. Move her to a different floor, a different wing, somewhere I can’t hear her voice or see her face or feel her hands on my chest, checking for wounds she’s terrified she’ll find.
I should do a lot of things.
Instead, I sit in the chair by the window and watch the sunrise paint the sky in shades of blood and gold. Alexandra sleeps. The compound breathes. And the third player, faceless, nameless, powerful enough to arm mercenaries and fund a war.
Whoever they are, they’ve made their first mistake.
They thought they could take us with eighteen men.
They thought wrong.