Chapter 2
brONX
TWENTY MINUTES EARLIER…
I've done a lot of stupid shit in my life. Ask my brothers, they'll give you a list. But stuffed into a tiny Fiat that smells like cold shawarma and stale beer while the Bucharest sky goes black? This might be a new personal low.
Six hours. Six hours in this fucking car.
Kingston said observe and report, and I've been a good soldier - watching, waiting, cataloging every guard rotation, every camera angle, every single movement around a warehouse that doesn't exist on any map. It’s the home of the Blood Vault, basically a digital fortress where the Red Tribunal keeps every dirty secret they've ever stolen, locked down and impenetrable by outsiders.
Including enough dirt on my family to bury us six feet under.
I take a long drag of my cigarette and blow smoke rings at the laptop balanced on my dash.
The security feed I hacked three hours ago loops on the screen.
Two guards at the main entrance, rotating every four minutes like clockwork.
Two more inside, patrolling the maze of hallways.
It’s boring and predictable. The kind of security that makes me think that the real protection is invisible to anyone looking for it.
My phone buzzes on the seat next to me and my brother Reign’s name flashes across the screen. I let out a deep sigh, shift in my seat, and stab the Accept button.
“Anything yet?” he asks.
I adjust the AirPod in my ear. “Yeah, guard one picks his nose every twelve minutes. I've got a stiff neck, no feeling in my left ass cheek, and I’m really starting to hate Romanian radio,” I say.
I can almost hear him roll his eyes. "Kingston wants an update."
“Tell Kingston I'm working on my tan and I’ll get back to him later.”
“I'll give him the message.”
The line goes dead. I almost smile. Reign is the only person in this family who can translate my bullshit into something Kingston won't murder me over.
I slouch back against the seat, my eyes fixed on the feed. It’ll be four more hours before the extraction team shows up. Four more hours of—
Wait.
I sit up so fast I nearly knock the laptop off the dash.
There’s movement on the south corridor feed in the lower portion of the screen. I narrow my eyes at the figure darting through the blind spots between cameras like they choreographed the whole thing in advance.
It’s not a guard. Guards don't move like that.
No, this person was trained. They know the camera positions, the guard rotation schedule. They've done their homework.
I zoom in, my fingers flying across the keyboard as I try to narrow down the specific location.
The figure suddenly stops before rounding a corner and pulls out some kind of handheld device. The light catches a face for half a second—
A hiss of breath slips from my lips.
It’s a woman.
She’s got dark hair pulled into a braid and a sharp profile.
I take a screenshot and run it through every database I have access to – Interpol, the CIA watchlist, and Europol.
Fuck. I rake a hand through my hair when my searches come up empty.
Nothing. She's a ghost, according to those databases.
But ghosts don’t exist in our world. You can scrub a file, burn a paper trail, disappear from every government database on the planet, but someone always knows who you are.
I glare at my laptop screen and do another search on the Dark Web when I finally hit a match.
Tierney Blake, daughter of Declan Blake. I scan some of the search results. He’s head of an organized crime family in Belfast with blood ties to the Irish mafia in the south. They have operations across northern Ireland and some in Eastern Europe.
My eyes flick back to the security monitor. The woman, Tierney, is already past the second security checkpoint, still moving fast like there’s fire on her heels. The guards don't notice a damn thing. She's inside, and they have no fucking clue.
Part of me is impressed. Most of me is pissed.
My AirPod crackles. Reign again.
“Bronx, you seeing this?”
“Yeah. Looks like we've got company.” I scrape a hand down the front of my stubbled face. “I did a check. The intruder’s name is Tierney Blake. Irish mafia royalty on her dads side.”
“Shit, what does she want?” He pauses for a second. “Kingston wants you to pull out. Wait for the team.”
I watch my secondary monitor light up like a Christmas tree. She's accessed the mainframe and there’s a download in progress.
Fuuuuck.
“She's pulling files. Right now. If I wait for the team, she'll be gone and so is whatever she's taking.”
Kingston's voice cuts in since Reign’s got me on speaker. “Bronx. Do not fucking do what I think you’re about to do. You sit your ass in that car until the team gets there. We’ll track her once she’s out and then we’ll find out who sent her. We play the long game, remember that.”
On my screen, a countdown timer appears. She set it herself. Three minutes.
In three minutes, she’s gonna take whatever she wants and disappear. And if she gets anything on our family - our operations, our financials, our names - we're fucked. Completely exposed.
Done.
The kind of done that no one comes back from.
“We’ll talk about it over drinks when I get back,” I say.
“Bronx—”
I click to end the call, grab my Beretta, and step onto the gravel road.
“It's a long way home to Ireland, Tierney Blake, and I'm not letting you out of this elevator until you hand it over.”
The words land exactly the way I want them to. Her expression goes from shocked to full of rage. And then realization sets in behind those blue eyes as she processes the fact that I know exactly who she is.
She doesn't panic. Doesn't beg for her life or ask how I know.
She just lifts her chin and says in a cold voice, “You don't know what you're talking about.”
“I know your daddy sent you down here to steal something. I know it’s saved in that USB you’re hiding. And I know you're about thirty seconds from being trapped underground with me and no way out.” I let my “you’re fucked” smile spread across my face. “So let's make this nice and easy.”
“Nothing about this is going to be nice and easy for you,” she says, as cold as ice.
Goddamn, I like her. The Irish accent, dripping with disdain, is doing things to me that are wildly inappropriate for a standoff in a freight elevator.
But it's her eyes that really get me. They flare blue fire with absolutely zero fear, calculating at least six different scenarios where she beats me out of here.
“Hand over the drive, Tierney.”
“Use my name again and I'll put a bullet through your kneecap.”
I lift an eyebrow. “That's not a no.”
“It's not a yes, either.”
The elevator jerks again. The already-tight space closes in and her floral shampoo cuts through the stale air and wafts under my nose. In the mirrored wall panel, I catch her tracking my reflection. She's watching me the way I'm watching her.
But time will tell who’s faster and more lethal.
She's got her gun pointed at my chest, and I've got an Uzi strapped across mine as well as a gun holstered at my hip. But neither of us is going to pull the trigger because we both know we’ll be toast if a single shot ricochets off the walls in this airless metal box.
So we stand down, sizing each other up.
“Who do you work for?” she asks.
“Nobody you need to worry about.” I lean back against the wall.
“Everyone with a gun is someone I need to worry about.”
“That’s fair.” But I don’t give her more than that.
“I'm not here for money, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she says. Her voice changes and the cool confidence slips the slightest bit. “I'm not selling what I took. I need it.”
Aha. She’s desperate for something. I file that away. She didn't come here for profit. This is personal.
The elevator stutters, grinds, then keeps climbing, now at half speed. Like it's thinking about stopping. Like whatever security protocol the Tribunal just activated is deciding whether to strand us between floors or let us ride to the top and ice us both when the doors open.
I don’t like either option.
I catch her eyes in the red fog. She's scared now. Not of me, but of this. Of being trapped. Of whatever she came here for slipping through her fingers.
“Relax, sweetheart. We're not dying in an elevator in Bucharest. That's not how my story ends.”
“Stop calling me sweetheart. You know my name. Use it or shut up,” she snaps, whirling around to lance me with a glare.
“Where's the fun in that?”
Her jaw tightens as she white-knuckles her gun.
The elevator groans, moving upward but at an agonizingly slow pace.
I use the time to study details like the sweat pebbling her forehead, the grip on her gun, her throbbing pulse at the base of her neck.
She's terrified but furious and still believes she’s the most dangerous person in this building.
Tierney Blake didn't come here for money. The desperation in her eyes is the kind that comes from protecting someone you love, not filling a bank account. And that makes her more dangerous than anyone the Tribunal has on its payroll because desperate people don't negotiate. They detonate.
The elevator finally shudders to a stop and the doors grind open to a loading bay on the ground level. A cracked concrete floor is laid out in front of us. Industrial shelving lines the perimeter and fluorescent bulbs flicker overhead.
And beyond the half-open bay door is a dark alleyway where a truck sits, waiting.
Her ride, I guess.
Tierney darts out before the doors have a chance to finish opening, ducking low, boots pounding against the ground. She heads straight for that bay door like her life depends on it.
And it does because a Tribunal guard rounds the shelving unit with an automatic rifle pointed at her back.
She doesn't see him.
I do.
I fire off two shots and he drops before he has a chance to pull the trigger on his weapon. She flinches, spins just in time to see the guard’s body drop, and for a hot second, those blue eyes find mine.
No thank you. No acknowledgment at all. Just a flicker of something raw before she turns and runs.
You're fucking welcome, Tierney.
Two more guards run through a side entrance with their weapons drawn, shouting in Romanian.
They fire at me and bullets spark off the concrete at my feet.
I dive behind a forklift and go for my Uzi this time.
A hail of bullets spray the air. One guard drops.
The other staggers backward behind some shelves.
Tierney sprints into the darkness toward the truck.
I run toward the second guard, taking him out with a few more shots before I run after her. My ears ring, my Kevlar vest bruised from a hit I didn't even feel in the chaos.
She’s still about ten feet from the truck.
And I'm faster.
I tackle her three feet from the driver’s side door. We fall to the wet concrete, limbs tangled. She drags her nails down the side of my face, drawing blood as I pin her wrists over her head and lock her legs between mine.
But she fights dirty and manages to free one of her knees and drive it into my balls.
She doesn’t catch them full-on but I have to grit my teeth for a second.
Her face is a mess of fury, teeth bared, and fuck, it makes my blood sing.
I tighten my grip on her wrists. She twists, writhes, throws me everything she has to get free, knocking my cap off in the process.
“Hand over the drive, Tierney,” I manage to say through gritted teeth, blood dripping from the scratches she carved into my face. “Last fucking chance.”
She glares up at me, pure defiance, her chest heaving. Our faces are inches apart. I can count her eyelashes and see the sweat on her upper lip.
“You want to know what's on it, Bronx Viacava?” she hisses, apparently recognizing me now. “Proof that your family is corrupt. And if I don’t use it, my brother dies.”
Her brother.
That's what this is about. She didn’t risk her life for power or to feed her father's ambitions.
She’s here to save a Blake.
Then something weird happens. Some strange, foreign emotion like empathy bubbles up in my chest. It’s a feeling I’ve no business feeling for a stranger I'm supposed to be stopping.
I open my mouth to speak and she fucking headbutts me.
Stars flood my vision. White-hot pain explodes across the bridge of my nose. My grip loosens for one second - one fucking second - and she manages to roll out from under me. Before I can get to my feet, she’s in the truck.
The engine roars and tires scream against the pavement outside.
I raise the Uzi, a breath away from pulling the trigger. From this angle I could take the shot and blow out a tire, fuck up the engine and destroy her back windshield.
But I don't take it.
Because I don't want her dead.
I want to know what kind of woman breaks into the most secure criminal database on the planet, fights like a soldier, and tells the enemy her brother's life is on the line like she's daring me to use it against her.
So I fire shots in the direction of the truck, purposely hitting a tree she’s speeding past, just to let her know I could hit her if I wanted to. The taillights disappear in the inky blackness.
My shoulders sag, blood from the cuts on my face trickling down the side of my jaw, hard as a goddamn rock, and more alive than I've felt in years.
I press my fingers to the scratches. They sting like hell. They're going to scar.
Good.
I hunker low and get myself the hell out of there. Once I’m back at the rental car, I dig out my phone and dial my brother’s number.
“Bronx, for fuck’s sake.” Kingston's voice could freeze lava. “What the hell did you just do?”
“We have a problem.”
I light a cigarette, inhale slowly, and watch the smoke dissipate into the cold night air.
“Tierney Blake got away. She's got files on us. I don't know how much, but it’s probably enough to be a problem. And K...” I take another drag, thinking about those fiery blue eyes and a voice that cracked when she mentioned her brother.
“She's not freelance. Breaking into the vault was personal.
The Tribunal has something on them. But whatever she thinks she stole? She's in over her head.”
He’s quiet for a minute. “How do you want to handle it?”
I take one last drag, flick the cigarette onto the ground, and make a promise to the woman who just clawed my face open and stole my control.
“I’ve got a plan,” I say.
I'll see you again, Tierney Blake.
And next time, sweetheart, you won't get away.