32. ~Nico~
32
~Nico~
“Are you okay?” I asked Milo as he watched a couple of my soldiers dragging Leo’s corpse away in a body bag.
He finally turned from staring at the scene and eyed me. “He was your uncle.”
“By blood only.”
“Well, yeah. There was never any love lost between the two of you.”
“Especially near the end.”
The truth was, it had been from the moment Leo had become Underboss that had shifted everything and worsened our relationship to the point of no return.
Milo knew that, really, but we both also knew why I wasn’t speaking to it.
Because the fucker had only become Underboss as a result of murdering Milo’s father.
He shoved a hand through his spiky hair, and admitted, “It was a lot. Hearing him spout all the shit that he did, knowing how if your father had just had faith in mine, then things could have gone a whole other way.”
“Even if it hadn’t been that night, Milo, with Leo in the picture, and on an obsessive power trip, he would have found another way. The only thing that would have stopped it would have been Marco removing him from power.”
“I hear you, yeah.” He sighed heavily. “And there’s no point imagining things being different or going another way, because it’s not our reality, and it can never be. What happened can’t be undone. My parents are gone.” He brightened a little as he said, “But I have the three of you, our own crafted family. And now, I do feel like justice has been served. Not just because I was able to put that motherfucker down, but because we’re taking power now and undoing the mistakes they made. We’ve rooted out the poison that had infected everything.”
I laid my hand on his shoulder. “I’m glad you feel that way. I’m so sorry that it took such a long time for the truth to come out and for you to get the justice that you deserved.”
“All that matters is that I did.”
“I agree.”
We turned at the sound of a disgruntled sound to see Julian coming into the living room, the one where we’d had the command center set up. Pretty much the only room on the ground floor that hadn’t sustained any damage whatsoever, thanks to us focusing a lot of our defense there to protect the equipment within.
“Told you it needed stitches,” Milo said, gesturing at the now treated gash across Julian’s left cheek from a hit he’d taken during the battle, wherein he’d had his face smashed through a window.
“Five,” Julian muttered.
I walked to him and inspected the work my on-call doctor had done. “This will barely scar at all. She did a phenomenal job. Don’t worry, J.”
“You think Cat will find it hot?”
“Absolutely. No doubt about it.”
“You know how she is,” Milo chimed in.
“Yeah. She likes it rough. Down and dirty as fuck.”
“She sure does,” Caterina spoke, walking in with a tablet in hand, her attention half on us, half on it. “Table that for later, my boys.”
“Incredibly difficult to do after just coming out of my feral state, principessa.”
“I’m right there with you.”
“You controlled it really impressively this time. Yet again.”
“Thanks to the three of you. You held me steady through it all, even just the thought of you.”
“We’re glad,” Milo said.
“Nicely done, darlin’.”
“So, here’s the situation. The tracer I planted on Joe is active and he’s on the move. Moving dangerously fast, actually.” She propped up the tablet on one of the desktops and gestured at the map with the bright-red circle moving in real-time.
“The protein shake obsession he developed really came in handy,” Julian commented. “What did you call it? The thing you dropped in one of them?”
“An ingestible micro-RFID tag,” she told him. “Something I had Levi procure from Knightsridge Engineering. One of their advanced prototypes. It can’t be detected through regular means. It has no beeping GPS signal. Because the tracker transmits data through the body’s natural electromagnetic fields, even if Joe goes digitally dark, I’ll still be able to track him.”
“Talk about next-gen tech,” Milo spoke.
She lifted a shoulder. “That’s Knightsridge for you.”
I took in the tracking dot on the map. “He’s not heading to the chief operational hub.”
“No,” she confirmed. “He must’ve lied to Levi and me about Donahue not taking him up on his offer to step into the light. It looks like they’ve arranged another meeting location.”
“Where he’s gonna get himself killed,” Julian groused.
Caterina told us, “As you know, from accessing their communications network, I’ve been able to tag many of their operatives. And right now, at least thirty of them are in Joe’s vicinity. It looks like they’re converging at this prearranged meeting location.”
“Does he really think he can win out against those odds?” Milo asked.
“No. He’ll try to take them down with him,” Caterina said, pinching the bridge of her nose, her distress clear. “He thinks he’s doing right by me, by us.”
“Sounds more like a lack of trust to me,” I spoke.
“He’s overcompensating for not being there for Cat in the past. It’s skewing everything for him,” Julian said.
“Well, I’m not going to let him do this,” Caterina ground out with a whole lot of conviction.
“ We won’t,” I stated.
She frowned out at me. “Nico, no. Your soldiers are all geared up to take the operational hub, to finally end this. Carlo’s too. Everything is set. So many people are involved in this, so many lives impacted and—”
“ And Nathan Donahue still needs to be taken out. Something good has come out of Stover going off half-cocked. We now know that Donahue won’t be at the operational hub.”
“But we can’t split their focus. I’ve shown you how many operatives they’ll need to take down in order to render that place ineffective. Everything you and Carlo have at your disposal will be needed.”
“Agreed. It should be the four of us.”
“What?” she exclaimed. “But the operational hub assault? Don’t you need to—”
“Everything is set, strategized down to the last detail, covering every eventuality, thanks to Stover and the operational tactics you and Levi were able to obtain on Erebus from your hack. It doesn’t need to be me who leads that assault.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” I said, taking her hands in mine. “But you need us on this.”
“Besides,” Julian said, stepping forward with Milo. “It’s been a long time since we’ve gone on a mission, just the four of us.”
“One last one for the road, beauty.”
She looked out at each of us in turn.
And then she gave my hands a squeeze and nodded. “Let’s do it.”