Chapter 20 – Calista
“I’m not using Windows. I need a MacBook.”
My arms are crossed, spine stiff, eyes locked on Lazaro like he’s just offended every functioning neuron in my brain. His study smells like leather, smoke, and arrogance. He’s lounging in that oversized chair like a king on his throne, swirling a glass of whiskey like he’s immune to my protests.
No reaction. Just those dark, infuriating eyes lifting to meet mine as he says, flatly, "You need discipline."
“Discipline has nothing to do with basic computer functionality.”
“You’re talking back to me over a laptop.”
“Correction,” I say, lifting a finger. “I’m talking back to you over my mental health.”
His lips twitch subtly, like he’s biting back a grin—or maybe a lecture. Hard to tell with him. "You’ll survive without a MacBook."
“No,” I deadpan. “I’ll suffer. Slowly. Tragically. Until one day you find me face-down in a pile of corrupted Word files and regret.”
He lifts his glass in a mocking toast. “A noble death.”
“Ugh.” I toss my hands up. “Lazaro, I’m serious. I need a MacBook with proper encryption and processing speed, not whatever antique Dell you’ve got stashed in the corner over there like it’s the Holy Grail.”
“Stop insulting my machines.”
“Then stop insulting my standards.”
A beat passes between us —like a duel without swords. He raises a brow. I raise both.
Finally, he sighs and glances at Ethan, who’s been standing quietly like he’s watching a very dramatic soap opera unfold. “Take her. Ten minutes. No detours.”
I smirk, victorious. "See? That wasn’t so hard."
“I already regret it.”
“You’ll live.”
He pins me with a glare. “Argue again and I’ll revoke it.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me.”
I huff and turn to leave, but his voice stops me at the door.
“One more thing,” Lazaro says, his voice clipped. "If she refuses the guards, she’s not going." He looks at Ethan, who’s already anticipating the next command. "Two guards go with her."
I whirl back around. "What? Lazaro, come on. Two guards? I’m going to an electronics store, not a war zone."
He leans back, completely unbothered. "Then you’ll have company on your little Apple pilgrimage."
“I’m going to look like a criminal."
“You are one now. Might as well embrace the aesthetic.”
“Ridiculous,” I mutter, dragging a hand down my face. “They’re going to stare."
“They’d stare anyway.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re insufferable.”
“And yet, here you are.”
I sigh dramatically, because of course he’s not budging. “Fine. But I swear, if one of them breathes down my neck while I’m comparing processors, I’ll stab them with a stylus.”
He smiles like I just complimented him. "Now you’re starting to sound like one of us."
I fake a gagging motion, but a smile sneaks onto my lips anyway.
By the time I’m in the SUV with Aaron and Cain—Lazaro’s favorite muscleheads—I’m half regretting my decision. Aaron sits beside me in the back, practically vibrating with military alertness, while Cain is at the wheel, eyes flicking to every passing pedestrian like they’re armed to the teeth.
I slump into the seat and groan. “This is humiliating.”
“Not our fault you picked a laptop over basic freedom,” Aaron mutters, checking his watch like I’m a ticking bomb.
I glare at him. "You know what’s worse than Windows? You."
He doesn’t respond, but I swear I catch the corner of his mouth twitching.
The ride through Manhattan isn’t long, but it feels eternal. The moment we pull up to the electronics store, I’m already bracing myself for the awkward stares. Because nothing says ‘casual shopping trip’ like a woman flanked by two men who look like they moonlight as mercenaries.
“Stay close,” Aaron orders as we step out.
“I wasn’t planning on sprinting off into the sunset with a MacBook,” I grumble.
The store is bright, crowded, full of everyday chaos—crying toddlers, clueless tech buyers, and the comforting murmur of people chatting amongst themselves. Everything feels normal. Almost comforting.
Aaron sticks to my side like static cling, eyes scanning everything, while Cain waits outside near the SUV, arms crossed, head on a swivel.
I stroll over to the tech counter, letting my fingers skim over the rows of shiny, overpriced Apple products. Comparing specs and tapping on cooperative keyboards has a strange kind of calm—nothing like battling a war-torn typewriter.
“This one,” I murmur, testing the weight of a MacBook with an M2 chip and matte finish. “Perfect balance. Sleek design. Not a single soul-draining bloatware icon in sight.”
Aaron raises a brow. “You sound like you’re flirting with it.”
“Let me live.”
Just as I’m scrolling through display settings, a familiar voice cuts in behind me.
“This is why he doesn’t let you work unsupervised.”
I turn to see Ian—another one of Lazaro’s men, and apparently, the unofficial president of the Grumpy Henchmen Club.
“Nice to see you too,” I quip, tapping through trackpad sensitivity settings. “I’m being productive. That counts, right?”
“You’re ten seconds from hacking the store’s mainframe just to adjust a color profile.”
“I like precision.”
He mutters something under his breath, but I’m too busy grinning at the screen.
“Calista.” Aaron’s voice sharpens suddenly, and it pulls me from my tech-induced trance.
I glance up.
There’s motion outside the window and a twitch in Cain’s posture. My fingers pause over the keyboard.
Then—everything ruptures.
A thunderous crash. Glass explodes in every direction, raining shards like daggers. A grenade tears through the front display, plowing into the tile with a sickening clang before detonating in a bloom of smoke and shrapnel. Screams split the air.
Chaos. Screeching metal. Alarms blaring.
Three men burst through the ruined front, civilian clothes barely hiding the weapons in their hands. Gunfire erupts, deafening. Bullets slam into walls, displays, and flesh.
“Down!” Aaron shouts, grabbing me by the waist and dragging me behind the counter. I hit the floor hard, ears ringing.
He’s already firing, every shot brutal and precise. Blood paints the floor. A customer falls near us, shrieking, blood pouring from a shredded arm. Glass crunches under Aaron’s boots as he moves to cover me.
Outside, Cain returns fire from behind the SUV, muzzle flashing like lightning as he unloads round after round. One attacker jerks as a bullet slams straight through his neck—arterial spray erupts in violent spurts, painting the concrete in crimson. The man crumples, twitching, blood pulsing from his severed jugular. But before Cain can reposition, another shot rips through the chaos and punches into his leg—just above the knee. He howls, buckling as the impact throws him sideways into the SUV. The side mirror explodes on contact, shards flying as Cain smashes into the metal, leaving a bloody smear on the door. He collapses in a twisted heap, groaning, his leg a mess of shredded flesh and exposed muscle.
A sharp sting slices across my shoulder. My scream tears out involuntarily as blood wells beneath the torn fabric. My fingers go slick with it as I press instinctively to stop the flow.
Then he’s on me.
One of them—a beast of a man in a black mask, thick with muscle, veins bulging in his forearms like cables—lunges from the smoke and grabs me by the arm, yanking me upright so violently my shoulder pops. His grip is bruising, fingers digging in like iron shackles. I can feel the blood drain from my fingers under the pressure. The stench of sweat and gunpowder clings to him, his breathing sharp and animalistic.
He slams me against a cracked wall-mounted shelf, knocking the wind out of me. A cracked monitor crashes beside my head, glass shards embedding into the floor. His face inches from mine, teeth bared behind the torn edge of his mask, he snarls, “Zano sends his regards,” his voice low and full of promise—like death wrapped in a growl.
My pulse explodes with fury. Without thinking, I act. My hand fumbles for anything solid, landing on the jagged edge of a shattered display stand. I grip the metal, rusty and razor-sharp, and swing with every ounce of strength I have.
The stand crashes into his cheekbone with a crack, the impact jolting up my arm. Blood bursts from the gash like a geyser, splattering my face and coat. His mask splits, revealing a twisted mouth, shattered teeth, and a thick gash that runs down his cheek to his throat. He stumbles, dazed, but stays on his feet.
I swing again, harder. The second blow slices open his forehead, skin peeling like wet paper. Blood pours in thick rivulets, coating his chest, dripping onto the floor in rhythmic splats. He bellows in pain, stumbling backward, but his grip tightens again, fingers bruising my arm.
I slam my knee into his groin with a brutal upward thrust. He jerks with a strangled grunt, eyes bulging. I rip free, twist, and bring the jagged stand down on the back of his skull. The crunch it makes is obscene—bone cracking, tissue tearing. He crumples mid-motion, a broken pile of flesh and muscle, convulsing as blood pools beneath his twitching body.
His last breath is a gurgle, bubbling through crimson froth from his split lips. I stumble back, panting, body shaking, hands slick with his blood. And still, my eyes stay locked on him, refusing to look away until I know—without a doubt—he’s not getting back up.
I spin back just in time to see Aaron take a hit—bullet punching straight into his side with a fleshy thud. The force jerks his torso sideways, blood spraying in a sudden arc that spatters the wall behind him. He stumbles, groaning through clenched teeth, and I swear I see a glimpse of exposed bone through the shredded tear in his jacket. But he stays standing. His face contorts in raw pain, but he plants his feet, raising his gun again with a snarl. Another bullet ricochets off a metal display near his head, sending sparks everywhere, but he keeps firing—each shot delivered with savage precision, knuckles white around the grip, blood pouring down his hip in thick, dark streams. The stench of iron and burnt powder is overwhelming, and for a second, all I can hear is the rapid crack of his gun and the gurgled wheeze of the man he just shot in the throat.
Another man barrels toward me, gun raised, eyes feral.
And then—
The front doors explode open again. Reinforcements.
Ethan bursts through, gun blazing. Behind him, Virelli men pour in like a tidal wave of wrath, weapons raised and eyes sharp. The sound is relentless—gunfire echoing like thunder, shells clattering across the tile in a relentless, metallic hailstorm. Screams pierce the air from every direction—customers who just moments ago were browsing laptops now crawling across blood-slick floors, ducking behind fallen shelves and shattered display stands. A mother drags her sobbing child behind a broken checkout kiosk. A teenage boy clutches his stomach where a shard of glass has embedded itself deep, blood seeping through his shirt.
The chaos is complete. Shrieks of pain and panic blend with the roar of gunfire, the acrid stench of smoke and blood thick enough to choke on. Somewhere nearby, a woman screams for help, her voice raw and ragged, as another Virelli soldier guns down an attacker at close range—blood splattering across a terrified employee crouched in the corner.
And through all of it, I feel a sick twist in my gut—not from fear, not even from the pain throbbing in my shoulder—but from the sight of all these people caught in the crossfire. Innocent bystanders, bleeding and broken, trapped in a nightmare they didn’t ask for. I hate that this is my world now. That the war I walked into dragged everyone else down with it.
Two more attackers go down in a spray of bullets—one shot through the eye, the other collapsing with half his ribcage blown open. Blood spatters across the walls, the floor, my shoes.
The last De Corsi thug tries to run, but he’s tackled, pinned, and restrained. He’s snarling, blood running down his arm from a torn bicep, teeth snapping like a rabid dog.
Ethan turns to me, breathing hard. “You good?”
“I’ve been better.” I glance down at my bloodied sleeve and the corpse at my feet. “But hey, got my MacBook.”
He stares for a beat, then shakes his head. “You’re goddamn insane.”
“Tell Lazaro I want hazard pay.”
The sound of polished shoes on broken glass cuts through the aftermath like a blade.
Lazaro steps over debris and shattered plastic, fury carved into every line of his face. His coat sweeps the floor, boots crunching over bloodied tech parts and bullet casings.
He doesn’t speak. He sees the blood soaked through my shirt, the burn marks singed into my coat. His eyes flick to Aaron’s wound, then back to me. There’s a feral heat burning behind that stare.
He walks straight to the captured De Corsi soldier.
The man snarls, still trying to fight even with arms restrained, blood pouring from his mouth.
Lazaro draws his gun without a word.
“You tried to touch what’s mine.”
One shot. Point-blank.
The man’s skull snaps back, a mist of brain matter painting the floor behind him. His body drops like a discarded puppet.
No one speaks. No one moves.
Lazaro holsters his weapon and finally looks at me again—rage cooling just slightly, but that storm in his eyes still simmering.
And for the first time, I don’t feel like the chaos. I feel like the reason it exists.
Cain limps toward us, his leg soaked in blood, dragging behind him like a dead weight. Aaron braces himself against a shattered counter, still holding pressure to his side with one hand, the other gripping his pistol like he’s ready for a second wave. The Virelli soldiers start sweeping the building, barking orders and dragging away bodies. The scent of scorched plastic and singed flesh mingles with the metallic tang of blood—thick, cloying, stifling.
Lazaro turns back to me. The sharpness in his expression doesn’t soften, but his hand rises, fingers surprisingly gentle as they brush a smear of blood from my cheek. I wince slightly when he steadies me by the arm, and that’s all it takes—he notices the tremor in my hands, the way my muscles won’t stop twitching from the aftershock.
"I told you I can handle myself," I mutter, trying to sound stronger than I feel. My voice is hoarse, my body a collage of bruises, smoke, and adrenaline.
Lazaro’s hand lingers, his thumb smoothing over a smear of grime near my temple. His eyes stay locked on mine, low and lethal. “And I told you—if they touch you again, I’ll burn their whole legacy to the ground.”
The words aren’t empty. They burn hotter than the gunfire that just tore this place apart. It’s not just fury. It’s possession. Promise. A vow dipped in violence.
"You’re so dramatic," I say with a shaky laugh, though it comes out weaker than I intend—half teasing, half clinging to whatever normalcy I can scrape together in the wreckage around us.
He helps me toward the SUV, one arm around my waist, guiding me through the shattered remains of the battlefield we left behind. Each step crunches over glass, charred wires, and broken lives. People still cry out inside the store—bystanders dazed, injured, carried away on stretchers by paramedics now flooding the scene. But for me, everything narrows to the blood drying on my shirt and the heat of Lazaro’s touch.
The SUV door slams shut behind us. The engine rumbles to life, muffling the chaos outside. I slide into the seat beside Lazaro, the MacBook box still in my lap—blood-spattered, cracked at the corner, a sharp edge pressing against my knee like a reminder of everything we just survived.
My fingers ache from how tightly I balled them into fists. Like if I let go, I’d fall apart. Like I was holding on to the last thread of whatever part of me hadn’t been swallowed by this world.
There’s blood under my nails. On my boots. Dried along my forearms. And the worst part?
I don’t feel anything.
Not guilt. Not relief.
Just... stillness.
I used to create. My tattoo art was ink and pain, sure—but it healed. It had meaning.
Now, I break things.
Now, I hurt people.
I tell myself it’s for justice. For vengeance. For Noel.
But what if it’s not?
What if I’ve stopped running from the world I feared—and started becoming it?
Aaron’s in the back seat, reclined slightly, his side wrapped in fresh gauze, a grimace carved into his face. Ethan hands him a bottle of water, then leans back casually, glancing at me through the rearview mirror.
“I give it... two days before she shoots someone again,” Ethan says, not even trying to whisper.
Aaron snorts through the pain, taking a slow sip. “Two days? That’s generous. I say by tonight.”
They both glance at me. I’m cleaning the blood off my fingers with a torn napkin, my gun already resting in the seat beside me. I don’t look up—but the corner of my mouth twitches.
“You boys betting on me now?” I ask coolly.
Aaron raises a brow. “Just respecting your consistency.”
Ethan laughs. “We’re impressed, not scared.”
I finally glance over my shoulder, one brow arched. “Be scared.”
Lazaro smirks, but it’s faint—more tired amusement than real laughter. “Shut up, both of you,” he says without looking back. “Try resting your eyes for once instead of running your mouths.”
Aaron mumbles something under his breath about sore ribs and bullet magnets, while Ethan chuckles and leans his head against the window.
But Lazaro’s gaze is already back on me.
And now, there’s no humor left.
He watches me with a different kind of heat—low-burning and dangerous. Not lust or anger. He looks protective, possessive, like every inch of me belongs to him and he’s memorizing the damage. His eyes trace over the blood on my shirt, the scrapes along my jaw, the stiffness in my shoulders like he’s committing it all to memory—like he wants to held onto the shape of my fury.
“We’re in this together,” he says, voice low—lower than a whisper. It’s not rage. It’s devotion. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Not now. Not ever.”
And maybe it’s the warmth of his grip, or the steadiness in his voice, but I feel steadier as well. Just a little.
Aaron shifts in the backseat with a sharp grunt, one arm clutching his side. “You’d think with a shootout in broad daylight, we’d have had a goddamn SWAT team in five minutes.”
Ethan, riding shotgun, snorts. “You still believe in fairy tales?”
Lazaro keeps his eyes on the road. “Detective Molina’s on the payroll. Has been for years.”
I glance at him, surprised. “And he’s just... okay with all of this?”
“He’s not okay. He’s paid,” Lazaro says flatly. “And paid well. As long as we don’t touch schools or cops, he looks the other way. He even buries reports when it suits him.”
Aaron exhales hard. “So basically, we’re ghosts until someone makes too much noise.”
Lazaro’s hands tighten around the steering wheel. “Exactly. Which means we’re on borrowed time.”
I sit with that for a second, staring out the window as the city blurs past in streaks of sirens and neon. I knew Lazaro had power—I’ve seen what he’s capable of—but this? Bribing law enforcement. Making chaos disappear. Bending the rules until they break. It’s more than I realized. More than I was ready for.
There’s a storm brewing within me but outside, New York simmers under a haze of smoke and flashing sirens, but the city barely flinches. People keep moving—hurrying past the chaos, stepping over broken glass like it’s just another Tuesday. Horns blare. A food cart vendor keeps shouting about hot dogs three blocks away.
Because this is New York—violence echoes, sirens scream, and yet the world keeps spinning.