Chapter 8 – Rocco
I don’t like this place.
The Ferrano safehouse on the edge of Miami isn’t a house.
It’s a cage wrapped in drywall. Concrete floors, no real windows, just steel shutters.
Smells like bleach and mildew. The fridge buzzes too loudly.
Everything in here feels like it was meant to be temporary but ended up permanent through neglect.
I’m pacing in tight circles, shirt damp against my back, cigar burning between my fingers, but I’m not smoking it. Not really. Just watching it chew through itself while my mind spins around the pictures on the table.
They’re spread out across a scratched metal surface meant for mechanical work, not this. Eight photographs. Six are blurry. Two are clear enough to piss me off.
Chiara’s face. Caught mid-turn. Helmet off. Neckline low enough to see the chain.
Chain matches. Eyes match. Everything matches.
So why the hell is she calling herself Clara?
I stub the cigar on the edge of the table, leave the ember smoking there.
I told myself it wasn’t her. Told myself it was coincidence. Some girl with the same bone structure, same fire under the surface. But I’ve been doing this too long to lie that well.
I don’t move. Just stare at that one shot where the necklace is swinging against her collarbone.
It’s hers. I remember the day she got it.
Small job up near Jacksonville. I was supposed to watch her six.
She ended up saving mine. We didn’t talk about it after, but she pulled me out from under a bad angle, cut through two of them while I was still on the floor.
That night, Marco handed her the chain. A gift. A mark of trust.
She wore it every day. Said she didn’t believe in luck, but she believed in metal that had survived worse than she had.
I run a hand through my hair and press my palms to the edge of the table.
There’s no version of this where she’s not alive. No version where she’s not hiding from us.
So the question is: Why?
The room creaks above me. Maybe a radio. Maybe a busted TV. Whoever’s on the third floor likes their noise distorted. I don’t care enough to knock.
I sit on the arm of the couch, facing the table. The ledgers Marco gave me are still open. Maps. Drop locations. Shipments that didn’t make it to the port. Half the crew thinks it’s the Cubans. The other half thinks it’s someone in our circle.
Marco’s not looking for guesses. He’s looking for a name.
And this photo?
This photo blows a hole through everything.
My burner vibrates across the steel.
I grab it and answer.
Marco’s voice cuts through, no greeting. “I want the leak, Rocco. And I want it fast.”
“Working it.”
“No mistakes. The Cubans get another drop on us, it won’t be just your ass on the line.”
“I know.”
There’s a pause. Not long—just enough for him to let the pressure sink in. Then he hangs up.
I toss the phone onto the table hard enough that it bounces off the edge and hits the floor.
“You’re making this harder than it has to be, Chiara,” I mutter. Not loud. Just enough to break the rhythm in my head.
I stand again. My legs don’t want to stop moving. I circle the table twice, then stop in front of the photo again.
If she was lying, it wasn’t to con me. It was to survive.
That backroom in the garage—her eyes weren’t hiding greed. They were shielding panic. Every word she said, every breath she took, was measured like she was bracing for someone to blow the door in.
I’ve seen women fake innocence. She wasn’t faking. She was adapting. Fast. Brutal. Efficient.
But then, why the street race?
Why throw herself into the spotlight?
That’s what doesn’t make sense.
Unless she’s bait.
Unless she’s trying to draw someone out.
Unless she knows more than she’s saying.
I grit my teeth and reach for the knife in the crate near the couch. Slide it into the sheath on my side. The sidearm follows—checked, chambered, and clean.
I hear the knock before the door swings open.
“Rocco.”
It’s one of our runners. Thin frame, sweat down the sides of his neck. He’s got a gash near his elbow and a limp that wasn’t there yesterday.
“You gotta go. Docks.”
“What happened?”
“Cubans hit one of ours. Vincent. They left him like trash.”
I don’t react. Just stare.
“Shot through the chest. They dumped him on the pallets.”
“Alive?”
He hesitates. “Not when we found him.”
I nod once, grab my jacket from the back of the chair, and head for the door.
No orders. No permission.
Just movement.
The safehouse closes behind me like a vault. I don’t plan to come back tonight.
The docks are twenty minutes out, depending on the traffic. I don’t take the main road. I take the side cuts through Little Haiti, push past red lights, ignore the horns. The streets stink of fried meat and seawater. Neon signs blur past the windshield.
I think about Vincent.
He wasn’t top-tier. But he didn’t fold. He took orders clean. Moved shipments quietly. Kept his head down.
This wasn’t random. This was marked.
I take the last turn near the cargo stacks and kill the lights. The wind’s sharp out here. Cuts through the sweat on my back.
Two of our guys are waiting near the gates. One smokes. The other grips a crowbar like it makes a difference.
They don’t speak as I approach. Just nod once.
Vincent’s body is still there. Propped up against a stack of pallets, shirt torn, bullet wound clean through the chest. Blood pooled underneath, dried already. Eyes open.
Message sent.
I crouch beside him. Search the pockets. No note. No tag. Just his wallet and a burner—powered off.
“Anyone move him?” I ask.
One guy shakes his head. “We left him how we found him.”
That’s good. That means it’s fresh. It means whoever did this didn’t have time to clean it.
I scan the lot. Footprints. Tire marks. One patch of smeared oil where someone stood too long. I follow it back to the fence line. There’s a cut in the chain link. Not the Cubans’ usual entrance. This was personal. It was messy. It was fast.
I pull out my phone and text Marco one word: Confirmed.
Then I capture a photo of the scene and attach it.
I tuck the phone away and return to the body.
Vincent’s chain is missing. They took it.
Another message. It’s no longer just about killing him.
They’re taking pieces now. Souvenirs. It’s not a robbery; it’s a hunt, and I’m starting to think I recognize what bait looks like.
Even after everything I’d seen, Vincent’s corpse still burned into my vision. Every jagged edge of those pallets seemed etched with the weight of his last breath.
I couldn’t afford to stare any longer. The night still had answers to give, and I needed to find them before dawn.
That matters. That tells me they didn’t come here to kill quickly. They came to make a point.
I stand and look around, back toward the lane between container stacks.
Then I hear it.
Footsteps.
Voices. Close. I duck behind the nearest crate and edge around until I can see the distant loading ramp. Three men. Cuban by their Spanish. One’s pacing with a machete as if it’s a stress habit. The other two are talking softly, too quickly to catch every word.
“That him?” one of them asks, pointing toward the lot.
The tall one steps forward. “No. That’s Damiani.”
They react like they’ve seen a ghost. The machete guy goes stiff, fingers twitching.
I move fast.
Two steps forward. Blade already drawn. I slam into the nearest one and throw him against the crate wall. His shoulder hits hard—bone cracks—and I bury my knife in his ribs, twist once, and drop him.
The second guy reaches for a gun, but he’s slow. I grab his wrist, slam his hand against the steel railing, and force the pistol free. It clatters to the floor. I elbow him across the temple. He goes down on the boards, groaning.
The third—machete guy—turns and runs.
I don’t chase him.
“Tell Javier he should’ve sent more,” I shout.
His footsteps pound down the pier until they vanish.
I breathe once. Short. Controlled.
I crouch by the guy I stabbed. He’s still twitching, breath rasping shallowly, and blood leaking from his side in quick pulses.
“Who gave the order?” I ask.
No response.
I press the blade against his throat, not slicing—just waiting. “Who gave it?”
His lips move like he’s trying to speak, but his eyes are fogging already. He dies before the sentence forms.
I wipe the knife on my jeans and straighten.
The second one groans. I step on his chest, press the steel to his neck. “You talk, or you go the same way.”
His eyes go wide. He coughs. “We were just backup. Said you might come. That’s all.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Javier. He sent a squad. Two cars. One already pulled out.”
“Why Vincent?”
“Wrong place. Didn’t know it was him.”
Bullshit.
I press harder.
“He saw a drop. They thought he was following.”
“Was he?”
The guy hesitates.
I push my knee into his ribs.
“He said nothing. Just watched. Maybe called it in.”
“So they left him as bait.”
The man nods.
I don’t kill him. Not yet. I zip-tie his hands with a loop from my belt and drag him to the edge of the dock. Sit him up against a crate.
“If you lie later, I’ll come back for the other eye.”
He whimpers and nods.
I step back to Vincent’s body. Still there. Still ruined.
“You didn’t deserve that, old man.”
I walk to the edge of the pier and stare out.
Water rolls against the rusted beams. Lights blink from ships across the way.
I don’t see the city anymore. I see her.
Clara.
Chiara.
The girl I thought was dead. The girl who’s alive and moving like none of this touches her—but it does. She’s tangled in this mess so deep I don’t know where she ends and it begins.
“You’re in this,” I mutter. “You can’t lie your way out of that.”
She was near the drop.
The Cubans are moving in tighter.
The Ferranos are on edge.
And I’m stuck in the middle, holding pieces that don’t want to fit together.
I head back to the car, steps steady, breath calm.
The dead don’t need me. The living do.
No more distance. No more waiting around to see if she tells me the truth.
No more questions.
I’m getting answers now—whether she gives them or I take them.