Chapter 15 Enzo Breaks His Own Rules #5
Enzo’s voice dropped. “Because I’m going to route through him - without letting his office finish wiping.”
The knock on the door became a battering rhythm. Wood splintered. A voice barked in Italian beyond the door, clipped and impatient.
Valentina’s shoulders went rigid. “Enzo - ”
He pulled her closer, their bodies aligning despite the cold air, despite the threat. He touched her cheek with the back of his fingers - gentle enough to be a promise, firm enough to be a claim.
“Listen,” he said. “They’re watching your phone. They’re watching the corridor. If I follow protocol, we go quiet, we get separated, and you end up in a holding room while they decide what to do with your documents.”
Valentina’s eyes shone. “And if you don’t follow it?”
“Then we move faster than they can erase.” Enzo’s thumb traced her jaw once, a brief stroke that made her shiver. “But it means I might get caught before you do.”
Her breath hitched. “You think I’d let you be the one taken.”
Enzo held her gaze. “I’m counting on it.”
Valentina’s expression turned fierce. “You’re not allowed to sacrifice yourself and call it strategy.”
“I’m not sacrificing,” he said, and he pushed her toward the back corner of the maintenance room where the window’s bars cast dark stripes across the wall. “I’m choosing. There’s a difference.”
The door finally gave with a violent crack.
A man’s silhouette filled the gap - broad shoulders, black gloves on both hands, a face half-hidden by a hood. He shoved the door open with his hip and stepped into the room like it belonged to him.
Enzo moved first.
He didn’t draw a weapon. He didn’t need to. He stepped into the man’s line of sight and grabbed the front of his coat, yanking him forward into the space Enzo had already decided would be the battleground. The scent of cheap cologne and cold metal hit Enzo’s senses.
The man grunted, surprise flashing across him for half a second.
Valentina moved too - fast, controlled, a blur of anger in a coat. She grabbed a metal filing tray off a shelf and slammed it into the man’s wrist. The gloves protected his hand; they didn’t protect the impact. He hissed, stumbling back.
Enzo twisted his grip and slammed the man’s shoulder into the wall. The sound was ugly, the kind that made Valentina’s face go pale.
“Where is the contact list?” Enzo asked, voice low, sharp. “Which burner device did you wipe?”
The man’s eyes flicked past Enzo toward Valentina.
He wasn’t afraid of Enzo. He was making a decision.
Enzo saw it.
The man’s hand twitched toward his pocket.
Enzo released him and drove a fist into the space between his shoulder blade and collar - hard enough to knock breath loose, not hard enough to kill. The man folded, one knee hitting the floor with a wet thud.
Valentina crouched beside Enzo, still holding the filing tray like a weapon. Her gaze stayed on the man’s pocket.
“Don’t,” she snapped at the hooded attacker, and the word carried a threat like a blade.
The man looked at Valentina with something cold and calculating. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Valentina’s smile was thin. “Neither should you.”
Enzo’s mind tracked everything at once: the attacker’s weight shift, the angle of his wrist, the way his hood shadowed his mouth. He wasn’t alone - he could feel it in the space. In the air. In the way the hallway noise had gone too quiet.
“Two,” Vito had said. “Maybe three.”
Enzo leaned close to the hooded man. “You wiped a list.”
The attacker’s jaw tightened. “I don’t answer to street questions.”
Enzo’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Then answer to mine.”
He reached down - not to pull a gun, but to grab the attacker’s burner phone, the one that had been tucked into his inner pocket. Enzo snatched it out and tossed it to Valentina.
Her hands caught it on instinct. She didn’t even flinch at the weight. “What are you doing?”
“Keeping it,” Enzo said. “Before they wipe it.”
Valentina stared at the phone, then at Enzo. “It’s already - ”
“No,” he said, and he sounded more certain than he felt. “They wiped the intermediary office list. They don’t wipe the device they’re still using to coordinate.”
Valentina’s lips parted as if she wanted to argue. Then the stairwell behind them rattled again, footsteps closing.
Enzo grabbed Valentina’s wrist and pulled her toward the maintenance room’s narrow hallway exit - toward the back alley view through the barred window, toward the corridor the attacker hadn’t expected them to take.
“Enzo!” Valentina hissed, trying to keep the phone steady in her grip.
He didn’t slow. “Move.”
She moved, but her eyes kept darting to the hooded man on the floor, to Enzo’s knuckles now scraped raw from grabbing the coat.
“You’re bleeding,” she said.
“I’m fine,” he lied.
A second voice - male, closer now - called from outside the door. “Where’s the channel?”
Valentina’s whole body went rigid at the exact wording. “That’s - ”
Enzo cut her off without looking back. “Say nothing. Let me hear how they talk.”
Valentina swallowed, her throat visibly tight. She pressed the phone against her coat like it was a shield. The screen glow dimmed, then flickered, as if the