Epilogue 1
Kaiden
Surprisingly, despite all that’s happened, my personal life is as perfect as it could possibly be… but there’s trouble brewing; I can feel it.
On the surface, everything is normal. But underneath, there’s a silent storm waiting to unleash itself on all of us.
Not just La Cosa Nostra, but our allies, too. The Radaevas and the Maguires from the Ukrainian Bratva and the Irish Mob.
There are too many coincidences. Too many unanswered questions.
We’ve been lucky so far. Because we’re careful and focused, we’ve managed to stay a step ahead.
But I’ve never had much faith in luck, and our advantage won’t hold forever.
I search my mind for something I feel like I’ve missed. The shooting and my subsequent brush with death has made me doubt my recollections.
The man in the attic at the pensioners’ house still haunts me.
The one who attacked Tina before those two Russians showed up to finish the job.
They’re all dead, more’s the pity, but we never identified them.
If they’d lived, at least we might have tortured the truth out of them, though something tells me the identity of whoever is behind the resurgence of the Red Scorpion would never have been known to them.
Whoever is pulling those strings remains in the shadows, refusing to show their face, and those who follow do it blindly, loyal to the memory of a lethal, blood-lusting institution that existed in the past.
At least Dominic was fortunate enough to be able to dispose of the attic body before the cops discovered the soundproofed room and left the rotting carcass of a crow in there to account for the smell, as if it had flown down the chimney and been stranded.
But despite all the photos, video, and fingerprints, I’ve come up with nothing.
No match in any database. No facial recognition.
Either they were ghosts, or someone scrubbed their records clean.
Someone with serious ability. Someone I need to be alert to.
Another person with skills no one knows about.
And that’s not the only thing keeping me up at night.
Belatedly, after being bedridden and out of commission, I reviewed the footage from the hidden surveillance equipment I installed throughout the compound’s main entrance. I almost didn’t bother, wanting to focus on my family and my recovery, but old habits die hard.
What I caught on that recording makes my blood run cold every time I think about it.
Two figures in the entryway, late at night.
No idea of their identity because I couldn’t see their faces.
The video was corrupted, pixelated in a way that screams professional jamming equipment.
But the audio came through, crackling and distorted enough that I’ve had to listen to it dozens of times as I try to piece together every sinister word.
But Russian. Definitely Russian. The dialect is unmistakable, though the static makes it hard to catch everything.
“skorо budet gotov” ...will be ready soon...”
A second voice, deeper, responds: “Pauk pletet svoyu pautinu. Skorpion naneсet udar, kogda oni men’she vsego etogo ozhidayut.”
“The spider weaves its web. The scorpion will strike when they least expect it.”
It chills me to the bone every time I replay that section. The spider. The scorpion. Two separate entities working in concert? Metaphors for a single operation or something more complex?
I rub my eyes, exhaustion pulling at me despite the hours I’ve supposedly been resting.
The conversation on the recording plays through my mind again, each word a puzzle piece I can’t quite fit into place.
Someone was inside the compound. Someone with access or a visitor?
Certainly, someone who speaks Russian and has the technical capability to jam video surveillance, and why would they be doing that?
Just as suspicious is there’s no information on guests visiting at that time and date. Why not?
I haven’t gone to Mika about any of this yet.
I haven’t worked out how to do it without giving myself away and compromising my covert surveillance.
And I have a strong feeling the less people who know about that, the better.
The element of surprise is my greatest asset.
Forewarned is forearmed and all that. I just need to work out how to warn the others without it coming back on me and the secrets I’ve kept.
In the meantime, I’ll keep looking. Keep searching. Keep pitting myself against whatever faceless entity dares to jeopardize the things I hold dear.
Because the one thing I’m certain of? Nobody gets to put my family in danger. No one gets to compromise my newfound happiness.
The vows I made a decade ago may once have been forbidden, but they have always been sacred. I defy anyone to try to take them away again. I will rain down a fury unlike anything they’ve ever seen before.
I’m done living a half-life in fear of retribution. Anyone who dares come at me and mine will feel the full weight of my wrath.
I’ve realized after all these years that there’s a benefit to being invisible… they won’t even see me coming.
For now, though? It’s time to concentrate on my family and rebuild everything we once lost.