CHAPTER NINE
RAVEN
Present Day
It’s too fucking quiet.
That’s the first thing I notice the second we pull up outside the docks, and silence like this always means that shit is about to get bloody.
The second the SUVs cut their engines, we move.
Doors open carefully instead of being thrown wide, every man spilling out into the dark while the glacial harbor wind cuts through the port hard enough to sting my leather clad skin.
Cold salt hangs thick in the air, mixing with diesel fumes and the rotten stench rolling in from the tide dragged low beneath the docks.
Towering cranes loom over the shipping yard, their rusted frames disappearing into the frost swallowing the harbor whole.
I roll my gaze over them briefly to check for shadows.
You never know who might be lurking around, especially if what I think we’re about to walk in on is anything to go by.
The intel came through about a week ago after one of Lucian Mortello’s men intercepted movement along the eastern ports.
Fake manifests. Unregistered shipments. Containers moving through routes connected to businesses that technically don’t exist anymore.
The kind of trail that desperate men leave behind when they’re trying to disappear.
At first, we thought it was weapons. Maybe narcotics.
Standard underground bullshit that we’re all familiar with.
But then came the footage. Footage Vaelric’s men managed to infiltrate after tearing through the port’s surveillance systems and rerouting the feeds directly back to us.
There’s a big part of me that wishes I never saw what was on those recordings.
The things those low life fucking animals were doing inside those containers.
But I did see it. We all did. Which means that every single man standing here with us tonight walked in carrying a giant fucking axe to grind and enough rage to fuel an entire nation.
Women locked inside steel containers no bigger than bird cages.
Dragged out of shelters and halfway houses that were supposed to fucking protect them, before disappearing completely.
Bruises and blood. Zip-ties and sedatives all laid out beside camera equipment.
But it was the men speaking in coded language Ezekiel recognized instantly from his days undercover.
And all of that pointed to The Royal. Or what’s left of them nowadays.
The scrape of a boot against the snow-covered concrete echoes behind me, loud enough to wake the fucking dolphins.
My jaw tightens instantly. I glance over my shoulder just in time to catch one of Ezekiel’s new men adjusting the rifle strapped across his chest before he shifts closer to the containers beside us.
Careless imbecile. Like he isn’t standing in the middle of a goddamn trafficking operation, or whatever the hell this is, where one wrong sound could get innocent people killed.
You’d think that after five years working under Ezekiel’s command, shoulder to shoulder with his and the other families’ men, I’d be used to relying on others, but I’m not.
Patience has never failed me, men have. And tonight, I have no other choice but to place the outcome of this mission in their hands and hope they won’t be the reason it all goes to shit.
“Relax,” the idiot mutters behind me, completely unconcerned and it’s enough to grate against my every nerve. “It’s only a bust.”
My body stiffens for half a second, subtle enough that the dark hides my obvious disdain for the bastard, but irritation still crawls up the back of my neck despite him not being worthy of the reaction.
Only a bust. The words only piss me off.
Does he have no concept of what we’ve been doing for the last five years?
Does he think this is just routine? Another day at the office.
Usually, I’d agree. But these busts will never be clean work.
The bodies, the blood that we’ve spilled.
Hunting down the remnants of a society that fed and thrived on both.
That’s not something even the coldest man in our outfit could ever get used to.
We’ve torn through The Royal like a damn apocalypse.
Ripped them out of their fucked up sanctuaries and burned their attempt at building an uprising to ash that still hasn’t settled.
Routine dies the second innocent people are dragged into this mess.
Children. Women. Those who we’ve saved. Those we were too late to find.
Does none of that mean anything to this prick, or is he just too damn fucking stupid to understand the difference between a job and the kind of aftermath that doesn’t go away?
Aftermath that leaves an infinite stain deeper than anything our world has ever dealt in.
Something that doesn’t just end when the bodies stop dropping.
This? The Royal…will stain this earth forever.
There is blood drying in corners of this shithole that should never have been spilled in the first place, in rooms reeking of ritual and rot, of symbols carved into skin for nothing more than power and depraved fucking lunacy.
For every door we’ve kicked in, there was another we didn’t reach in time.
Empty eyes. Cold bodies. That’s what he calls ‘only a bust?’
I’ve never cared for human filth. I don’t lose sleep over the men I put into the ground. But the innocent ones, the ones who never got out, they stay with me in a way nothing else does. They stay with Ezekiel too, even if he doesn’t admit much about it these days.
I don’t give the idiot behind me a second thought as I make my way forward.
The port is already locked down, not by the authorities, but by us.
Three black SUVs block the access road, engines cut, headlights dead, positioned far enough off the main line that no one will notice them unless they try to come through.
Mortello has men posted on every corner, spaced with precision, radios clipped to their vests and weapons concealed beneath mafia black but ready to be drawn without hesitation.
Drago Vaelric’s men are feeding us movement through the comms while they monitor the dock’s systems remotely, tracking positions, calling movement, searching the shadows between the spaces we can’t cover ourselves from the ground.
Nothing will slip through without being seen or detected.
No gaps. We can’t afford gaps. I step out from the line of containers, keeping close to the steel where the floodlights don’t quite reach, using the thin strip of broken light to remain unseen.
The sour stench of ocean filth sticks in the back of my throat.
I fucking hate this shit. The tide has pulled back, exposing the underbelly of the docks, dark and slick with ice and buildup that hasn’t seen clean water in years.
The lights that line the dock burn through the night in harsh angles, bleaching the pylons and concrete, forcing most of the gaps between the containers into full view, but not all of it.
There are still dead zones, narrow cuts of darkness where the light doesn’t touch, just enough cover for me to move without being noticed.
“Perimeter?” I murmur into the comm, keeping my voice low as I move through the dead space across the dock, my leather jacket doing nothing to soften the bite of steel pressed cold against my back as I keep tight to the shadows hugging the containers.
“Locked down,” a low voice answers in my ear, calm and unshaken.
“Road’s sealed, east end’s a choke point with four men holding it.
The west side is covered from elevation.
We’ve got eyes on every approach.” There’s a long, uncomfortable pause that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention, before he adds, “It’s a ghost town.
” I don’t know whether that is a positive, or a negative.
I am going to go with the latter. I keep moving, not bothering to see if the four other men are following behind me or not.
Most of the work that happens here happens at night.
But tonight, everything feels…silenced, not shut down.
It’s like someone reached in and severed the sound completely.
There are no engines turning over. No late-night crews shouting across the docks.
No chains or anchors dragging across the wood.
No witnesses.
I slow my pace, letting my eyes sweep the open stretches once more, but the place is clear. Billy moves up beside me. Unlike the idiots Ezekiel dragged along tonight, Billy actually knows how to fucking do his job without sounding like a SWAT team smashing through drywall with every step.
“Anything?” he asks, shifting closer beside me while his eyes track the loading yard ahead.
“Not a damn thing,” I mutter, finally cutting a glance in Billy’s direction.
His jaw is locked tight as he gives a single nod, noticeably on edge.
The man’s built like concrete and usually just as hard to read.
I’ve watched him walk through gunfire without a single ounce of fear, taken on some of the bloodiest jobs we’ve somehow managed to survive over the years without losing composure once, and tonight, something about him feels off.
Subtle, but noticeable. Working beside someone long enough teaches you things.
The small tells. The minute changes most people miss because they’re too caught up in themselves to listen or pay attention.
Billy gets quieter when something isn’t right.
While he may be a bit of a jokester on the exterior, he sure as shit has instincts that you can always count on being dead fucking accurate.
If Billy feels tension creeping in, there’s a reason for it.
“It would make me feel a whole lot better if the place didn’t look like someone scrubbed it clean before we got here,” he whispers, exhaling slowly through his nose. “Doesn’t sit right.”