CHAPTER 42
Edoardo
“Car is waiting whenever you’re ready for the airport. The jet’s fueled and cleared.”
I nod my thanks as my assistant sets down another round of coffee, refreshments, and small bites, replacing the last tray none of us had even looked at. Hunger died hours ago, and so did time.
The clock bleeds into three a.m.
“When do they move if it’s tonight?” I drag a slow sip of coffee down my throat as I glance at Tanin.
We’ve sat inside the command room for six straight hours, buried beneath surveillance feeds and tactical maps, our eyes burning from the glow of too many screens. Every camera angle, every thermal signature, every encrypted transmission has led to this.
Tanin doesn’t look at me when he answers. “Any minute now.”
His gaze remains locked on the monitors with the cold intensity of a man built for war. If concentration alone could ignite metal, the screens would already be ash. Tanin carries the razor-edged stillness of a Mossad operative: disciplined, lethal, impossible to read.
We watch everything from the command center while our people move like ghosts out there in Paris.
Nothing in this room is ordinary. Every surveillance system and every tracker have been rebuilt and upgraded under Tanin’s authority after the last attack: satellite-linked feeds, military-grade counter-surveillance, and real-time high-definition transmissions from places most governments can’t even monitor cleanly.
Every warehouse, artwork, vehicle, and route is stitched into one seamless network beneath his command.
Tanin presses two fingers to his tactical headset. “Body cams and night vision check. Team One.”
“Check.”
“Team Two.”
“Check.”
“Team Three.”
“Check.”
“Team Four.”
“Check.”
The central warehouse sits at the heart of this operation, the same location we rebuilt from the bones of the last incident.
Reinforced walls hide beneath polished concrete.
All access points were redesigned, escape routes calculated into the structure like pressure points waiting to be struck.
For months, Tanin’s team worked relentlessly behind the mask of ordinary business operations, turning the entire warehouse into a carefully engineered trap disguised as routine commerce.
We know they’ll strike again. The other two warehouses are covered too, but lighter. Tanin doesn’t expect they’d hit those first. Because predators always return to where they tasted blood.
Encrypted confirmations flash across the monitors one by one. Every team is ready and in position, awaiting command.
We’ve waited months for this. Months of surveillance, intercepted communications, and covert intel. Months of slow, patient hunting.
This afternoon Tanin finally got the intercept he was looking for. He told me, “Tonight.” Now all that remains is the kill.
“Stand by,” Garrett’s voice cuts through the communication channels, low and sharp as broken glass. Tanin’s second-in-command never wastes syllables. “Target movement expected any moment.”
Silence swallows the room again.
The soft hiss of air conditioning hums behind us. Boots scrape faintly across concrete through one of the audio feeds. A guard shifts his weight somewhere in the warehouse.
Thirty more minutes crawl past.
I stay quiet and let Tanin work. He sits motionless in his chair, shoulders relaxed, eyes unwavering - the calm of a sniper moments before the trigger breaks.
Then - a faint sound crackles through the long-range trackers.
Movement.
Garrett straightens instantly. “Positions. Night optics ready.”
“In position.”
“Ready.”
The confirmations come fast.
Ten minutes later, the motorcycles appear. Four of them emerge from different streets, circling the blocks like vultures sizing up a carcass. Engines growl low as their headlights cut through wet Paris pavement. They loop around the warehouse several times.
Tanin smiles faintly. “They’re trying to sweep for surveillance and cameras.”
They won’t find anything.
Every inch of the perimeter is shielded beneath military-grade countermeasures. Anti-tracking systems, signal masking, satellite relays. Their equipment might as well be children’s toys compared to ours.
We’ve been ten moves ahead since before they left home.
Then the vans arrive. Two black vans slide into view from opposite streets, slow and methodical, prowling toward the warehouse with deliberate patience.
One keeps circling.
Watching. Waiting.
The second one eases to a stop beside the right docking bay. Minutes pass. The doors finally open. Six men step out carrying tool cases and cutting equipment.
They move for the rear entrance. Calm, professional, and confident enough to think tonight belongs to them.
It takes them time to breach it, exactly as we designed. Tanin made sure the resistance felt real: easy enough to keep them committed but difficult enough to stop suspicion from creeping in.
Beside me, the corner of Tanin’s mouth curls upward. I’ve seen that expression before. It’s not our first rodeo.
It’s the look he gets when the trap finally snaps shut. Months of planning narrowing into ten violent minutes.
“Team One. Team Two.” Garrett’s voice slices through the comms.
On-screen, Team One glides toward the parked van like a shadow peeling off the darkness.
Team Two lies prone on the rooftop of the adjacent four-story building we quietly leased months ago.
The rooftop provides a perfect line of sight, a perfect sniper elevation.
If anyone runs, their tires explode. If anyone fights, knees shatter.
And if anyone gets desperate enough, well…
the vans become something else entirely.
“In position,” both teams confirm.
“Ready.” Garrett echoes back to Tanin.
“Team Three. Move.” Tanin delivers his command.
Steel spikes deploy across the escape routes in swift, practiced motions.
The motorcycles still idle at the perimeter, their engines snarling uselessly.
“All routes locked,” Garrett reports.
Tanin doesn’t hesitate. “Move. All teams.”
The warehouse erupts in light. Industrial floodlamps blaze alive in blinding white, freezing the intruders mid-step. The men near the back entrance recoil instinctively, caught smiling too late at what they thought was a successful breach.
Team Four is there and immediately tackles four of them to the ground.
Two run fast, straight to the door hoping their van carries them out like a dirt in the wind.
Team One, weapons loaded, is waiting. The two men stop dead in their tracks when they see the laser targets pointing straight at their hearts.
Across the block, the second van jolts into motion the instant the drivers realize the operation is blown.
Muted sniper fire cracks through the night. Two muffled shots and both side mirrors explode. A heartbeat later, bullets rip through the tires. The van lurches violently, grinding crooked against the pavement.
The bikers react instantly, engines screaming as they gun forward for escape.
They never make it. Sniper shots erupt again, clean and surgical bullets shredding tires before the motorcycles even reach the spike strips.
Rubber bursts and metal skids, then bodies slam across asphalt in violent crashes.
One rider tumbles hard enough to spark against the street while another cartwheels straight into a parked barrier.
They’re caught completely off guard, exactly as we planned. The entire operation is over in less than ten minutes, just like I calculated.
Tanin finally leans back and rises from his chair, calm as ever. “I’m flying out now,” he says. “Anything specific besides standard procedure?”
I stare at the frozen surveillance feeds, at the captured men pinned to concrete, the flashing tactical lights, and the wreckage of a revenge months in the making.
“No. Standard procedure. Clean it up. Extract any useful information but keep them alive for the police. Make sure the case destroys that company for good.”
I pause. “And give the teams something from me. Whatever celebration you guys do after closing a hunt.”
Tanin nods once. Then, he starts shutting down the command center, barking final orders into his headset as the monitors dim one by one.
Normally, I would’ve gone with him. Normally, I would’ve wanted to stand there in person, to look my enemies in the eye while they realized they lost, to feel the satisfaction of revenge settling into bone.
But tonight, there’s nothing. No triumph. No rage. No satisfaction.
Only a hollow emptiness sitting quietly through my chest.
***
I walk slowly through Soho, letting the evening drift around me without urgency. It’s been a quiet and slow day at the gallery, so I say goodbye to the team and decide to wander without destination but just movement, before grabbing a quick bite and heading back to the apartment.
The night I said goodbye to Caroline, I called Clive.
He didn’t ask questions. He just came, sat with me in my hotel suite, a bottle between us, the silence doing most of the talking.
The morning after, he had his people move my things out of my hotel and out of my parents’ house and into a place of his in Soho. I’ve stayed there since.
My agent’s been sending listings, apartments, townhouses, places that should feel like possibility. I’ve toured a few, nodded in the right places, asked the right questions. But none of them felt like anything. Or maybe I didn’t have a mind to feel, to pick.
“May I have the crispy chicken, please? And some toast with butter on the side. A glass of Sancerre as well.”
I take a seat at the bar of a cozy, crowded restaurant, the low hum of conversation wrapping around me. It’s not even six yet, but every table is taken. The menu looks promising, but choosing food has become a mechanical exercise. Taste has been a distant concept lately.
The server sets the plate down. “Enjoy. Let me know if you need anything.”
“Thank you.”
It looks good, golden, crispy, and carefully plated. I take a bite because that’s what people do. Then, a sip of wine to wash it down. I can’t tell if it’s delicious or not. Everything registers as texture, temperature, nothing more.
Work, at least, is back under control. We caught them and the case file is airtight. The company that targeted us won’t survive the fallout. But victory tastes just as flat as everything else.
I’ve stayed busy the way people tell you to after heartbreak: friends, travel, work, and endless commitments.
Nadine and Amina drag me to events, Clive refuses to let me disappear, Stefano and Xander tag-team in calling and checking in, Elena flies in whenever she senses the silence getting too loud.
Weekends blur into swims, long bike rides, brutal runs, training sessions, anything that keeps my body moving.
My muscles respond. They grow stronger, tighter, harder, more reliable. But my heart and mind don’t follow instructions. They reject any memo telling them to move on.
The moment I stop forcing my thoughts, they immediately drift back to her, to her smile, to her eyes, to the warmth of her hands in mine. To the memories that pull the air out from my lungs and to the moments that felt so ordinary then and feel unbearable now. Even breathing feels like effort.
I’m lifting my glass for another sip when I feel it - a gaze, sharp and unmistakable, like heat at the back of my neck.
I turn.
Anton Leka.
He smiles when our eyes meet and raises a hand. “Here, Edoardo.”
Anton is sitting at a table with three others.
A head of short blonde hair sits across from him, back turned but I know.
I would know her anywhere, from any angle, in any room.
She’s cut the silky hair I used to thread through my fingers, watching it slip like water through my hands.
Her posture stiffens for the briefest second, then settles again.
I hesitate. Then I stand and walk over. We said we wouldn’t be strangers.
Anton pulls me into a quick embrace. “Long time. How’ve you been?”
“I’m good. You?” My voice sounds steady enough.
He gestures. “Charlie, this is Edoardo.”
“Nice to meet you,” Charlie says, shaking my hand.
Then I see Michael beside Caroline.
For a split second, I brace myself. I’d failed him, in a way. He had trusted me with her and opened that door for me to get in, only for me to walk out of it months later. If anyone has the right to resent me, it’s him.
“Hi, Michael,” I say, offering a small, careful smile.
“Edoardo.” He stands and pulls me into a firm hug. “This is a surprise.”
The warmth catches me off guard. I glance at Caroline, and she gives the slightest nod, as if to say it’s okay.
I nod back. Polite. No hard feelings. That was the promise. Still, seeing her with Anton feels like breathing with a jagged knife stabbing through a cracked rib.
“Why don’t you join us?” Anton says.
I look at her then, really look.
Our eyes meet, and for one suspended second the room disappears. The noise fades, the clatter of dishes dissolves, and it’s just the two of us standing inches apart with a lifetime of unsaid things between us.
I forget to breathe. I forget where I am. I forget that we are no longer “we”.
All I want is to pull her into my arms, bury my face in her hair, breathe her in like oxygen. I miss her with a physical ache, like missing a limb you still reach for.
“Oh, thank you,” I manage, dragging myself back. “I’m just finishing up. I’ve got a conference call shortly.”
The lie comes easily, smooth and automatic. “But next time. Count me in.”
“Of course,” Anton says, standing to hug me again. “You’re hard to pin down, but I’ll make sure Nadine keeps you in the loop.”
“Perfect. I’d like that.”
I turn back to the table. “Nice meeting you, Charlie. Michael, good to see you. Have a great evening.”
Then, softer, “Bye, Caroline.”
I return to my seat, though I don’t remember the steps it takes to get there. I sit for a minute, staring at a plate I can’t see, then ask for the check.
Outside, the air hits my face like cold water. Everything inside me feels hollowed out. My mind, my chest, my limbs. I can’t feel anything but void, as if a storm just passed through and stripped the landscape bare. No noise, no debris, just the quiet devastation that follows.
I walk without direction, the city moving around me, and it feels like my body is carrying a weight my soul can’t quite keep up with. Like something essential was left behind at that table.
And why does it still hurt like hell despite the months that have passed?