Chapter 9 STEPHANO
The next day…
I hold the AMA papers in my hand and try not to think about the last twenty-four hours.
I’m glad she told me about Igor. I’d already seen the name skitter across a message preview on her screen before I walked in yesterday and wondered if she’d hand it to me or make me pry.
She handed it. Still, hearing Igor Pavlov out loud hit like a freight train I thought I’d outrun.
The dead don’t stay dead in this city; they hang around in ledgers and code and in the quiet parts of the night.
What legacy does a ghost leave? If, as it was starting to appear, he and Donna Margarita spent decades making wars from the shadows, what did they win, besides the right to keep bleeding people they’d never meet?
It’s been three days since Ana was shot.
Three days since I discovered my brother was alive.
Three days since anyone has told me a real word about Nico.
Dre’s scraping, the hymns are still being scrutinized, and my dig into my father has stalled like a bad engine.
The ledger in my head won’t stop flashing GUSTAVE.CONTI → AURELIO.VALVERDE and I still don’t know if I saw the truth or a trap.
And then there is the wedding this weekend.
In Las Vegas. Marcello’s wedding. I may have to bring my wife.
The way my mouth curves at that tells me things I don’t want to name.
She’s growing on me. Not like love, more like an itch you can’t stop scratching, even when it bleeds.
She’s not like any of the other women I've ever met. I like the way she argues. She thinks fast. She hits clean. She's smart and resourceful. Yes, I want to fuck her; that’s the easy part. What I don’t know is whether she’ll stand at my side or eat my head like a praying mantis when she’s done.
What surprises me is how much I want to find out.
I push into her room.
She’s already sitting on the edge of the bed, wrist taped, hair up, wearing the soft T-shirt I bought, like we’ve been married for years, and she stole my side of the closet. Her eyes cut to the folder in my hand.
"Good news?" she asks.
"Depends. You ready to commit a minor crime?"
Her mouth curves. "Always."
"Then sign here, Zhena." I hold out the AMA form. "You’re leaving."
She takes the pen, deliberately slow, fingers brushing mine. "I knew you had a kink for paperwork."
"I have a kink for control," I say. "Paper helps."
She signs, dotting the i like she’s stabbing someone, and I like the way she writes Ana Conti more than I'd like to admit. The nurse knocks, does the whole speech about risks; I nod at the right moments, slide a business card across the tray with a number that makes administrators cooperative, and we’re done.
When the door closes, Ana tips her head. "You look like a man chewing glass."
"I like my food crunchy," I deadpan. "You have something for me?"
Her phone dings like an answer. She doesn’t check it yet; she watches my face, then unlocks and skims. "Maybe. I did get a lead. My contact in Chihuahua is tracking a tail number that refueled near Batopilas at 03:12. If it’s the same bird that moved Nico out of Venezuela, it didn’t go far. He’ll confirm soon."
"Soon as in—"
"As in later today."
I eye the IV port, the bruise beneath the tape. "You’re leaving the hospital against medical advice, and you want me to fly you to Mexico?"
"Can you?"
"Yes."
"Then do."
"No." I let it hang, just to watch the spark in her eyes. "Not until I know if we’re chasing smoke."
She slides off the bed with more grace than her chart would approve. Pain flickers and goes out. "Fine," she says. "I’ll fly myself."
"Sit," I command. "You’re not getting in a cockpit with two holes in you."
Her eyebrow lifts. "You offering to carry me, Conti?"
"If that’s what it takes."
We stare each other down until the corner of her mouth betrays her. "Can you be ready," she asks, all business again, "to take us to Mexico the second I get the ping?"
"Yes." I pull out my phone and send two texts. Dre will have the jet ready to leave at a moment’s notice, and one of my trusted lieutenants, Lucas Bocelli, will get a standby ground team in El Paso ready to enter Mexico. "We'll have two jets and a standby team."
"You think of everything," she says lightly, but the approval under it is real.
"Comes from losing too much."
Another ding. She checks; her brows tighten, then smooth. "Update: tail number popped up again south of Creel, nothing since then. No manifest, but the timing lines up with a convoy outside Guachochi. My guy says they bought a lot of medical equipment, and the prisoner is American."
"Nico."
She lifts a shoulder, and her head turns from side to side.
There is a warning in her eyes not to jump to conclusions, but we are both betting on the same horse.
Still, she cautions, "Or a decoy. My guess?
It's him. They flew him to Creel, had him patched up, and now they're housing him somewhere nearby.
" She watches me carefully. I know her well enough that she isn't the type to mince words, and I brace myself.
"Nico was shot in the gut. The air transport was risky, driving him across the desert? " She shakes her head.
"So they're keeping him somewhere around Creel.
Send me your pins," I try not to think about Nico having been shot in the gut.
I can't. I've seen injuries like that go sideways too many times.
And that was in hospitals with proper medical care.
There is no telling what the Mexicans were able to scavenge up.
A second later, I receive the coordinates from Ana, and I forward them to Dre and Lucas. Dre sends back a thumbs-up and a skull. Comedian. While I get a thumbs-up from Lucas.
My eyes scan the room, find a small jar of lotion, and add it to the bag. "Let's go."
She watches me, amused, and mumbles, almost to herself, "You’re enjoying this."
"Which part?"
"Bossing me around."
"I’m enjoying you doing what I say." I wink at her.
"And when I'm not?"
"Then I enjoy us arguing," I reply, and her laugh is warmer than the room deserves.
I help her into the jacket I brought: lightweight, soft, black. My fingers find her shoulder through the fabric, a careful pressure where scar tissue will live. She goes still for a breath, then turns, close enough that I can count the gold flecks in her jade green eyes.
"You going to bring your wife to Vegas?" she asks, eyes hooked to mine. "Or are you ashamed of me?"
"How do you know about Vegas, and I don’t get ashamed," I say. "I get strategic."
"And strategically?"
"Strategically, I may need you where I can see you." I let the truth slide in behind it. "And yes, you’re growing on me."
"Like ivy."
"Like a boil."
Her smile is small and lethal. "Careful. You might have to cut yourself."
"I plan to cut other people."
"You still haven’t answered me about Vegas," I say, not letting it slide. Not this time. "Nobody outside the family was looped in. No emails. No calls. Just texts."
Her brow lifts, innocent as a blade. "What?"
I watch her. Really watch her. The timing. The calm. The audacity. "You hacked my phone."
She scoffs softly. "Please. Like you didn’t bug mine."
"I bugged yours after you married into a war zone," I counter. "That’s due diligence."
"And this," she says sweetly, "was initiative."
I exhale through my nose. "You accessed a secure thread."
"You left the door unlocked."
"I did not."
"You absolutely did," she contradicts, ticking it off on her fingers. "Old kernel. Lazy redundancy. And you still reuse that encryption that was retired weeks ago."
I stare at her.
She tilts her head. "Are you mad?"
"No," the answer surprises me more than her. To save face, I add, "I’m recalibrating."
We leave the room, and my men survey the hall.
I walk her past the nurses’ station with a discharge wristband that shouldn’t exist and a pace that says don’t ask.
We take the elevator down to the garage, where three SUVs are waiting for us.
Ana stops and arches a brow in a way that makes her appear like royalty. "Overcompensate much?"
"We're playing a dangerous game." I caution. Usually, I travel with one, but with her, I'm not going to take any risks.
"Sometimes one car is easier to fly under the radar."
"Sometimes three cars are needed to get out."
She shakes her head and holds out her hand, "In that case, I need a gun."
She's right. I've watched her use one too.
With an exaggerated huff, I tell one of the guards to hand me a gun.
He doesn't hesitate; he opens the storage compartment in the front, and several handguns lie readily inside.
He gives me a questioning glance as his hand brushes the Desert Eagle Mark XIX, and I nod.
Let's see how capable Ana is. The Desert Eagle is one of the most accurate handguns, but also one of the most powerful, and not easily wielded by a woman.
He hands the gun to me; it feels cold and stubborn in my hand, the slide a blunt slab that looks like it could double as a doorstop.
I glance at her. I’m thinking she won’t be able to move the slide.
Not because she’s a woman, but because her hand is bandaged, because the bruise under the tape is fresh and hot, and because the thing in my hand is built to resist lazy fingers.
It demands strength and patience. It demands practice.
But I'm also curious. I watched her kill four men in the span of a minute, and I want to know how capable she is.
She watches me handle it like she’s cataloguing an animal, measuring the weight, the balance, the way my thumb finds the seam. When I hold it out, she doesn’t take it like a challenge or a favor. She takes it like a question she already knows the answer to.
Our fingers brush when she closes on the grip; the contact is thin and electric. For a second, the world contracts to the heat where skin meets skin. I almost forget the garage, the SUVs, the other men.
She shifts slightly, strips the magazine free with practiced ease, and fingers it like a jeweler appraising a stone, thumbs the base with a motion that’s all economy and no show.
She works the action next, not fumbling or theatrical but precise, the way someone who’s spent too many hours making sure things that can kill people behave exactly as they should.
There’s a quick, professional rhythm to her checks: efficient, silent, and clinical.
Watching her do it is like seeing a private talent revealed.
My blood does something I have trouble naming; my vision narrows to the slide of the gun and the way her hands rake it back, effortlessly.
She makes violence look neat. It hits me hard and stupid and unbearably immediate — turned-on in a way that surprises me—hard as rock, bone-deep, the not-so-subtle proof that power can be very, very attractive when wielded with confidence.
She snaps the magazine back in with the same no-nonsense ease and tucks the gun into the tote.
Her eyes meet mine for a beat, cool and knowing.
The little smile that follows is all warning and invitation, says: Bring it on.
Her eyes flick to mine, the same sharp, amused look she wore when she called me out for not knowing Voronin.
"You better not get soft on me, Conti," she says.
"I don’t do soft," I tell her. "Soft gets you killed."