Chapter 17 STEPHANO
A few hours later, the sheets are still twisted at our ankles, the taste of her still lingers on my tongue, and we’re bickering like we’ve been married since the Cold War.
Ettoro’s feed from his helmet camera moves across the old TV with the green smear of night optics, his two men ghosting on either side.
They’re belly-low in scrub across from the old base.
Chain link ahead. Blocky shadows for buildings.
Oksana leans over my shoulder. Her hair is still damp from her earlier shower, and I like how it feels against my neck.
Her voice is as sharp as a scalpel. "Ettoro, move your head to the right. "
He obliges.
"More."
Ettoro mutters, "I’m not an owl."
I grin despite myself. "Humor her."
"Move," she says, impatiently, and he does, tilting until the camera finds the motor pool. Two guards stand at the corner, sharing a smoke and ruining their night vision.
"Zoom."
He pinches in. The pixelation breaks, then settles. "Happy now?" Ettoro asks.
"For the next two seconds," she shoots back.
"Shift change in three… two… One. There.
" Another two Cartel members emerge, trade a muttered line, pass a clipboard, then peel off. I know in her head, Oksana is keeping count like a dealer. "That’s four on the south lane, two on the roof. Where’s your right-hand building? "
"Right there," I tell her, tapping the screen. "Ettoro, swing right. The long block with the old skylights, does it look more heavily guarded than the others?"
"Yeah," he whispers. "They doubled the fence, new padlock on the side door, and an external camera that is actually powered. That’s a first."
"Crawl closer," Oksana demands.
He doesn’t move. "I can't clear that open ground without a distraction."
"Coward," she hisses with pure venom in her voice.
I laugh, I can’t help it, that woman is a sheer daredevil. "Down, Tempesta di Sangue."
"I told you I should have gone," she fires at me.
"And I told you you’re not going anywhere with stitches," I stand my ground.
"Funny how you didn't care about them when you were fucking me earlier," she hisses. Ettoro laughs.
"There are some risks that can be calculated," I press out, hating how she brought our sex life into the open for all to hear. Funny how I would have never cared before. This woman is full of firsts.
"Exactly," Oksana trumps, always needing to have the last word.
"When you two are done, what do you want me to do?" Ettoro is still snickering under his breath.
"Can you creep down that ditch?" I ask. The fence will give him some room there to get closer to the building.
He starts moving, the camera moves with him, and gravel whispers under his elbows and knees.
Floodlights sweep. He freezes; the light slides on.
We all hold our breaths. Up again, three feet, two, then it moves right over him.
He palms a tiny disk from his vest—a listening device the size of a coin—and holds it to the window seam of the target building.
The audio spikes—hisses, then shapes. Breathing and the steady beep of a machine we all recognize. A hospital monitor.
"Someone’s in there," I say. My heart is suddenly a fist.
Oksana is vibrating, electric. "Drone footage," she orders.
I thumb my phone; the second screen blooms with thermal from earlier. One heat source in the building, elevated but not moving much. The rest of the base is dotted with patrols and small knots. But that room: one bright, steady sun.
"That’s got to be him," she breathes. "Nico."
The name hits me in the sternum like a hammer I didn’t see coming. I haven’t seen my brother in years. Now there’s heat on a screen and breath in a box somewhere, and all I can think is we were here today kissing while he might be dying thirty yards from a steel door.
Ettoro shifts the mic higher. Footsteps approach, two sets, unhurried. Women.
"…patient’s pressure keeps dipping."
"Blood loss, I told you. Keep him sedated until El Arquitecto says otherwise."
"We need more saline."
"Not until midnight rotation. Make do."
Oksana’s eyes flare like a match. "That tracks. He was shot in the stomach. He must have had surgery. He said they would patch him up."
My mouth is dry. "If he’s that unstable, we can’t move him by car."
"We’ll risk his life if we try," she agrees, already calculating. "We need a helicopter."
She turns to me with a grin that belongs in a bad omen and gives me all kinds of foreboding images. "That’s how we get in. We parachute."
I stare at her. "Have you ever even—" I see the look in her eyes and cut myself off. "Never mind. You’re not jumping out of a fucking chopper."
"Fine, we rappel down."
"Not happening." Heat spikes behind my eyes. "Your stitches haven’t even been pulled."
Oksana points at the screen like it owes her money. "Rappel insertion from a bird is smarter than driving through three checkpoints with a hemorrhaging man in the back seat."
"That’s actually a good idea," Ettoro says, blessedly helpful at exactly the wrong time.
"Shut up," I snap. "And mark every guard who touches that door."
Oksana wheels on me. "Who do you think you are, telling me what I can and can’t do?"
"Your husband," I deadpan, because I'm not losing ground tonight.
"You’re not my husband," she fires back.
"According to you, I am." I don’t take my eyes off the feed. "Remember the hospital? They called me because you told them you were my wife."
She glares daggers. I smirk.
On the screen, the two nurses pass out of frame. Ettoro stays flat.
"Movement east," he whispers. "Truck, two men. Patrol."
"Hold," I order. My voice goes automatic, the way voices do when everything you love is standing too close to a cliff.
I think of Nico. Of his laugh when we were boys, mean and wild. Of what we said we’d be by thirty and what we became. I think of him on a slab in a room that smells like bleach while we’re arguing about ropes and parachutes. Fury climbs my spine and locks my jaw.
"We do this smart," I state, quieter than the anger feels. "We get a chopper on standby. The bird will fly him to the plane."
"On it," Ettoro murmurs.
"Oksana," I say, turning to her, "you’re not on the insertion."
Her mouth opens—sharp words lining up for the parade.
"You run overwatch," I push on. "From here. You’ve got the best eye and the worst wound. I need you to watch our backs."
We both know it's bullshit. "If Nico’s circling the drain, I need both hands free to carry him and not worry about you bleeding out beside me."
Her jaw works. "That's not fair."
"To me, losing you is not an option."
Silence sucks the air out of the room for a second at what I just admitted. On the TV, a guard yawns and scratches his neck. Life goes on in the ugliest ways.
Ettoro breaks it. "Cargo building to the north has a roof ladder. I can get a mic planted above the target room if I cross now."
"Negative," I say. "You move when the next floodlight cycles left. Thirty seconds on the sweep."
"Copy."
I push off the bed, pacing once to bleed the adrenaline. "I’m calling in a medic and blood. O-positive."
"O-negative," she corrects mechanically. "Universal donor."
"Both," I say. "And pressure bags. If he’s belly-shot, he’ll crash on movement."
Her eyes are still knives, but they’re pointed at the right enemy now. "We go at moonrise," she says. "Less light on the roof cams."
"We go when I say," I answer, and it comes out softer than it should, because the thought of that room and that one heat source is hollowing me out. "And we don’t go loud if we don’t have to."
The floodlights sweep. Ettoro moves, a gray smear cutting the distance between shadows, his breath steady in our speakers.
He flattens under the eaves. The mic goes up, adhesive kissed to corrugated tin.
Inside, we hear the rattle of a tray, the slow drip of fluid into a bag, a man grunting the way pain teaches you to. It’s him. It has to be.
My throat burns. For a second, all I can see is Nico’s face when he was nineteen, stupid and unkillable. I blink hard, and he’s back in a box with a tube in his arm and men with guns at the door.
"Ettoro," I say, and my voice doesn’t wobble, thank God, "pull back to the ditch. Mark every camera on the east face. We’re coming back hot."
"Copy," he breathes.
I turn to Oksana. She’s still furious, still blazing, still the best wrong decision I’ve ever made. The room smells like her skin and night plans and fear I will not show.
"You’re not jumping," I say. "You’re not rappelling. You’re calling the shots from here. That’s the only version where I let you live, and Nico lives too."
She steps into me, chest to chest, eyes bright and dangerous. "You don’t let me do anything," she whispers. "I choose."
I nod once. "Then choose not to die."
Her gaze flicks to the screen, to the little bright sun in the dark. The compass in her chest realigns with mine. "Get the helicopter," she says. "And don’t you dare be slow."
I’m already dialing. "I wasn’t slow today," I say, not looking up.
"No," she says, and her mouth curves with memory and accusation both. "You weren’t."
I don’t apologize for that. I won’t. I tell the voice on the other end what I need and when, and the room becomes a staging area instead of a bed.
The best sex of my life is already filed under later, if we’re lucky.
Right now, my brother is a single heat signature in a building with extra guards, and luck is a thing you buy with planning and the right kind of violence.
We’re done arguing. For the next six hours, we become what we are when we’re useful: practical, merciless, efficient. Not heroes, but killers with a vendetta.