Chapter 2
LORENZO
The compound is quiet when I gear up. Late enough that most of the family has gone to bed.
Nonna Rosa’s kitchen light is off. Dante’s study is dark.
Good. I don’t want to explain where I’m going.
I don’t explain things. People who explain themselves surrender pieces of themselves they can’t recover.
The armory is in the basement, past the wine cellar and the storage rooms that hold more weapons than vintage Bordeaux. I take what I need. Glock, suppressor, two extra magazines. Knife at my ankle. Zip ties in my back pocket.
Ghost is a hacker, not a fighter. This should be simple. Should be.
My fingers press against my pocket. The rosary is there, worn smooth. Mama pressed them into my hands the last time she was lucid, fingers cold and paper-thin, eyes already looking somewhere I couldn’t follow. Renzo. My gentle boy.
I don’t pray anymore. But I carry her beads.
Footsteps on the stairs. Gia. She moves like Mama used to, light and quick, always rushing somewhere.
“Renzo.” She stops in the doorway, arms crossed, still in her scrubs from the clinic.
Dark circles under her eyes. She puts in more hours than any of us.
Dante with his ledgers and his late-night calls.
Marco with his training, pushing himself until his knuckles bleed.
Nico with whatever masks he wears when he thinks no one’s watching.
“You’re going out.” Not a question.
“Yes.”
“It’s almost midnight.”
I holster the gun. Check the knife. “Yes.”
“Does Dante know?”
I don’t answer. She already does. If Dante knew, she wouldn’t be asking.
She sighs. Crosses the room. I brace myself the way I’d brace for a blow.
She hugs me. Her arms come around my waist and her head presses against my chest and I stand there. Still. Arms at my sides.
One. Two. Three.
She’s warm. She smells like antiseptic and the lavender soap Nonna Rosa stocks in all the bathrooms. Her arms tighten, squeezing like she can force connection through pressure alone.
I don’t pull away. That would hurt her. I don’t lean in either.
Four. Five. Six.
Nonna Rosa keeps albums somewhere, buried in closets, of a boy who smiled and reached for people and didn’t count the seconds until contact ended. That boy died a long time ago.
Seven.
She lets go. Steps back. Searches my face the same way she’s been doing for years.
“Be careful,” she says.
“Always am.”
“You’d tell me if something was wrong.”
The words sit between us. She wants them to be true. I let her believe they are.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
She doesn’t believe me. Mama’s eyes in Gia’s face, brown and too knowing. But she lets it go the way she always does.
“Nonna’s making breakfast tomorrow. She worries when you don’t eat.”
“I’ll be there.”
Maybe. If this takes longer than expected, I’ll find an excuse. I always do.
Giada leaves. Her footsteps fade up the stairs, and I’m alone with the guns and the silence.
The French Quarter at midnight. I move through it the way I move through everything. Precise. Measured. Invisible when I need to be.
Three exits on this block, two alleys, a rooftop access point through the bar on the corner. Jazz bleeds from open doorways. No one sees me unless I want them to.
Months of chasing Ghost’s digital footprints across New Orleans. The Russos. The Valentinos. Us. Every crime family’s security picked apart, and never enough left behind to track. Until now.
Our tech traced the signal three hours ago. Ghost bounced through seventeen proxies, masked every trace. Not carefully enough. The apartment is in the Marigny, third floor, corner unit.
I cut through Jackson Square. A street performer plays something mournful on a saxophone. I don’t slow down.
Dante called while I was leaving the compound. I answered with silence.
“You’re going alone.” A statement, not a question.
“Yes.”
“Take Marco. Or Nico.”
“No.”
“This hacker’s been inside our systems for months, Renzo. Inside the Russos’. The Valentinos’. That’s not some kid in a basement.”
“Then I’ll find out what it is.”
A pause. My brother knows when to push and when to let go.
“Call when it’s done.”
I ended the call without responding. Marco would want to help, and his help would slow me down. Nico would ask questions I don’t want to answer. Simpler. Cleaner.
The building is in worse shape than I expected. Four stories, brick crumbling, fire escape rusted enough that I wouldn’t trust it with my weight. Graffiti on the lower walls, tags I don’t recognize. People live here when they don’t want to be found. Ghost picked well.
I circle the block once. Front entrance, back exit, fire escape, roof access. A homeless man curled in the doorway of the building next door, newspaper pulled over his face. He doesn’t stir when I pass.
Two security cameras cover the entrance. Good equipment for a building this run-down. Someone installed them not long ago. Someone who wanted to monitor who was coming before they arrived.
Ghost is watching.
I pull out my phone. Text our tech. Kill the feeds. Building on Frenchmen. Two cameras, front entrance. Check for more inside. Now.
Thirty seconds. I wait in the shadows across the street, watching the windows. Third floor, the corner windows. Blue light flickers behind thin curtains. Multiple screens.
Ghost is home and working.
My phone buzzes. Done. Looped footage. You’re clear.
The lock on the front entrance is a joke. I’m inside in under a minute.
The hallway smells like mold and old cooking.
Fluorescent light flickers overhead, buzzing like a dying insect.
Water stains spread across the ceiling in patterns that look accidental but aren’t.
A child’s bicycle chained to the stair railing, pink with streamers on the handlebars.
Someone’s TV playing too loud behind a thin door, canned laughter from a sitcom.
People live here. Families. They’re not part of this.
Third floor. Corner unit.
The stairs make no sound under my feet. Check the corners. Listen for movement. The second-floor landing has a creaking step. I skip it without looking down.
Someone has been picking locks no one should know exist. Poking at firewalls across every family in New Orleans, slipping through the gaps, pulling threads. Our tech caught the edges of it. Faint. Deliberate. Precision built over years, not luck.
Dante wants to know what Ghost is after. I don’t give a fuck what Ghost is after. I end problems.
Third floor. The hallway is quieter up here, a single bulb casting everything in dim yellow. The sitcom fades to a murmur. Someone coughs further along the corridor. Then nothing.
Apartment 3C. Light bleeds under the door.
All those months of building a profile. Male, probably. The forum posts read masculine, the technical jargon thick with male arrogance. Untouchable. Mid-thirties based on the coding patterns. Arrogant enough to think he could poke around in our systems without consequence. Damn arrogant.
I press my ear to the wood. Inside, the clicking of a keyboard. Rapid, focused. The hum of multiple computers running hot. A chair creaking as someone shifts.
Ghost is in there. Working. No idea the hunt just ended.
Standard lock, no deadbolt. One kick. I’ve done this a hundred times.
She’d hate this. She’s not here.
The keyboard stops. A chair rolls back. Footsteps, moving closer.
Doesn’t matter. I’m faster.
One breath. The stillness that comes before violence. My body knows what to do. No thought. No feeling. Just the work.
One kick. The door crashes inward.