Chapter 30
Victory tastes like hot iron and sour wine.
In the back seat, I wiped Rossi’s blood from my knuckles with a gray industrial rag.
The fabric was already soaked, saturated, couldn’t absorb anything more—just spread the red around and left my skin sticky.
I scrubbed the knuckle of my index finger, felt the sting of a shallow cut reopening under the friction.
The pain was small. Right. His blood dried fast, forming a dark varnish that clung to the fine hairs on my hand.
Rossi was still warm in the Cicero warehouse. I saw his face without wanting to—eyes open, staring at the rusted ceiling as if asking, too late, why betrayal hadn’t paid off. The memory of his last gasp hit me like a lungful of smoke. I’d done what needed to be done. Finished.
The evidence sat in my jacket’s inner pocket, pressing against my chest like something alive: flash drive with offshore transfers, printouts of encrypted messages, a photo of him smiling with Nikolai Kovacs in Sochi last year.
I’d checked, cross-referenced, validated. Everything tied up. Everything handled.
The taste of iron was victory. The sour wine was instinct telling me something was wrong.
I grabbed the secure phone. The cold screen reflected my face for a second, and I didn’t like what I saw. I dialed the penthouse number, the familiar quartet of rings that always brought her voice back to me—complaining, laughing, teasing.
Ring…
Ring…
Ring…
Voicemail.
The car hit a pothole and lurched. My stomach didn’t follow. It stayed suspended somewhere, on alert. I dialed again, faster, impatient—as if the speed of my hand could change the outcome.
Same thing.
I tried the office landline. The ritual was automatic—my thumb knew the numbers by heart. I called.
Ring… Ring…
Absolute silence on the other end. Not the silence of “don’t want to answer.” This was the silence of a dead line, of a fish floating belly-up, of a city gone dark.
An alarm I didn’t know existed went off inside my skull. Small at first, a buzz behind my eyes, then a full siren cutting through bone.
“Speed up,” I ordered the driver.
My voice came out too low to invite calm obedience, and I heard it as a warning.
“Sir, we’re ten minutes out, the traffic on Kennedy is…”
“Get on the sidewalk. Run the red. Hit whoever you need to. Get me to that door now.”
He didn’t argue. He floored it.
The V8 roared like an animal jolted awake.
The SUV jumped into the emergency lane, and horns exploded around us—sharp, hysterical, like warning shots.
I felt the seatbelt dig into my collarbone with each lane change, the leather seat creaking under my tense body.
Outside, the city seemed unreal, blurred by urgency.
I tried Franco. Voicemail. I tried the building lobby. Nothing. I tried security backup. Line cut.
Each attempt was a door slamming in my face.
The taste of victory turned to bile.
Rossi wasn’t the rat.
Rossi was the bait.
And I’d swallowed it whole.
The SUV skidded to a stop at the building entrance. Rubber screamed against wet asphalt. I jumped out before the vehicle fully stopped. The cold November air burned my lungs in one dry gasp. The wind off the lake cut through me, carrying the smell of dirty water and metal.
The doorman wasn’t at his post. The lobby was empty.
The minimalist decor—pale marble, recessed lights—had become a scene of abandonment.
A perfect 9mm hole punched through the tempered glass of the revolving door, spiderweb cracks radiating out, shards scattered on the floor like dirty diamonds.
I stepped on them and heard the dry crunch-crunch.
Didn’t like the sound. It sounded like something dying.
I ran for the elevators.
The biometric panel hung by its wires. Blue sparks jumped with an electrical hiss. Someone had used a plasma torch or a portable EMP. Didn’t matter. Nothing was going up from there.
Stairs.
Fifty floors.
The fire door creaked when I pushed it open. The service corridor smelled of cold concrete and cheap cleaning product. The fluorescent light flickered, and my footsteps were the only sound.
I started climbing.
One step. Two. Three at a time. The soles of my shoes struck hard on the cement edges. The heavy jacket whipped against my thighs. My shirt stuck to my body with cold sweat. My heart wasn’t beating—it was detonating. Each beat a grenade inside my chest, keeping time with my steps.
Ten floors. Twenty. Thirty.
The air started to give out—not from exhaustion, but from rage. My calves burned like I was running over hot coals. The taste of iron returned, stronger, rising in my throat. I swallowed hard and kept going.
Forty.
The thin air burned my throat. My tongue went rough, like I’d been chewing dust. The tie tightened around my neck—a rope I didn’t have time to loosen.
Forty-five.
I couldn’t feel my thighs anymore. All I felt was her name in my head, hammering with each step, a word pounding against bone.
Solaia. Solaia. Solaia.
I reached the fiftieth floor. The fire door hung wide open. The spring dangled useless, as if someone had ripped the will right out of the metal.
The hallway was deserted.
Silence so thick it hurt my ears, as if the air itself was holding its breath.
I pulled the Glock from my shoulder holster. Extended barrel with suppressor. Safety off. Finger resting along the trigger guard. The cold metal fit my hand like a natural extension.
I moved forward.
The penthouse door was open.
Electronic lock melted. Steel deadbolts twisted like tinfoil.
Solid wood splintered into long shards that looked like broken teeth.
I stepped through and smelled it before I saw it: cordite, fresh blood, the sweat of fear.
Burned gunpowder still hanging in the air like mist. My stomach turned to stone.
The living room was untouched. Her pink sofa mocked me with its neatly arranged cushions, the perfectly aligned rug, as if the apartment had feigned innocence while violence tore through somewhere else.
But the hallway…
I followed the trail without thinking. A Qing dynasty vase lay shattered on the floor, reduced to white and blue shards.
Size 45 boot prints on the polished concrete, mud mixed with blood and plaster fragments.
A spent casing rolled slowly when the air conditioning kicked on, making a tiny sound of metal against stone that seemed like a cruel little laugh.
I reached the bedroom.
The master bedroom door no longer existed. It had been ripped from its hinges and hurled against the opposite wall, a dead plank. I entered.
The world stopped.
Blood on the left wall. High arterial spray, almost six feet up, dripping slowly like fresh red paint.
The pool on the floor near the dresser was thick, dark, already starting to coagulate at the edges.
The king-size bed had been shoved to the right, gray sheets twisted, stained.
The shattered Murano lamp on the floor gleamed like broken ice.
The air had that temperature—the kind you feel in a place where someone screamed seconds ago. Hot, heavy, almost electric.
“Sol?” My voice came out cracked.
It tore at my throat. I didn’t recognize it.
No answer.
I knelt in the pool.
The blood was still warm. Sticky. I touched it. It coated my fingertips like a red glove. The metallic smell rose, flooded my nostrils, slid down my throat and made my body react as if I’d swallowed a hot coin. Femoral artery… height of the spray… volume. Someone died here. Or nearly.
But was it hers?
God, was it hers?
I swept the floor with my eyes, each detail cutting in like a blade. And I saw it—under the bed, almost hidden by the shadow of the frame, a silver gleam.
I reached out. My fingers trembled, and I hated that. I grabbed it.
The Sig Sauer P226 Legion.
My weapon. The one I’d given her.
The slide locked open. Empty magazine. The barrel still hot. I felt the residual heat against my palm as if the weapon itself had a pulse.
She fired.
She emptied the entire magazine.
She fought.
Solaia, my Solaia, who cried at bad movies and painted walls pink, had faced armed men and fired until the last bullet.
And I wasn’t here.
I pressed the weapon against my chest. Her blood—or theirs—stained my shirt, hot, sticky. The pain started in my stomach, rose like acid, exploded in my chest. It wasn’t a feeling. It was a physical event, an implosion that opened craters.
I failed.
I failed Vittorio.
I failed her.
I failed myself.
A sound tore from my throat. Not human. A roar that ripped pieces of my soul along with it.
I punched the floor. Once. Twice. Three times.
Four. My knuckles cracked and split open.
My blood mixed with theirs on the carpet.
I screamed until my voice shredded, until my lungs burned, until the world went white around the black edges.
BZZZZT. BZZZZT.
My personal phone vibrated in my pocket.
I pulled it out with my bloodied hand. Unknown number. Multimedia message. My thumb hovered over the screen. If it was a photo of her body, I’d die right there.
I touched it.
Video.
Play.
Shaky image, dark. Basement or van. Solaia tied to a metal chair. Hair stuck to her forehead with sweat and blood. Lip cut, swollen. White dress torn at the shoulder, strap fallen. Glazed eyes—sedated, but alive.
A gloved hand grabbed her hair, yanked her head back hard. She moaned, a sound that wasn’t just pain—it was suffocated fury.
“Say hi to your husband, princess,” the voice said, distorted, electronic, almost mocking.
Her eyes found the camera.
And even drugged, even hurt, even terrified—she spat blood at the lens.
“Cassian…” Her voice came out hoarse, ragged, like a blade without a handle. “Kill… them all.”
Black screen.
Text:
We have the merchandise. Await instructions. Police or Family = pieces.
I stared at the screen.
The video had ended, but the image of her spitting blood burned into my retina like acid. She was alive. And she’d given me an order.
Kill them all.
I stood up.
The pain vanished. The despair vanished. The world went crystalline, as if someone had drained everything human and left only function.
AbsoluteZero.
I walked to the bathroom of the destroyed suite.
My footsteps echoed sharply against the tiles.
I turned on the gold faucet. The water came ice-cold, brutal.
I shoved my hands underneath, and the shock of cold shot up through my bones.
Her blood—or theirs—swirled pink in the sink, sliding down the drain in thin ribbons.
I lifted my face slowly.
I looked in the mirror.
The man staring back at me had no soul.
I left.
I went to the office.
I opened the biometric safe. Iris + fingerprint + eight-digit code.
The door gave a heavy sigh when it yielded.
I grabbed four magazines for the Sig. Their cold metal felt like bars of ice.
I loaded them one by one. The sound of the bullets sliding in was dry, mechanical—the kind of music I understand.
I reloaded the gun she’d used, feeling each round settle into place like a tooth in a gear.
I grabbed the satellite phone.
I dialed the number I only use when the world needs to end.
“Varro?” came the hoarse voice on the other end.
“I want everything,” I said.
My voice wasn’t a voice. It was ice breaking. “Satellite, interception, city lockdown. I want Nikolai Kovacs and anything that breathes near him.”
“Rules of engagement?”
I looked at the silver Sig in my hand. I remembered the blood on the carpet. I remembered her red spit on the lens.
“There are no rules.”
I hung up.
I left the penthouse.
I left the broken door open. There was nothing left there to protect. My life was in a van, handcuffed, hurt, waiting.
And I was going to hell to get her.
And hell had better be ready.
Because I was coming.