CHAPTER NINETEEN
The damp, rotting walls of the abandoned textile factory on the outskirts of Milan offered no warmth against the biting chill of the Italian night.
Rain poured through a rusted hole in the corrugated tin roof, pooling in dark, muddy puddles on the concrete floor.
It was a miserable, squalid hiding place, but for Ruggero Vanzetti and the four traitorous Kazan Capos, it was the only sanctuary left on earth.
Vanzetti sat on an overturned wooden crate, his hands shaking so violently that the cheap vodka in his flask spilled over his knuckles. He was a man unraveled, stripped of his bespoke suits and his European influence, reduced to a hunted rat.
Across the dark room, Kamran Shirazi paced like a starved wolf.
Bogdan, Farid, and Radu huddled near a rusted oil drum, their eyes hollow with paranoia and exhaustion.
They had pooled the last of their hidden cash to hire a handful of desperate, freelance street thugs to scout the Palazzo Moretti, praying for a vulnerability.
The metal door groaned open, and a drenched scout slipped inside, pulling his hood down.
"Well?" Kamran demanded, crossing the concrete in three long strides, grabbing the scout by his damp jacket. "Did you find a blind spot? Can we get to the boy?"
The scout shook his head frantically, holding his hands up in surrender.
"It is impossible. The Moretti estate is a fortress.
They have snipers on the roof with thermal optics.
The perimeter guards are moving in overlapping tactical rotations.
And the boy... Reza does not even walk near a window without two heavily armed enforcers standing in the room.
We cannot get within a mile of him without being shredded. "
Kamran shoved the scout backward with a guttural curse.
"I told you," Vanzetti whispered, his voice cracking with despair. "Alessandro Moretti does not leave loose ends. We are trapped. They are going to find us, and they are going to peel the skin from our bones."
"Shut your mouth, Ruggero!" Bogdan snapped, his nerves completely frayed. "If we cannot get to Reza, we have no leverage. We have absolutely nothing to bargain with."
"Then we find a softer target," Kamran said, his dark eyes narrowing with a sick, desperate calculation. He turned to the scout. "If the boy is locked in the fortress, what about the women? Do they ever leave the gates?"
The scout hesitated, wiping the rain from his face. "The older women stay inside. But... the Don’s sister, Francesca. She has a scheduled viewing at an art gallery in the Brera district tomorrow afternoon. The intel says she is bringing the new fiancée with her."
Farid looked up, a glimmer of terrified hope breaking through his exhaustion. "Sherezine is leaving the estate?"
"She will be guarded," Radu warned. "Moretti will send his men."
"They will be expecting a street attack, not an ambush inside a private gallery," Kamran reasoned, his mind racing.
"Vanzetti, you still have those six freelancers on the payroll.
We send them in. They do not need to win a war; they just need to grab Sherezine or Francesca and drag them into a vehicle.
If we have the Don's sister or his future wife, Moretti will be forced to negotiate our safe passage out of Europe. "
Vanzetti swallowed hard, looking at the floor. It was a suicide mission for the freelancers, but he had absolutely nothing left to lose. "Do it," he breathed. "Send them."
***
The Brera art gallery was a sanctuary of high-vaulted ceilings, polished oak floors, and pristine silence. The air smelled faintly of oil paint and expensive perfume. Soft, ambient lighting illuminated masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance, casting long, elegant shadows across the marble columns.
Francesca Ricci, dressed in a chic, tailored cream suit, stood before a canvas depicting the fall of Rome. She gestured toward the intricate brushwork, her eyes alight with genuine passion.
"You see the way the artist uses the crimson underneath the gold?" Francesca murmured, leaning slightly closer to the painting. "It creates a sense of impending violence beneath the glory. It is brilliant."
Zina stood beside her, wearing a sleek, charcoal-grey trench coat over a simple dress, the diamond on her left hand catching the gallery lights. "It is beautiful, Francesca. It almost makes you feel sorry for the empire."
Outside the glass doors of the gallery, four of Nico Barone’s elite enforcers stood watch, their eyes scanning the cobblestone street. Two more guards were stationed at the rear exit. It was a standard, heavily secured civilian outing.
But as Francesca continued to explain the historical context of the painting, Zina stopped listening.
The finely tuned instincts of the Kazan assassin suddenly flared, cold and sharp in the pit of her stomach. The ambient noise of the gallery had shifted. The quiet footsteps of the few other patrons admiring the art had vanished, replaced by the synchronized squeak of rubber soles on polished oak.
Zina did not turn her head. She merely shifted her gaze to the reflection in the protective glass covering a smaller painting to her right.
Three men were advancing down the corridor behind them. They were not dressed for an art gallery. They wore dark jackets that hung loosely over their frames—the universal tell of men concealing automatic weapons. Their eyes were locked directly on the backs of Zina and Francesca.
They did not know who they were dealing with. To the street thugs Vanzetti had hired, Zina was merely a civilian barista who had gotten lucky enough to marry a Don. They expected her to scream. They expected her to cower.
"Francesca," Zina said, her voice dropping into a flat, unrecognizable register of ice.
Francesca blinked, turning away from the painting. "Yes?"
"Drop to the floor. Now."
Francesca’s mouth parted in confusion, but the sheer, terrifying command in Zina’s voice overrode her hesitation. The mafia princess threw herself down onto the polished oak boards just as the first man drew a suppressed pistol from his jacket.
Zina did not dive for cover. She exploded into motion.
She pivoted on her heel, her charcoal coat flaring around her legs.
In a fraction of a second, she closed the agonizingly short distance between herself and the lead attacker before he could even raise his weapon to eye level.
Zina drove the palm of her hand upward with bone-shattering force, catching the man directly under the chin.
His jaw snapped shut with a sickening crunch, his eyes rolling back as his brain collided with the inside of his skull.
As his limp body began to fall, Zina stripped the pistol from his slack grip.
She didn't bother to check the safety; she simply used the steel frame of the gun as a blunt instrument, bringing it down viciously across the collarbone of the second attacker.
The bone snapped like a dry branch. The man screamed, dropping his weapon, but Zina was already moving past him.
The third man panicked. Realizing that the beautiful fiancée was actually a demon wrapped in silk, he drew a serrated combat knife from his belt and lunged wildly.
Zina sidestepped the chaotic thrust, grabbing his wrist and twisting it with a violent, agonizing torque.
But the man was fueled by adrenaline, and as she threw him toward the marble pedestal displaying a bronze bust, the edge of his blade caught the fabric of her coat, slicing through the wool and biting into the flesh over her lower ribs.
Zina hissed in pain, but the injury only ignited the lethal fire in her blood. She drove her knee upward into the man’s sternum, forcing the breath from his lungs, and followed it with a brutal, calculating strike to the side of his neck. He hit the floor like a stone and did not move again.
The glass doors at the front of the gallery shattered inward as the Moretti enforcers finally breached the room, their weapons drawn and sweeping the space.
They froze.
The grand gallery was dead silent. Three men lay unconscious and bleeding on the polished oak floor. Zina stood in the center of the carnage, her breathing perfectly even, holding a stolen pistol casually at her side. A thin line of blood was soaking into the dark fabric of her coat.
Francesca slowly pushed herself up from the floor, her eyes wide with awe as she stared at her future sister-in-law.
"Clear the rear exit," Zina commanded the stunned guards, her voice completely devoid of adrenaline. She dropped the pistol onto the floor and turned to Francesca, extending a steady hand. "Are you alright, Francesca?"
Francesca took Zina’s hand, pulling herself up. She looked at the bodies, then at the blood on Zina’s side, and let out a breathless, disbelieving laugh. "I am perfectly fine. Remind me never, ever to argue with you at dinner."
***
An hour later, the private medical suite beneath the Palazzo Moretti was a contained epicenter of pure, volcanic rage.
Alessandro Moretti was pacing the length of the room, his dress shoes clicking aggressively against the sterile tiles.
He had discarded his suit jacket and tie, and his hands were raking through his dark hair in frantic, furious motions.
He was vibrating with a deadly anger that made the two enforcers standing by the door look as if they wanted to merge with the drywall.
"Six men!" Sandro roared, his voice echoing off the walls. "Six armed mercenaries bypass my outer perimeter, track my sister and my fiancée to a public gallery, and get within ten feet of them! What the hell am I paying you for? If she hadn't been a trained operative, she would be dead!"