CHAPTER 14 THE RESCUE OPERATION
Dario checked his watch under the dim yellow light of the warehouse's side door. "Marco's late."
Marco shoved through the door two seconds later, breath clouding in the cold air.
"Fucking Moretti guards changed their rotation. Had to loop around the loading docks."
He tossed Dario a set of keys. "Got the van parked behind the scrap yard. Carmine's got the back exit covered if we need to torch the place."
Dario caught the keys without looking. "Tommy's in the north storage room. Moretti's boys worked him over, but he's alive."
Marco spat on the concrete. "How bad?"
"Bad enough we're bringing Evelyn." Dario pulled the slide on his pistol to check the round. "Vincent didn't authorize this. Once we pull Tommy out, it's gonna be obvious who took him."
Marco's jaw tightened. "Yeah, and whose bright fucking idea was it to stash a made man in Moretti territory?"
"Dominic's," Dario said, watching the shadows near the main corridor. "He wanted Tommy to sweat before questioning. Vincent doesn't know."
"Fantastic." Marco yanked his knife from its sheath. "So we're stealing from the boss's brother. Again."
Dario moved toward the interior door. "You got a better plan for keeping our crew alive?"
Marco muttered something that ended with "suicide," but followed.
The extraction took four minutes.
Tommy hung from a pipe by his wrists, blood dripping from his split lip onto the concrete below. Marco cut him down while Dario covered the door. Tommy's left eye was swollen shut, his right one blinking against the sudden light. "Boss—"
"Save it," Dario said. "Can you walk?"
Tommy swayed but nodded. Marco hauled him upright with a grunt. "Christ, kid. What'd you do, punch Dominic in the dick?"
"Told him his wife looked lonely," Tommy coughed.
Dario didn't smile. "Move."
They made it to the van without gunfire. Evelyn waited inside, gloved hands already reaching for Tommy. "Jesus." She ripped open his shirt, revealing the dark bruising along his ribs. "Two broken, maybe three. Who's driving?"
"Marco," Dario said, checking the rearview. "Carmine's cleaning up."
Evelyn pressed a wad of gauze to Tommy's side. "Cleaning up what?"
Dario met her eyes in the mirror. "The blood."
Marco gunned the engine. "Speaking of—Dominic's gonna notice his toy's missing."
Dario pulled out his phone. A new message lit the screen—Vincent's personal number, which never meant good news.
Family meeting. One hour. All captains.
Marco saw it and swore. "That's our window gone."
Dario locked the phone. "Drive faster."
Evelyn leaned between the seats, her voice low. "You know what happens if Vincent finds out you went behind his back."
Dario watched the city blur past. "I'm counting on it."
The van hit a pothole. Tommy groaned as Evelyn shoved him back onto the bench. "Stay still or I'll sedate you."
Marco glanced at Dario. "You got a plan for the meeting?"
Dario rested his arm on the window ledge. "Depends how many guns Vincent brings."
Behind them, a siren wailed.
Marco's grip tightened on the wheel. "Fuck. That's not for us."
Dario turned. A black sedan tore around the corner behind them, no lights, no markings.
Vincent's car.
Evelyn reached for the first aid kit. "Tell me you at least hid the van plates."
Dario watched the sedan gain ground. "Marco."
"Working on it." Marco jerked the wheel left, cutting through an alley barely wider than the van. Metal screeched as the mirror snapped off.
Tommy grabbed Dario's shoulder. "Boss—"
Dario didn't look away from the rear window. The sedan was still there.
Vincent never chased his own men.
Not unless he already knew.
The van's tires screeched as Marco took another sharp turn, throwing Dario against the door. Carmine braced himself against the dashboard, his gloved fingers digging into the upholstery. "You ever gonna tell me why the fuck we're running from an unmarked car like it's the goddamn apocalypse?"
Tommy, wedged between crates in the back, flicked a glance at Dario. "Because it's more than a car."
Dario didn't answer. His eyes stayed fixed on the side mirror, watching the sedan match their speed with unnatural precision. No plates. No lights. And no driver visible behind the tinted glass.
Marco swore as they clipped a dumpster, sending a spray of loose trash across the alley. "Whatever that is, it's not LEO. Cops don't drive like they're on fucking rails."
Carmine pulled a pistol from his waistband, checking the magazine with practiced efficiency. "So we're dealing with something that looks like a car but isn't. Great. Any other rules of this world I've misread?"
Dario finally spoke, voice low. "It's not following us. It's herding us."
The realization hit as the sedan swerved, cutting off the alley's next exit and forcing Marco to brake hard. The van lurched, throwing them forward. Tommy caught himself against the crates, one hand already drawing his weapon.
A second sedan slid into view ahead, identical, silent. Blocking them in.
Marco's grip tightened on the wheel. "Tell me you've got a play, Dario. Because right now, I'm counting exactly zero options that don't end with us ventilated."
Dario exhaled through his nose. He'd understood the danger the moment he saw those blacked-out windows. This wasn't a chase—it was a trap, and they'd walked right into it.
Tommy shifted, the crates creaking under his weight. "Evelyn's people?"
"Maybe." Dario's jaw worked. "Or something newly interested in our business."
Carmine snorted. "Fantastic. So we're either dealing with Crane's pet monsters or some fresh hell we haven't met yet." He racked the slide of his pistol. "Either way, I vote we stop talking and start shooting."
The first sedan's doors opened. No one got out.
Dario watched the empty space where drivers should have been, and the cold certainty settled in his gut. They weren't just outmaneuvered.
They were being hunted.
Marco glanced at him. "Orders?"
Dario reached for his own weapon. "Buy time."
Then the night erupted in gunfire.
The crates splintered as bullets tore through the van’s thin metal walls.
Tommy cursed, flattening himself against the floor as the air filled with the stink of gunpowder and burning upholstery.
Carmine leaned out the shattered passenger window, returning fire with sharp, controlled bursts.
His bullets punched into the sedan’s windshield—but no blood sprayed. No bodies dropped.
Dario didn’t waste ammo. He watched.
The sedan’s doors hung open, still empty. No silhouettes. No muzzle flashes revealing shooters. Just the methodical crack-crack-crack of gunfire from nothing.
Marco ducked as a round whined past his ear. “The hell are we shooting at?”
Carmine ejected a spent mag. “Does it matter?”
It did. Dario had seen staged ambushes, blind spots exploited, but this wasn’t that. The rules were wrong.
A bullet grazed Tommy’s arm, and he hissed, pressing a hand to the wound. His fingers came away wet. “Okay, new theory,” he gritted out. “They’re not in the cars.”
Dario’s gaze snapped to the sedan’s roof. Not a glint of movement. No outline of a prone shooter. But the angle was wrong—unless the bullets were curving.
Carmine fired again, and this time Dario saw it: the air warped just beyond the sedan’s hood. Like heat haze off asphalt, but the night was cold.
“Don’t aim at the cars,” Dario said.
Marco blinked. “Then what the fuck are we—”
Dario pointed. “There.”
A distortion flickered near the alley wall, a ripple in the dark. He fired.
The night screamed.
Not a human sound—something jagged and metallic, like steel rods twisting. The distortion shuddered, and for half a heartbeat, Dario saw it: a hunched silhouette, all wrong angles, fused to the brickwork like a shadow pulled loose. Then it was gone.
The gunfire stopped.
Carmine’s breath came fast. “What. Was. That.”
Tommy clutched his bleeding arm. “Not Evelyn’s.”
Dario kept his weapon trained on the empty alley. The second sedan hadn’t moved. No doors opening now. No attack. Just silence.
Marco wiped sweat from his upper lip. “They’re letting us go.”
No. Dario watched the darkness between the cars. The ripple was back, drifting like oil on water. Waiting.
Not a retreat. A reset.
“Drive,” Dario said.
Marco didn’t argue. The van’s engine roared, tires skidding on damp pavement as he wrenched them around. The sedan didn’t pursue.
Carmine stared out the shattered rear window. “They could’ve killed us.”
Dario checked his remaining rounds. “They weren’t trying to.”
That was the misread. Not a hunt. A test.
And now something knew exactly how they fought.
The van's tires screeched against the curb as Dario Vitale killed the engine. Marco Bruno barely waited for the vehicle to stop moving before shoving the door open, his boots hitting the pavement with a force that sent a cigarette butt skittering into the gutter.
"Tell me you're not actually considering this," Marco growled, slamming the door behind him.
Dario didn't answer. He flicked the van's interior lights off, plunging them into the dim orange glow of the streetlamp outside Carmine Russo's safehouse. The brick walls were pockmarked with old bullet holes, but the steel door was new—reinforced, Carmine's doing.
"Because if you are," Marco continued, stepping into Dario's space, "you better have a fucking explanation ready."
Dario checked the safety on his pistol before tucking it into his waistband. "We don't leave people behind."
"That's not a rescue, that's suicide." Marco jabbed a finger toward the alley behind them, where the thing that wasn't Evelyn had peeled itself from the brickwork. "You saw that. I saw that. That’s not some ghost story Carmine made up after too much whiskey."
The steel door creaked open. Tommy Caruso stood silhouetted in the doorway, his grip white-knuckled around the handle. "Vincent’s calling a meet. Now."
"Fuck," Marco muttered.
Dario exhaled through his nose. Of course Vincent had heard. The Morettis had eyes everywhere, especially when it came to deviations from the plan. "How long?"