CHAPTER 19 THE SAFEHOUSE RAID #3
And that meant they still had a chance.
She touched Maya’s elbow, felt the tremor in the other woman’s arm. "What do you want?"
Dario’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. "Same thing I always want, Evelyn. A clean solution."
Behind them, the distant voices grew louder. Rizzo’s men, closing in.
Time was up.
Maya’s grip on Evelyn tightened. "Fuck this." She lunged forward, a switchblade flashing in her hand.
Dario sidestepped without hurry, catching Maya’s wrist mid-strike. He twisted, just once. The knife clattered to the ground.
"Try that again," he said softly, "and I break it."
Evelyn stepped between them before Maya could retaliate. "Stop." She met Dario’s gaze. "You didn’t come here to fight us."
"No," he agreed. "I came to make you an offer."
The footsteps behind them were close now. Too close.
Maya spat at his feet. "We don’t deal with Moretti dogs."
Dario didn’t react. "Then deal with Rizzo," he said. "But know this—he doesn’t make offers. He makes examples."
A new sound cut through the tension—the unmistakable cock of a hammer.
Evelyn didn’t turn. She didn’t need to.
Rizzo’s voice, thick with amusement, rolled over them. "Found you."
Dario’s expression didn’t change. "Told you."
And just like that, the balance shifted.
Evelyn’s choices narrowed to two: the devil she knew, or the one holding the gun.
She reached for Maya’s hand.
The decision was already made.
Evelyn's knee hit the concrete, the impact vibrating up her thigh as the warehouse's fluorescent lights flickered overhead.
She'd been mid-sentence when the first explosion rocked the north wall, the blast wave knocking the phone from her hand.
It skittered across the floor, screen cracked, Ez Ward's voice still crackling through the speaker—"Evelyn? Crane, answer me—" before the second detonation cut the call dead.
Vincent Moretti's men were already moving, weapons drawn toward the gaping hole where the loading dock doors had been. The acrid smell of burning rubber and melted wiring filled the air—her security system's main junction box must have been the first target.
Dario Vitale didn't flinch. He stepped over the shattered remains of a surveillance monitor, dress shoes crunching glass as he crouched beside her.
"Your infrastructure," he said, thumb brushing a streak of soot from her cheekbone, "just suffered a critical failure."
His voice stayed level, but his grip on her elbow was iron.
"Four minutes ago, someone disabled the backup generators at your secondary site. That's three layers of redundancy gone before the first shot was fired."
She yanked her arm free. "Rizzo."
"Not his style." Dario stood, adjusting his cuffs while Carmine Russo tossed him a pistol from across the room. "This is surgical. Someone mapped your weak points."
A new sound cut through the chaos—the whine of a power drill biting into metal.
From the rafters, a section of ceiling grid collapsed, taking two of Vincent's men down under a rain of plaster and steel.
Owen Pryor swung down on a fire hose, combat boots slamming into Dominic Moretti's ribs with a wet crack.
The drill was still clutched in his left hand, its bit gleaming with fresh shavings.
"Surprise audit," Owen spat, dodging Carmine's wild punch. He jammed the drill against the warehouse's main support column. The high-pitched scream of metal on metal drowned Evelyn's shout—then stopped dead as Paul Rizzo's bullet took Owen in the shoulder.
Owen staggered but didn't drop the drill. Blood soaked his sleeve as he grinned at Evelyn. "You should've paid your electrician better." He thumbed the trigger.
The column split with a sound like a gunshot. Above them, the roof groaned.
Dario moved first, tackling Evelyn backward as a ten-foot steel I-beam crashed down where she'd stood. It sheared through a pallet of inventory—her inventory, the legitimate front that laundered half her operation's cash flow.
"Look at that," Owen coughed from where Rizzo had him pinned. "Critical infrastructure damage."
Evelyn scrambled to her knees, tasting copper. The warehouse's sprinkler system chose that moment to activate, the water hitting scorched wiring with a hiss. Through the steam, she saw Maya Torres appear in the ruined doorway, a crowbar in one hand and a gasoline can in the other.
Maya didn't wait. She heaved the canister straight into the heart of Evelyn's server rack, the crowbar following like a javelin. Sparks erupted in a shower of blue-white light.
"Payment came through," Maya called over the sizzling wreckage. She tossed Evelyn a USB drive. It landed in a puddle at her feet. "Your client list. Every ghost account, every shell corporation." A smile peeled across her face. "I kept a copy, obviously."
Dario's palm pressed between Evelyn's shoulder blades, propelling her toward the emergency exit. Behind them, the warehouse's surviving lights strobed like a distress signal.
"Next time," he murmured, shoving the door open with his shoulder, "get a better class of disgruntled employees."
Cold air hit her face. The USB drive weighed nothing in her pocket. Nothing at all.