Chapter 26 Knox
Lena was post-heat, still recovering, her body worn from exhaustion.
I couldn’t blame her. It had been forty-eight hours of nonstop exertion and intensity, the kind that drained everything from you, physically and mentally, leaving nothing behind but the need to rest and reset.
Even now, I could see it in the way she moved, slower and softer, like her body was still catching up to everything it had just been through.
She needed time, and as much as we wanted to be there for her, offering comfort while she recovered, Command wasn’t interested in time.
They wanted Marco captured immediately. From what we’d been told, they had promised the final omega in his custody to the Russo family as a reward for their loyalty to Arca. And they wanted her now. It wasn’t a request. It was an order.
Which meant we didn’t just need Marco.
We needed her too.
The final Bellini omega.
We had AIED men positioned at his location, posted in shifts, watching the stash house from every angle and tracking any movement in or out. Reports had been steady, almost too steady. Marco hadn’t left in days. No supply runs. No movement. Nothing.
It was over and he knew it.
He was prolonging his end now, cornered in what little remained of his control. The empire he inherited had been stripped away, piece by piece, until there was nothing left to protect him. No allies. No men. No leverage.
Just a hideout, an omega, and the inevitable closing in around him.
Silas and I didn’t bother with stealth. There was no need to slip through shadows or play this quietly. Marco already knew we were coming.
We walked straight up to the front door.
Silas knocked once, before we both shifted to either side of the frame.
The response was immediate.
Gunfire exploded through the wooden door, bullets tearing in a violent spray. Splinters burst outward, shredding the frame where we’d just been standing.
Inside, a high-pitched scream cut through the chaos.
“Marco, stop! It’s over!” the omega cried, her voice breaking, choking with panic.
Around us, officers swarmed, surrounding the house. Our men closed in from every direction, boots crunching against gravel, weapons raised, sealing every possible exit.
Silas lifted his voice over the noise.
“Marco!”
“Polo,” I called back dryly, already moving, slipping along the side of the house toward the rear entrance.
Another round of gunfire tore through the front.
“Marco!” Silas shouted again, louder this time.
“Polo, where are you?” I echoed, rounding the corner and positioning myself at the back door.
That was the signal.
Silas hit the front at the same moment I drove my boot into the back.
Both doors gave at once, wood splintering inward now as we breached from either side. A canister shattered through a side window a second later, hissing as smoke flooded the interior, thick and fast, swallowing the space in seconds.
We moved swiftly.
Two of Marco’s men came out of the haze first, disoriented, guns raised too slow. Silas dropped one before he could open fire. I took the other, a clean shot between the eyes, that sent him collapsing backward.
Another figure lunged from the hallway. A shot rang out behind me, and he went down hard as one of ours cleared the flank.
“Clear the left!” Silas barked.
Boots thundered through the house as our team swept room to room, securing it.
And then—
We found him.
Marco stood in the center of the living room, half-shrouded in smoke, one arm locked around an omega, dragging her tight against his chest. His gun was pressed to her head, his grip bruising and possessive.
She was crying, shaking, and barely able to stay upright in his hold.
His eyes found us through the haze.
Wild. Cornered.
But underneath it—
Fear.
“Don’t come any closer,” he snapped, tightening his grip on her. “I swear to God, I’ll kill her.”
Silas didn’t even raise his weapon.
He stepped forward calmly, before calling him on his bluff. “No, you won’t,” he said flatly. "Because if you do, you're dead."
Marco’s grip faltered for half a second, just enough to give him away.
“You don’t have the spine for it,” I added, taking another step closer. “You never did.”
Marco’s jaw clenched, his gaze flicking between us, calculating and unraveling simultaneously.
Silas tilted his head slightly, studying him.
“Go ahead. Pull the trigger."
The room went still.
“But know if you hurt her,” Silas continued, his tone sharpening, “we won’t take you in. We won’t question you. We won’t give you a second of breath.”
“We’ll kill you where you stand,” I finished. “And then you won’t ever get the chance to see Lena again.”
His eyes flashed at the sound of her name. Something about our omega fed his obsession in a way nothing else could. I knew that in dangling her in front of him, by offering even the possibility of seeing her again, he would surrender.
The last omega let out a broken sob in his arms. Marco’s grip on her tightened, then loosened. His eyes flicked to the doorways, to the men surrounding him, to the guns trained on his chest. He was outnumbered and outplayed. Deep down, he knew it.
Slowly, almost reluctantly, his arm dropped away from her. She stumbled forward immediately, scrambling out of his hold, collapsing toward us. One of our men caught her, pulling her back and securing her safely behind the line. Marco stood there, empty-handed now.
He turned, placing his wrists together in front of him, waiting. It didn’t matter that he was cooperating. One of our men surged forward anyway, slamming into him hard enough to drive him to the ground. His arms were wrenched back, restrained with brutal efficiency.
As they hauled him outside, he twisted, looking back at Silas and me, really looking at us. It was the first time we had stood in front of each other since the day he killed our mother. And in his eyes, I saw it.
Regret.
Not the kind born from guilt. Marco Bellini didn't regret anything he'd done. Not what he did to Lena, to us, to our mother, or to anyone else caught in the wake of his greed and violence.
No, he regretted what he hadn't finished.
The realization that he should have killed us when he had the chance, must have struck him hard and fast as he craned his neck backward, studying us intensely.
When he twisted our mother’s neck like she was nothing, we slipped out of his house before he could do the same to us.
Two kids fleeing into the dark, loose ends in the aftermath of his killing spree.
But we stayed hidden and eventually, his hit on us expired.
He chose to let us go.
Not out of mercy. Out of arrogance.
And now he knew it.
He should have hunted us down. Should have torn Falcon City apart piece by piece. Looked under every rock, scoured every slum, dragged every shadow into the light until he found us.
But he didn't.
He underestimated what we would become.
Perhaps he always knew, somewhere deep down, that this was a possibility. That the twin boys he left breathing might come back as something far more dangerous. Violent men with a debt to settle. That his end might not come from a mafia enemy across the table, but from a loose end left untied.
If he hadn't considered it, he certainly did now.
Marco held my gaze for one last second as they forced him into one of the waiting vehicles.
And for the first time since we had known him, Marco didn't look untouchable.
He looked like a man who finally understood exactly how this would end.
At our hands.