Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
SERENITY
THE WAR CONTINUES
By four thirty in the morning, we are in position.
The summer air sits heavy and damp against my skin, pressing through the layers of all-black tactical gear like a second body.
Even at this hour, sweat has already gathered between my shoulder blades, pooling at the base of my spine.
The Elizabeth shipping district stretches out around us in total silence, the kind of silence that has weight to it, the kind that means something is about to shatter it.
Rusted shipping containers line the property in long, crooked rows, their hulking silhouettes bleeding into the dark like steel coffins stacked and forgotten. The smell of salt water, rust, and engine oil hangs in the air.
Somewhere inside that warehouse, Ettore and his men are waiting.
Good. So am I.
Every muscle in my body is coiled, restless, and hungry. I have been waiting for this moment longer than I can put into words, and I need to be smart about it. I need to be patient. But patience isn’t easy when I know I’ll get to see my enemy’s smug face. Oh, how I plan to disfigure it.
I check my Glock one final time, running my thumb along the grip out of habit.
Another sits strapped to my thigh. Knives are secured exactly where I need them. Angel stands to my left. Nico stands to my right, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off him even through the gear.
He’s too close. And not close enough.
“Stay beside me,” Nico says for what feels like the hundredth time.
I roll my eyes. “You’re so possessive.”
“Yes.” His expression doesn’t change. “Move.”
The explosion at the front gate tears through the stillness like a fist through paper, rattling the ground beneath my boots and sending a shockwave rolling up through my legs. The sky above the gate blooms orange for half a second before the smoke swallows it.
Showtime.
Gunfire erupts almost before the echo dies. Men shout in Italian, voices sharp and overlapping, and bullets begin punching through metal, throwing sparks that arc and vanish in the dark. The wee hours of the morning come alive with sound and heat and the smell of burning.
Nico and I push through the loading dock entrance while Miff and Ritchie split off to clear the side. I move close behind Nico, eyes tracking every shadow, every pocket of dark between the crates.
A man rises from behind a stack of containers to my right, weapon up, eyes finding me fast.
Mine find him faster.
I lift my Glock, squeeze the trigger, and the bullet slams into his face. He collapses instantly, crumpling as if he were boneless.
No hesitation. And not a shred of guilt.
Another man comes charging hard from the left, boots hammering the concrete.
Angel puts him down before he gets within ten feet of me.
One clean shot and it is over. More of our men sweep through in pairs, moving like water around the obstacles, and Ettore’s soldiers go down one after another.
Their bodies meet the concrete with those dull, heavy thuds that you never quite get used to, no matter how many times you have heard them.
Blood spreads in dark, slow pools beneath our boots, and we don’t stop moving.
Smoke is beginning to curl through the air, acrid and sharp, clawing at the back of my throat.
Good. Let the bastards choke on it.
“Catwalk!” Catch’s voice cuts through the comms, tight with urgency.
Bullets hammered from above, striking the concrete around us with sharp sparks. My husband’s hand clamps onto the back of my vest, yanking me forcefully behind a barricade of steel crates. My shoulder crashes into the cold metal, the chill seeping through my gear.
“Stay down,” he orders.
“I hate when you say that,” I bite back.
A grenade skids across the floor.
“Move!” Nico tries to get to me, but it’s too late.
The explosion detonates behind us, punching a wall of heat into my back and lifting a ringing silence into both ears that swallows everything for three full seconds.
Nico crawls toward me. He grips my face. His brown eyes are wild with concern. “Are you all right?”
I can barely hear him. I nod, then stand through the smoke, coughing, eyes already scanning the upper railing. Movement. A silhouette shifting along the catwalk above.
I raise my Glock and fire.
The body pitches forward over the railing and drops, hitting the concrete below with a sound like a bag of wet cement.
“Boss,” Miff’s voice comes through the comms, steady and clipped. “Movement on the second floor.”
Nico and I look up at the same time.
My hard gaze lands on him.
He stands above the chaos on the mezzanine level like he has simply stepped out to observe something mildly interesting.
Silver threads his temples. His hands are folded behind his back with the patience of a man who has never once in his life been afraid of anything happening below him.
His suit is dark and expensive, and completely, obscenely clean.
Ettore.
The air leaves my body in one slow, silent pull.
And then I am fourteen years old.
My mother curls herself tightly on the floor. Hands tied in front. Her arms clutch her swollen belly, desperate to shield whatever she can still protect. Lurch’s boot crashes into her heavy pregnant stomach. Her sobbing, a sound more unbearable than the screams that fill the room.
Ettore’s brother grins cruelly in my face, laughing as I’m trapped, forced to witness the nightmare unfold.
I blink.
The warehouse floods back in. The smoke and the gunfire, and the bodies on the floor. I am here. I am grown. I am armed and I have been training for this moment for years. I roll my shoulders back and I feel the weight of both weapons on my body like an answer.
“Ettore,” I breathe.
He looks down. And when his eyes find me across the chaos, his mouth curves into a slow, unhurried smile. The kind of smile that says he finds this all very amusing. The kind of smile I have imagined erasing from his face for the better part of my life.
Then he turns and walks calmly deeper into the building.
“No.”
I move before the word is fully out of my mouth.
“Serenity!” Nico’s voice breaks through the noise behind me like thunder.
I know my husband wants to protect me, but I’m done waiting.
The metal stairs thunder beneath our boots as we push upward, the whole staircase shaking with the weight of us moving fast. One of Ettore’s men materializes from a side corridor, weapon swinging toward Nico.
Nico puts two rounds into him without breaking stride.
Another comes from the opposite direction, and I shoot him clean between the eyes and step over him without slowing.
We reach the office at the end of the corridor. Ritchie doesn’t bother with the handle. He drives his boot into the door, and it swings open hard against the inner wall.
Ettore stands near the far wall.
Calm. Completely, infuriatingly calm with a Glock at his side. No soldiers flanking him. No backup positioned in the corners. Just him, alone in the middle of a war zone, like a man who has never once in his life considered the possibility that he could lose.
The bastard genuinely believes he is untouchable.
“Well.” His voice rolls out smooth and unhurried, the voice of a man who has never needed to raise it. “The frightened little girl grew up.”
I raise my Glock and chuckle. “I wasn’t frightened when I killed your brother.”
His cocky grin slips, and anger covers his rugged features.
“I’m going to do much worse to you than I did to Lauro.”
He chuckles, low and unbothered, and reaches up to straighten his suit jacket at the lapels. Slow. Deliberate. Like we are having a conversation over lunch somewhere, like there is not a dead man’s blood drying on the floor two levels below us.
“Still emotional.” His eyes settle on mine with something like pity. “Still weak. The way you crumbled under Chris’s hands at the college party.”
How does he know about that? Aleksandr. Motherfucker.
My jaw clenches.
“Hands where I can see them,” Nico orders, standing at my side aiming his Glock at Ettore’s chest.
Ettore looks at him and laughs. Actually laughs, short and dismissive, the way you laugh at something that doesn’t quite register as a real threat. His hands remain at his sides. He’s still gripping his Glock.
I’m hoping my husband doesn’t lose his shit on Ettore for mentioning Chris. Nico doesn’t play well with other men when it comes to me.
“I did a number on him for touching my woman.” Nico smirks. “He’s also on borrowed time.”
My husband didn’t fall into the trap. This moment reminds me why I love him.
“Let’s get back to your men storming my home while my dad was away. Fucking pussy,” I spit.
His expression doesn’t shift. But his top lip twitches. I got to him.
“Your father had lucrative territory, Aleksandr, and I needed for our partnership. Tizáno’s family was just collateral damage.”
He speaks of us in the third person, like we aren’t flesh and blood.
His words boil the blood under my skin.
“We have your business partner,” Nico says.
Ettore’s eyes move between us slowly, reading the room, running the calculations. Something shifts behind his expression then. Not fear. Not yet. But awareness.
Nico’s mouth curves into a slow, thin smile. “Aleksandr failed.”
Not a question. A statement delivered the way you set something down on a table, with total confidence in its weight.
I say nothing. I let the silence sit between us, and I watch his face.
Ettore exhales through his nose, a short, sharp breath of pure contempt. “That incompetent bastard.”
Good. Let him wonder what failed means. Let him build the picture in his own head: Aleksandr talking, Aleksandr breaking, Aleksandr giving up everything in whatever dark room he ended up in. Let his imagination do the work.
Because right now Aleksandr is exactly where he belongs, locked in a room far from here, waiting for whatever comes next. But Ettore does not need to know the details.