Chapter 8
NICO
Blood roars in my ears. The encrypted ping from Vincenzo pulses on the war room screen, a harsh red strobe cutting through the shadows of the South Side safehouse. The gates of the compound. My family. The Bellantis are at my front door.
Priya stands three feet away. Her eyes lock onto the flashing screen. She doesn't scream. She doesn't panic. She just looks at me. The blanket hangs around her shoulders. My scent still clings to her skin.
I am being torn in two. The soldier bred since boyhood to protect the Costa name is screaming to get in the truck.
To shed blood on the limestone. To kill every threat that breathes near my brothers.
But the man. The possessive thing that woke up the second I crossed the street to her.
That man is chaining my boots to the floor.
I can’t leave her. I won’t leave her unprotected.
"Go." Her voice is steady. Warm cardamom and jasmine cutting through the scent of old blood and gun oil.
I step into her space. I crowd her against the edge of the metal desk. My hands grip her hips. Bruising. Claiming. She doesn't flinch. She tips her chin up. Defiant. Beautiful.
Mine.
"I’m locking this building down." My voice is flat steel. "Three manual deadbolts. The electronic lock. The reinforced steel plates. Nobody gets in."
"I understand."
"You don’t open the door. You don’t go near the windows.
You stay in the center of the room." I lean down.
My nose brushes her jaw. I inhale her deeply.
The anchor I need before diving into the blood.
"If anyone breaches the outer stairwell, the automated lockdown seals the inner door and the alarm trips.
No charges, nothing that touches this room. You stay low to the floor."
She nods. Her hands come up. Her fingers press into the weave of my vest. A grounding touch. "Come back."
"There’s no universe where I don’t come back to you." I crush my mouth to hers. A punishing, brief kiss. No softness. Just a brand.
I grab the AR-15 from the rack. I hit the door. The steel slams shut behind me. The locks engage with a series of loud, mechanical thuds. I am already moving. Down the stairs. Into the alley.
The black armored SUV roars to life. I tear out onto the street. Tires screaming against the wet asphalt. Chicago blurs outside the windshield. The early morning sky is a bruised gray. Neon lights streak across the glass. My grip on the steering wheel is rigid. The engine hums a violent frequency.
I need to be in two places. I need to be guarding my woman. I need to be killing for my brothers. The dichotomy claws at the inside of my skull.
I have been a weapon since the night Carlo died. Since the silence fell. I stood in the compound and understood that no one was coming to fix what had been broken. Waited for my father to walk back in. He never walked in. The chair stayed empty.
I grip the wheel harder. Leather groans under my palms. I will not lose my family. I will not lose my woman.
The North Side approaches. The scent of ozone and burning rubber filters through the vents. Smoke is rising above the tree line. Black plumes staining the morning sky.
I slam the SUV into park outside the wall. The wrought-iron gates are twisted. Scorched black. A Bellanti vehicle burns on the lawn, smashed through the stone barricade.
The breach is still live. Muzzle flashes strobe through the smoke. Two shooters are dug in behind the shattered barricade, raking the courtyard with fire.
I move. A round screams out of the smoke and tears across my shoulder. The fabric splits. The burn is instant. I don’t slow down.
I hit the first shooter at a dead run. We go down hard against the broken stone. Brick dust chokes the air. I drive my fist into his throat, then his temple, until he stops moving. The second one swings his barrel on me. I catch it, wrench it wide, and put three rounds through his chest.
Then it’s quiet. Just the fire crackling and the ringing in my ears.
I lower my rifle. The perimeter is secure. Cordite and copper coat the back of my throat. My knuckles are split. The graze on my shoulder weeps through the scorched fabric.
Matteo stands near the fountain, barking orders into a handheld radio. His suit jacket is gone. Blood stains his white shirt. Not his blood. Costa soldiers drag bodies toward the extraction vans. Cleaners, erasing the strike before the morning commute.
Santi melts out of the smoke like a ghost. “Clear.”
"Nico." Matteo turns. His eyes scan me. Assessing the blood on my clothes. The fatigue lining my face. "You handled the armory."
"The first team inside the armory is dead. Their immediate cache is neutralized. " I state the fact. No pride. Just math. "But they had other teams moving while I was in there."
"This was a distraction." Matteo wipes ash from his jaw. "They pushed us here while they moved assets through the South Side armory network. It was too coordinated. They knew our shift change."
The leak. The ghost in our system. The rat in the walls.
"Where is Vincenzo?" I ask.
"Sub-basement. Tracking the data."
I bypass the kitchen. I don't look at the reinforced glass.
I head straight for the steel door of the war room.
Down the concrete stairs. The temperature drops ten degrees.
The sub-basement is a sensory deprivation tank compared to the chaos outside.
Concrete walls. Soundproofed ceiling. The only noise is the hum of the servers.
Vincenzo sits in front of a wall of glowing monitors. The blue light casts harsh shadows across his face. He looks exhausted. Lines of green code reflect in his eyes.
"Talk to me," I say. My voice echoes off the concrete.
Vincenzo types a rapid sequence. A map of the city appears. Red nodes flashing. "The data packet routing the strike team bounced through three dummy servers, but the access pattern matches internal credentials."
I step closer. The servers hum. A steady, oppressive drone. I stare at the origin timestamp. The access logs.
The weight of a generation drops onto my shoulders. Old access. Elder-level permissions. Someone close enough to know our routes, our shifts, and our blind spots
"The pattern you found." I keep my voice dead flat. Stripped of any inflection. "It points to someone who has been inside for a long time."
Vincenzo stops moving. His hands freeze over the keyboard.
The silence is absolute. A vacuum sucking the air out of the room. We are two brothers standing on the edge of a cliff, staring down into an abyss that will consume our family. We do not name anyone. We do not look at each other. Looking at each other means acknowledging the knife in our backs.
Vincenzo slowly reaches up and closes the terminal window. The screen goes black. The ghost retreats into the machine. The subject is closed.
We cannot act on a ghost. Not today. Not with blood on the grass outside.
"The perimeter is holding," Vincenzo says. His voice is devoid of emotion. A reset. "We are locking the gate. Nobody in or out without Matteo's direct authorization."
I nod. I leave the basement. I walk back up the stairs.
The compound is a fortress. It is supposed to be impenetrable. It is supposed to be the safest place in Chicago. And I cannot stand to be inside it for another second. The walls are poisoned.
My blood is pulling me back. South. To the fortified second-floor safehouse near her clinic. To the scent of cardamom. To her.
I walk down the east wing hallway. My boots thud against the hardwood. I stop at Matteo's secondary office. The one with the heavy safe. I spin the dial. Seventy-two. Fourteen. Thirty-six. The tumblers click into place.
I pull open the steel door. The smell of oiled metal and old paper wafts out. Stacks of cash. Passports. Clean burner phones. I ignore all of it.
I reach into the back. I pull out a small, velvet-lined box. Dust coats the lid. Inside is a black keycard. Heavy plastic. Embedded with a military-grade microchip.
Every Costa brother has the right to grant one protected access card. Limited doors. Inner gates. Safehouse routes. Enough to bring one person inside the perimeter.
The card has sat in this safe for years. Unassigned. Waiting for a name.
I grip the plastic edge. The edges bite into my thumb. My hands are calloused. Stained with dirt and gunpowder. The contrast against the pristine plastic is sharp.
I am bringing her inside. Not just into the safehouse. Into my life. Into the blood. Into the war.
It is an irreversible gesture. Once I hand this to her, there is no stepping back.
She becomes a target. She becomes family.
I am giving her the keys to a kingdom of violence.
But it is the only way to keep her alive.
If she is on the outside, she is collateral damage.
If she is on the inside, she is royalty. Untouchable.
I shove the card into my tactical vest. I slam the safe shut.
The drive back to the South Side is a blur of acceleration and aggressive lane changes.
I push the SUV to its limit. The engine screams. The morning traffic is building.
Commuters drinking coffee in their sedans.
I weave through them with ruthless precision.
My siren is off, but my aggression forces them out of the lane.
The sun glares off the Chicago River. The water is a murky, metallic gray. The city is beautiful and rotting at the same time. Just like my legacy.
Every mile still between me and the South Side safehouse stretches a phantom wire attached to my ribs.
The wire pulls taut. A primal agony. My woman is unguarded.
She is locked in a steel box, but she is alone.
Discipline demands I focus on the road ahead.
The animal demands I turn the truck around to check my blind spots.
I compromise by driving at a speed that risks flipping the armored vehicle.