I chuckle, opening my eyes again as he carries me out of my father’s ruined empire.Giovanni and Cesare are on the run.Somewhere out there, children are still trapped in the network my father built.
But we’re going to find them.
We’re going to stop this.
Together.
30
Shelby
Once we rescue my wife, we don’t go home to sleep.We return to the war room at the Syndicate’s headquarters.All hands on deck.Maeve, Serena, and Nikolai make a formidable tech team, scanning the dark web for leads.
Earlier, we ticked the old meatpacking plant in Widett Circle off the list of places Giovanni might have been holding Serena.Still, Ray’s team continued surveilling it.With every minute that passed, the property looked suspiciously active for an abandoned building.
“Motherfuckers!”Serena grunts, pointing at the monitors.
We look up at the live feed from the drone she designed.Its thermal imaging sweeps the main structures, translating heat into ghostly bursts of color.Beneath the concrete floors, clustered heat signatures bloom where there shouldn’t be any.They’re too organized, too concentrated to be a coincidence.Dozens of bodies.Maybe more.The shapes huddle together in tight corners, bleeding into one another on the screen, impossible to separate.Whatever Giovanni buried beneath that plant isn’t storage.
It’s a holding pen.
“Dave, we need to…” I whip my head to the right, where my older brother stands.
“On it,” he answers my unfinished request as he holds his cellphone to his ear.“Ray, mobilize all teams.We leave in ten.”
“Ten minutes?”Tommy double-checks to my left.
“No time to waste.We’ve got only an hour before dawn.
“All teams in position,” Ray’s voice crackles through my earpiece.
“Serena, security system offline?We’re dark?”I ask.
“Confirmed,” Serena’s voice follows, steady despite everything she’s been through in the past twenty-four hours.“Their cameras are showing a loop from four hours ago.Their motion sensors think everything is quiet.Their panic buttons will dial a disconnected number.”A pause.“They won’t know you’re there until you’re inside.Be safe, Shelby.”
Pride swells in my chest.My wife built the security systems of her father’s empire.Now she’s turning those same systems against the monsters.
“Copy that,” I murmur.“Going radio silent until breach.”
I move through the shadows toward the loading dock, Alpha team flanking me.Four men, hand-selected from our best operatives.Silent.Deadly.Efficient.The night air bites at my skin, but I barely feel it.Every sense is dialed to eleven—the crunch of gravel beneath tactical boots, the hum of the wind in the trees, the hammering of my own pulse.
The door opens without a sound.
Rusted containers, crumbling concrete, the smell of rotten blood, and abandonment.Perfect place to hide women and children before shipping them overseas like livestock.
Not tonight.
We press forward together, deeper inside, and more smells hit me.Sweat.Fear.Human waste.The stench of people held too long in too small a space.My stomach lurches, but I force it down.I’ve smelled worse in Aleppo.I’ve seen worse.
Don’t freeze.Don’t you dare fucking freeze.
A guard rounds the corner, hand moving toward his holster.I’m faster.Two steps, a quick slash of my knife across his throat, and he crumples without a sound.I lower him to the concrete and keep moving.
“Contact neutralized,” I whisper into comms.“Continuing to primary objective.”
“Copy,” Serena responds.“You’ve got two more heat signatures forty feet ahead, ground level.Then the basement access should be clear.”
We move like ghosts through the labyrinth of abandoned equipment.Two more guards fall before they can raise an alarm—one to Tommy’s team entering from the south, one to my own hands.
