13
BIANCA
The warehouse complex looks like a fortress in the pre-dawn darkness, but I see it as a chess board.
Seven targets.
Three buildings.
Multiple escape routes and defensive positions.
What Alessandro sees as a tactical nightmare, I see as an opportunity to demonstrate what I’m capable of when I stop overthinking and start acting.
“Phase one is complete,” I whisper into my comm, watching from my position on the adjacent rooftop as the first explosion rocks the eastern building.
Not enough to bring it down, just enough to drive the targets exactly where I want them.
“Jesus Christ, Bianca.” Alessandro’s voice crackles through the earpiece, and I can hear genuine shock underneath his professional tone. “That was surgical.”
I smirk.
It was.
The shaped charges I placed earlier created precisely the right amount of chaos—disorienting the targets without actually harming them, forcing them to abandon their defensive positions and move toward what they think is safety.
What they don’t know is that I’ve been planning their movements for the past eighteen hours, anticipating every decision they might make.
“They’re heading for the central building, just like we predicted,” I report, tracking the shadowy figures through my scope. “Seven targets confirmed. Moving to phase two.”
Alessandro’s position gives him oversight of the western approach, but the real genius of this operation isn’t our positioning.
It’s the narrative I’ve constructed around it.
By the time law enforcement arrives, this won’t look like a DeLuca family execution.
It’ll look like a gang war that got out of hand, rivals settling scores with each other until everyone was dead.
The beauty is in the details.
Different weapons for different kills, evidence planted to suggest multiple factions, even the timing designed to coincide with known territorial disputes between other crews.
Every aspect carefully orchestrated to create a story that has nothing to do with family justice.
Damn, I’m good.
Giuseppe would have just kicked down the doors and started shooting. Effective, but crude. This? This isart.
“Movement on the north side,” Alessandro reports. “Two targets attempting to flank around the shipping containers.”
I smile in the darkness. “Let them. They’re walking into the kill zone.”
The next fifteen minutes start exactly as planned but quickly spiral into chaos.
The first part goes according to plan—Alessandro takes down two targets, and I eliminate another using the planted weapons to support the false narrative.
But when we reach the central building where the remaining four targets have barricaded themselves, everything goes sideways.
The gas canisters I planted earlier aren’t working properly. Instead of creating subtle disorientation, they’re producing visible clouds that make it obvious we’re using chemical agents.
