I watch through the gap between containers as Alessandro moves with lethal grace across the warehouse floor.
This isn’t the careful, planned violence we’d orchestrated earlier.
This is pure improvisation, adapting to chaos with deadly efficiency.
And if he dies, it’s all my fault.
He takes down the first fleeing target with a shot so precise it drops the man mid-stride.
The second target turns to fire at him, and Alessandro uses the muzzle flash to pinpoint his position in the darkness.
What happens next is amazing—Alessandro closes the distance in seconds, deflecting the gun barrel upward as the man fires wildly into the warehouse ceiling.
His knee drives up into the target’s side, doubling him over, then Alessandro’s elbow comes down hard on the back of his neck with a wet crack that echoes through the space.
I wince.Ouch.
The man doesn’t go down immediately, so Alessandro grabs him by the hair and slams his face into the concrete support beam once, twice, until blood streams down the gray surface and the target’s legs give out.
When the body finally crumples to the warehouse floor, there’s a spreading pool of red beneath his shattered skull.
My stomach seizes. Oh god, am I about to be sick?
My heart is hammering so hard I’m sure everyone in the warehouse can hear it.
This is nothing like the controlled execution of Vincent Torrino.
This is chaos, and I’m drowning in it.
A shadow moves across the wall to my left—one of the remaining shooters trying to flank my position.
I force myself to breathe, to think, to remember my training.
When he rounds the corner, gun raised, I’m ready.
The shot takes him dead center, and he goes down hard, his weapon skittering across the concrete.
But the muzzle flash gives away my position to whoever else is still alive in here.
“There! Behind the crates!” a voice shouts from somewhere in the darkness.
Fuck.
Bullets immediately start chewing up the wood around my head, splinters raining down as I press myself flat against the floor.
My hands are shaking now—actually fucking shaking—as I try to reload.
“Alessandro,” I whisper into my comm, hating how breathless I sound. “I’m pinned. There’s at least one more, maybe two.”
“I see him,” Alessandro’s voice crackles back. “Northeast corner, elevated position. He’s got clear sightlines to both exits.”
Fuck.
We’re trapped, and it’s my fault.
My brilliant plan to prove Alessandro wrong has turned into exactly the kind of clusterfuck he warned me about.
Every second we’re stuck here increases the chance that neighbors called the cops, that sirens are already screaming toward this warehouse.
