Just my closest men and Rowan.
Rowan’s seated at the long slab of smoked glass we call a conference table. The only light comes from the screens in front of him—six monitors humming in unison, bouncing light off the dozens of silver piercings that decorate his ears and brow. He doesn’t acknowledge me when I enter. His focus is already pinned to whatever data he’s about to drop.
Lars stands in the corner near the liquor cabinet, arms crossed. His silence is tight. Guarded. Tells me everything I need to know before a single word is spoken.
This isn’t just a lead.
It’s a problem.
I shut the door behind me with a soft click and move to the table. “Talk.”
Rowan doesn’t glance up. He taps a few keys and drags a file to the center screen. “We found her.”
A street cam image flickers into place. Grainy but clearenough. A woman walking out of a gun shop in Austin, Texas. Baseball cap, tactical boots, braid slung over one shoulder. And eyes I recognize instantly.
Zara’s eyes.
“She doesn’t go by Isadora anymore. We couldn’t find her because she changed her name.” The screen changes to a PDF of a passport. “Serafina Corrigan,” Rowan continues, fingers flying across the keyboard. “Goes by Sera. Ran quiet for years. Left Chicago when she turned eighteen from what I can tell on the passport. Since then, she’s been seen in connection with a property near the Texas-Mexico border. High security. Private compound. No paper trail. No business ties, an ownerless stretch of land.”
He swipes the image away and replaces it with satellite footage—thermal overlays, heat signatures. Men training with military precision. Perimeter alarms. Firing ranges.
Lars steps forward, jaw tight. “Recognize the formation?”
I nod once. “Marchetti.”
Rowan exhales and shifts in his seat, finally glancing up at me. “Used to be. The men she’s with are part of a unit that went dark five years ago. Internal designation:Veleno.”
I pause, the name dragging old weight with it.
Veleno.
Poison.
Twelve Marchetti men, hand-selected and embedded in the south under deep cover. Their job was infiltration—blend in with Southern families, dismantle them from the inside. It worked for a while. Until it didn’t.
“They went rogue,” Lars says quietly. “Cut contact. Killed their handler. We assumed they were either dead and buried or merged with another organization.”
“And now they’re sheltering a Kavanagh?” I ask, voice cold.
Rowan shakes his head. “She’s not hiding, Enzo. She’s leading them.”
I stare at the screen. Sera, stepping into frame beside a man with tactical gear. She says something, and he moves. Obeys.
“She’s trained,” Lars says. “Likely by them. Or someone before them. That’s the part we still haven’t figured out.”
“She’s not just some runaway,” I mutter.
“No. She’s a vigilante, there’s been growing whispers in the region. A woman, deadly with a taste for both cartel and Maravilla Syndicate blood,” Rowan replies. “She’s playing a game we haven’t figured out yet.”
The Maravilla Syndicate began over a century ago, when a family of Spanish land barons carved their fortune out of the Texas plains and the blood-soaked trade routes that bled into Mexico. What started as cattle and cotton shifted with the times—morphing into smuggling routes for the cartels, weapons pipelines for foreign buyers, and a laundering network so vast even the Feds can’t chart it. They don’t flash power; they breathe it, their legacy is strong, passing it from father to son with the quiet promise that no deal is too dangerous if it feeds the family. You don’t cross the Maravilla family and live long enough to explain why you tried.
I lean on the edge of the table. Zara asked me to help her find her sister. She told me stories of childhood—forts in the basement, whispered secrets, a bond ripped apart by geography and betrayal. And maybe all of that was true. But this woman staring back at me from the screen is no longer that person.
“She’s a Kavanagh in blood only,” I say. “Everything else looks like Marchetti muscle gone toxic.”
Lars lifts a brow. “Could be she’s in too deep. Could be she’s waiting for contact. Or it could be that she's a new enemy.”
I drag a hand across my jaw, exhaling hard. This changes everything. Zara wanted hope. A reunion. Closure. Instead, she might’ve handed me the key to another war.
