"I'm going myself."
Marcos studied me for a long moment. "This is personal."
"He tried to murder my wife. Yes, it's fucking personal."
Hammond, Indiana was a wasteland of rust and abandonment. The kind of place where industrial dreams had died decades ago and left their corpses to rot in the Midwest cold.
The storage facility sat at the end of a gravel road, surrounded by chain-link fence and nothing else for miles. No lights. No movement. Just a low concrete building that looked like it hadn't been used in years.
Perfect cover.
We approached on foot, weapons drawn, moving through the predawn darkness with the practiced silence of men who'd done this a hundred times. Vince took point. I stayed center, my focus narrowed to the building ahead.
The fence had been cut recently—fresh metal glinting where bolt cutters had sheared through. Someone had been here. Someone was still here.
We cleared the exterior in minutes. Two entrances—front and back. No windows. Reinforced doors that wouldn't open without force.
I gestured. Vince and two men took the back. I took the front with three others.
On my signal, we breached.
The interior was exactly what I'd expected—open warehouse space, empty except for scattered debris and a single light source coming from a makeshift office in the back corner. Someone was home.
We moved through the space like water, surrounding the office before whoever was inside could react.
I kicked the door open.
Sal was sitting at a folding table, a pistol within reach, his face resigned. He'd known we were coming. Had probably heard us breach. But he hadn't run.
Because there was nowhere left to run.
"Dante." His voice was steady. Tired. "Took you long enough."
I stepped inside, my weapon trained on his chest. "Hands on the table."
He complied slowly, deliberately. The gun stayed where it was. "You here to talk or just execute me?"
"That depends on what you have to say."
Sal leaned back in his chair, and for a moment he looked every one of his fifty-three years. "Lorenzo paid me two million to feed information to the Castellanos. Wedding details. Security rotations. Everything they'd need to execute a clean hit on Julietta."
"Why?"
"Because she's a threat." Sal's expression was grim. "Not to you. To him. Lorenzo never intended that marriage to Miguel to happen. Never intended her to survive it. She was always meant to be collateral—a spark to start a war between the Suarez family and whoever he could frame for her death."
"I know that part. What I don't know is why you helped him."
"Two million reasons." Sal's smile was bitter. "And because I've served Lorenzo for fifteen years. You don't say no to a man like that and live to regret it."
"You could have come to me."
"And say what? That my boss ordered me to help murder his own daughter?" Sal shook his head. "You'd have killed me for knowing. At least this way, I got paid."
I felt the cold clarity that always came before violence. "Who else knows?"
"About the hit? Just me and Lorenzo. About Elena—" He stopped.
I went very still. "What about Elena?"
