"That's her." I knew it the same way I knew my own heartbeat. "She's escaping."
I was already moving, already sprinting toward the service entrance. Behind me, I could hear Marcos shouting orders into comms, could hear the teams mobilizing faster than any breach protocol would allow, could hear the controlled panic in voices that had never heard me move without thinking.
The service door was locked. I didn't bother with the lock. I put a bullet through the mechanism and kicked it open, and then I was inside, moving through hallways that reeked of oil and old concrete, my weapon raised and my senses screaming with one singular purpose: find her.
The basement stairs were ahead. Voices above—guards reacting to the commotion. Footsteps. Shouting. Lorenzo's men werescrambling, finally understanding that the siege they thought they'd initiated was actually a war they couldn't survive.
I took the stairs three at a time.
The basement was a nightmare of industrial concrete and metal—exposed pipes, old crates, the kind of space that had probably stored contraband for decades. A holding cell stood at the far end, reinforced door, single slot window.
There was a guard there. Young. Terrified. His hand was on the lock mechanism.
His hand. On her lock.
I fired twice before my brain could process the context—before I could register that he wasn't holding a weapon, that his posture wasn't aggressive, that the lock was already turning.
He went down. The cell door swung open.
And then she was there, standing over his body, her expression unreadable. Not grateful. Not shocked. Just... watching me realize what I'd done.
"He was letting me out," she said quietly.
My chest seized. The guard—the one who'd gotten my message, who'd understood the threat she posed, who'd chosen survival over loyalty to Lorenzo—was bleeding out on the concrete because I'd assumed the worst.
Because I couldn't trust that anyone else would save her.
Because I'd needed to be the one who did it.
Julietta stepped over his body, her wrists raw and torn where she'd fought her restraints. Her eyes were fierce. Her jaw was set with the kind of determination that would have terrified me if I hadn't been so completely, utterly wrecked at the sight of her alive and standing and moving toward me like something that had been forged in darkness and come out the other side transformed.
She saw me and something shifted in her expression. Not relief. Not fear. Recognition.
She knew what I was.
She knew what I'd done to get here.
Behind her, another guard was reaching for his weapon, was trying to process that his world had just collapsed, was searching for some action that might still save his life.
I crossed the distance between us in three strides and put a bullet through his skull without slowing down. His body hit the ground before I reached her.
Then I had her against my chest, my hands in her hair, my face buried in her neck, and I was breathing like I'd run across the entire city which maybe I had because my lungs were burning and my heart was trying to tear out of my ribs.
"You're safe," I whispered into her hair. "You're safe. You're safe."
She was shaking. Not from fear—I could tell the difference now. She was shaking from adrenaline, from rage, from the same thing that was tearing through my veins like poison.
"I know," she said into my shoulder. "I already had a way out."
Of course she had.
Of course my wife had managed to escape from a locked cell using whatever she could find, had positioned herself for maximum advantage, had been seconds away from taking down guards when I arrived.
Above us, gunfire erupted. My teams were engaging. Screams. The sound of tactical assault meeting criminal disorganization. It would be over in minutes.
"Come on," I said, and I lifted her—didn't ask, didn't hesitate, just gathered her into my arms like she weighed nothing, like she wasn't exactly where she needed to be.
She didn't fight me. She wrapped her arms around my neck and held on.
