I sit at the desk and spread the file on Alexandra Clark in front of me.
The photo is a few years old—driver’s license, probably. She’s younger in it, softer. Hair pulled back, slight smile, no shadows under her eyes. The woman I met in the interrogation room looked nothing like this. That woman was all sharp edges and defiance.
I flip through the pages. Birth certificate. School records. Employment history—bartending, retail, delivery services. Nothing remarkable. Nothing that screams mafia or crime or danger.
Father: Raymond Clark. Fifty-three. Chronic gambler. Three separate treatment programs, all failed. Current debts estimated at $180,000, spread across six different lenders. Two of them Castillo-affiliated. One of them ours.
Mother: Catherine Clark, née Morrison. Deceased. Ovarian cancer, eight years ago. Medical bills totaling $340,000, most of it unpaid.
No siblings. No extended family worth noting. A few scattered friends, none close enough to matter.
I stare at the photo and try to reconcile the smiling girl with the woman who called me a coward to my face.
Good dog. Pup.
My hands curl into fists on the desk.
No one talks to me like that. No one has in fifteen years. The last person who tried ended up with a broken jaw and a permanent limp. But Alexandra Clark looked me in the eye, strung up by her wrists, blood on her mouth, and spat insults like she had nothing left to lose.
Maybe she didn’t.
I close the file and lean back in my chair, rubbing my eyes. The clock on the wall reads 2:47 AM. I should sleep. Tomorrow will bring more violence, more strategy sessions, more of the grinding war that’s been consuming us for months.
Instead, I find myself standing. Walking. Moving through the silent corridors of the compound until I’m outside her door.
The guards snap to attention when they see me. I wave them off and stand there, listening.
No sound from inside. No crying, no pacing, no muffled sobs. silence, deep and complete.
She’s either asleep or pretending to be. Either way, she’s not breaking. Not yet.
I don’t knock. I tell myself it’s surveillance, assessment, tactical awareness.
I tell myself a lot of things.
Morning comes with gunfire.
Not in the compound—on the east side, three miles away. A Castillo strike team hit one of our warehouses at dawn, killed three soldiers, and torched a quarter-million in product before our response teams could mobilize. By the time I arrive at the scene, there’s nothing left but smoke and bodies.
I walk through the wreckage, assessing damage. The warehouse was supposed to be secure; reinforced doors, armed guards, motion sensors. None of it mattered. The Castillo’s knew exactly where to hit and when.
Claudio meets me at the perimeter, his face blank as a mask. “They had our patrol schedules.”
“I noticed.”
“This is the third leak in two weeks.” He falls into step beside me, hands in his pockets, posture deceptively relaxed. “Someone’s feeding them real-time intelligence.”
“I know.”
“Do you know who?”
I stop walking and turn to face him. Claudio’s pale green eyes meet mine without flinching. Of everyone in the organization, he’s the only one who looks at me like an equal rather than a superior. It’s either respect or a death wish. Sometimes I can’t tell which.
“Not yet,” I say. “But I will.”
He nods slowly. “And the girl?”
“What about her?”
