Then he’s gone, and the door seals shut behind him, and I’m alone in the silence, listening to my heartbeat and praying to a God I don’t believe in that he comes back alive.
Chapter Five: Leone
Thecompoundscreams.
Not the building—the people inside it. Orders ricocheting off walls, boots pounding concrete, the metallic sound of magazines slamming into receivers. I move through the corridor at a dead sprint, Carmelo two steps behind me, both of us geared up and running hot.
“How many?” I bark into the comm.
Claudio’s voice comes back tight, controlled. “Three vehicles. East gate. Maybe fifteen, twenty shooters. They’ve already breached the outer fence.”
Twenty. That’s not a raiding party. That’s a war.
I round the corner into the main staging area. Six of our soldiers are already kitted up—vests, rifles, earpieces. Emilio stands at the front, cracking his neck, bouncing on the balls of his feet like a boxer waiting for the bell. His eyes are lit up.
The bastard loves this.
“Twins, you’re with me on the east corridor,” I say, grabbing a tactical vest from the rack and strapping it over my chest. “Carmelo, take Sandro and two others and cover the south entrance. They’ll try to flank.”
“They always try to flank,” Carmelo grunts, checking his shotgun.
“Which is why you’ll be there to welcome them.” I pull my Sig, chamber a round, then grab an MP5 from the wall and sling it across my back. Overkill, sure. But the Castillo’s aren’t sending amateurs tonight.
Emilio grins at me, all teeth. “About fucking time. I was starting to get bored.”
“Save it for the bodies.” I push past him and head for the east wing.
The compound is a fortress. Aurelio designed it that way. Three-foot concrete walls, reinforced doors, ballistic glass on every window. But a fortress is only as strong as the men defending it, and right now my men are spread thin across four floors and half a mile of perimeter.
Renzo’s betrayal cut deep. Our enemy knows our rotations, our weak points, our blind spots. Fourteen months of intel, bleeding out like an open wound. I should’ve caught it sooner. Should’ve seen the signs. Instead, it took a civilian with a stack of shipping manifests to do what my entire intelligence operation couldn’t.
My mind drifts to Alexandra, sealed in the panic room three floors below my feet, and fear twists behind my ribs.
Focus.
We reach the east corridor. Through the ballistic glass, I can see the courtyard, floodlights cutting white arcs across the rain, shadows moving fast between parked vehicles. The Castillo’s came in three black SUVs, doors flung open, men pouring out like roaches.
“Positions,” I say.
Claudio takes the far window, settling his rifle against the sill with the calm of a man sitting down to dinner. Emilio kicks open a side door and drops to a knee, handgun up, grinning into the dark.
I take center, pressing my shoulder against the wall and sighting through the scope of the MP5.
The first wave hits the east entrance.
They come fast. Six men in tactical gear, moving in pairs, covering each other with practiced efficiency. These aren’t Castillo street soldiers. These are mercenaries. Hired guns with real training and no loyalty to anything except the paycheck.
Castillo spent money on this.
Good. That means he’s desperate.
“Wait,” I murmur into the comm. “Let them stack.”
The mercs reach the door and fan out, two of them working on the lock while the others provide cover.
“Now.”
Claudio moves to a vantage point and fires first. The shot drops the lead merc like a puppet with cut strings. Before the body hits the ground, I’m firing—controlled bursts, three rounds each, walking the shots across the formation. Two more go down. A fourth staggers sideways, clutching his vest where the round didn’t penetrate but the impact would have cracked a rib.
