Alexandra is at the desk by seven, coffee in one hand, pen in the other, already deep in the Apex Meridian files. I watch her from the bed for a few minutes before she notices. She's muttering to herself, circling figures, drawing lines between entries. Her hair is piled on top of her head in a messy knot, and she's in a spaghetti strap that accentuates her curves, and the sight of her bare legs crossed beneath the desk makes it difficult to think about anything that involves leaving this room.
But the war doesn't pause for bare legs.
I dress, holster my weapon, and stop behind her chair on my way out. My hand finds the back of her neck, thumb pressing into the muscle where tension lives. She tips her head back and looks up at me, upside down, and smiles.
"Find anything new?" I ask.
"Hard to tell. The logistics subsidiary, the one moving weapons off the books, their shipping manifests overlap with three known Castillo resupply dates. Not approximately. Exactly. Same ports, same carriers, same twenty-four-hour windows." She taps the page. "It seems like a supply chain."
I lean down and kiss her forehead. "Write it up. I'll take it to Aurelio after the convoy briefing."
"Be careful."
"You keep saying that."
"You keep needing to hear it."
I leave with her voice in my head and her scent on my skin and the steady, grinding awareness that every hour she spends unraveling Apex Meridian is another hour closer to whoever is behind it realizing she needs to be silenced.
The convoy briefing is standard. Resupply run to the north warehouses. Weapons, ammunition, medical supplies. Three vehicles, eight soldiers, a route that's been cleared and scouted twice. Claudio is running point. I'm overseeing from the mobile command post three miles out, close enough to respond if things go sideways, far enough to maintain strategic oversight.
I don't like leaving the compound. Every time I step outside these walls, the distance between me and Alexandra becomes a variable I can't control. But Aurelio needs me operational, not hovering, and the terms of his approval were clear: the war takes priority.
So I go.
The first hour is clean. The convoy moves north on schedule, no contact, no complications. I sit in the back of an armored SUV with a laptop and a radio, tracking their progress on a map while Emilio drives and cracks jokes I don't laugh at.
"You're extra fun today," Emilio says, glancing in the rearview.
"Drive."
"I'm saying, for a guy who finally got laid, you're remarkably tense."
I look up from the laptop. He raises both hands off the wheel in surrender, then quickly puts them back.
"Driving," he says. "Driving and shutting up."
The convoy reaches the first checkpoint at 10:15. All clear. Claudio reports in, voice flat and professional. No contact. No surveillance. Clean run.
That's when my phone rings.
Not the operational line. My personal phone. The one only three people have the number for.
I answer.
"Leone." It's Aurelio. His voice is wrong. Not angry. Not panicked. Controlled in a way that means something terrible has happened and he's already past the reaction phase. "The compound has been hit."
The blood drains from my face.
"When?"
"Fifteen minutes ago. East gate breach. Professional team. In and out in under four minutes."
"Alexandra."
The silence on the other end lasts two seconds. It feels like twenty years.
"She's gone, Leone."
