I tap the screen, bringing up the customs inspector’s roster. I scan the names. One of them, a man named Henderson, clocked in ten minutes late three weeks in a row. He’s sloppy. But tonight, the roster shows a substitute.
“Wait,” I say, my voice filling the silent cabin. “Henderson isn’t at the gate. It’s Miller. Miller is by the book. He does a secondary sweep of the crates.”
“Damn it,” Varro mutters. “I see him. He’s walking the line with a dog.”
“Abort the transport,” I order. “Let the container sit. We pay the storage fee.”
“Copy that. Holding pattern. We’ll try again tomorrow.”
I kill the connection.
This is the reality of my life. I’m not a thug with a gun; I’m the head of the Drazic empire. We control the port unions, the offshore laundering accounts, and the real estate development board. I maintain my power with silence, diversified leverage, and fear.
To the world, I’m Cassian Drazic, the untouchable Don. I have soldiers to do my dirty work and legitimate businesses to wash the blood off my money, yet I’m sitting in a wet alleyway in the middle of the night, waiting for a vibrating phone.
It’s the price of a debt. And in my world, debt is the only thing that outranks money.
The secure phone in the center console buzzes.
It’s a single, short vibration. If I had the radio on, I would have missed it. But the radio is never on.
I pick it up. The device is a military-grade piece of hardware, untraceable and unhackable. The screen is black, save for a single line of white text that glows in the darkness.
BLUEBIRD: MIDNIGHT.
The signal.
I stare at the words, feeling a physical shift in my chest. I don’t reply. I don’t need to. The sender knows I’m already moving.
I delete the message.
“Varro,” I say into the comms, my voice dropping an octave. “I’m going dark. Coordinates are live. Team 6 is already staged two blocks out in the van. Have them hold at the perimeter. Do not breach unless I signal.”
The line goes dead silent. I haven’t spoken those words in five years. But Varro remembers. He knows, right now, I’m no longer the Don; I’m the weapon.
“I see the coordinates,” he says. “Assets are holding. Good hunting, Boss.”
I pull the earpiece out, toss it to the passenger seat, and reach under the seat to retrieve a slim, matte-black dossier tablet. I press my thumb against the scanner. It reads my biometric data and flares to life, decrypting the file linked to the “Bluebird” code.
TARGET:Elias Vane.
LOCATION:Waldorf Museum, VIP Study.
THREAT LEVEL:Imminent. Mass Casualty Event.
INTEL:Subject is a radicalized extremist carrying structural schematics for the Judiciary Gala. Intent to detonate during Senator Caldwell’s keynote address.
I swipe through the surveillance photos attached to the file.
Elias Vane. Mid-thirties. He has the look of a man who has spent too much time in basements reading manifestos. Disheveled hair, a weak chin, desperate, watery eyes. A shell of a person who has lost everything and decided that if he can’t have a life, no one else can either.
He doesn’t look like a killer, but the true fanatics rarely do. They look like Elias—sloppy, desperate, and terrifyingly unpredictable.
My jaw tightens as I read the threat assessment again.
Mass casualty.
That means indiscriminate. Women. Children. The service staff—the ones pouring champagne and setting the stage.
