He turned to his men, and they gathered around him. I couldn’t hear everything they said, but I heard the gist of it.
“He won’t find her.”
“We’re moving her at dawn.”
“Yes, the pier.”
“Get the crates loaded.”
Then Enzo left without looking in my direction.
The warehouse settled into a tense, vibrating silence. The guards moved with a new sense of urgency, their shadows dancing against the walls as they shifted crates of weapons and contraband.
I closed my eyes, trying to regulate my breathing. I counted the seconds, the minutes. I focused on the cold, using it to sharpen my senses.
The lights flickered. It was subtle at first.
One of the guards looked up, squinting. “The generator is acting up again. This place is a dump.”
Then the lights flickered again, more violently this time. The hum died, replaced by a low, rhythmic throb that seemed to come from the very earth.
One of the guards, a younger man I hadn’t seen before, unholstered his weapon. “I’ll check the external lines.”
He stepped out through a side door into the swirling white of the blizzard. The door swung shut behind him.
One minute passed. Two.
The lights gave one final, dying strobe and went out completely. The warehouse was plunged into a thick, suffocating darkness, broken only by the dim red glow of the exit signs.
“Vinnie?” Marco called out. “Vinnie, get back in here!”
There was no answer. Only the whistle of the wind through the gaps in the tin.
“Go check,” one of them told another.
Another guard moved toward the door. He pushed it open, his flashlight cutting a bright, desperate beam through the snow.
“Vinnie? You out—”
Crack.
The guard jerked backward as if hit by a physical hammer, his flashlight spinning across the floor.
Then, the world exploded. The corrugated metal walls of the warehouse didn’t just rattle; they shredded. Bullets began to rain through the walls like a hailstorm of fire. The sound was deafening—a rhythmic, high-velocity thud-thud-thud as heavy caliber rounds tore through the structure.
Men were screaming. I saw one of the guards dive behind a stack of wooden pallets, only for the wood to disintegrate into splinters under a barrage of lead. He slumped over, his chest a ruin of red.
The air was thick with smoke and the smell of gunpowder. I ducked as low as I could in my chair, my heart hammering against my ribs.
I saw the silhouettes of the Italians moving frantically, their muzzle flashes lighting up the dark like strobe lights. But they were shooting at ghosts. The return fire was surgical, precise, and utterly relentless. One by one, they dropped.
Enzo was near me in an instant, shouting orders.
Before I knew what was going on, rough hands untied the ropes that held me down and grabbed me, forcing me to stand.They dragged me with them and, just as they yanked me behind a crate, I caught sight of a familiar shadow stepping through the smoke.
Alexei.
His suit was black as sin, his face carved from war, his gun steady.
