Something is wrong.
His face is already set. Already moving. I read it in under a second and step back from Gia in the same motion, turning to put myself between her and the direction Enzo came from, instinct before thought.
“What’s up?”
“We have an issue. Dante will take the women home," Enzo says. "Now. We step out."
I take Gia's arm. She's already reading the room, her eyes moving fast across the space, the color in her face from thedancing gone, something that looks very much like fear sitting underneath the composure she's pulling up over it. I bring her attention back to me.
"Go with Dante." I hold her eyes until I'm certain she's here, fully, hearing me and not the noise of the room. "Stay with him. Don't separate from him. Don't stop, don't wait, go directly to the car." A beat. "Don't lose him."
She nods. Her hand is still in mine and I feel it tighten once before she lets go.
I watch her reach Dante, watch him steer her efficiently toward the exit with Alessia, and I feel something I don't have a name for—wanting to be the one walking her out, wanting to be between her and whatever is coming rather than going toward it.
Enzo's hand closes on my arm. “Come on, man.” He said and we move.
Outside the service exit the cold hits clean and immediate, Enzo is already talking. “The northern transport run. They were hit at the checkpoint exchange point, two vehicles down, men on the ground.”
Fucking hell!
The window was specific, twelve minutes between the last check-in and the next one, and whoever planned this knew the exact width of that window. He talks and I listen as we walk fasttoward the car and I am thinking about the list of people who know that route, that timing, that specific twelve-minute gap between check-ins. It is a short list. I know every name on it.
I keep walking.
The warehouse district is ten minutes out. We smell it before we see it, acrid, chemical, the specific bite of burning metal and rubber that means vehicles, not structure. We come around the corner into the lot and the scene is already in motion.
Two of the transport cars are on their sides. One burns at the rear, the fire low now but steady, throwing orange across the concrete in long guttering sheets. Our men have pushed the attackers back but the line is fractured. I count three of ours down in the first sweep, one more being held upright against the warehouse wall by the man beside him, his legs not cooperating. Spent casings across the ground. A body near the gate that isn't one of ours.
Enzo and I split without discussing it.
I come in from the left flank where the line is thinnest. The first man turns at the sound of my footsteps and I close the distance before he finishes turning, driving my forearm into his throat hard enough that the sound he makes is mostly air and he folds. I step over him and keep moving because the second man is already up and the third is reaching.
The second one is bigger, trained, balanced, the way he sets his feet before he swings tells me he's done this more than a fewtimes. He leads with a right that I slip, roll inside, and the elbow I put into his ribs finds the sweet spot, the one that takes the breath out completely regardless of how big you are. While he's gasping, I take his collar with both hands and introduce his face to the side of the burning car at speed. He goes down and stays there.
The third has a blade.
He knows how to use it—short grip, elbow in, not the wide theatrical swings of a man trying to look dangerous but the tight controlled movements of someone who's been trained to finish it fast. He feints left and comes right and the cut he opens on my left side is shallow but immediate, a clean burn below the ribs that I register and file without stopping. I grab the wrist on the backswing, twist it past the point where the joint is happy about it, and the blade hits concrete. I put him down with two knees and leave him there.
Across the lot, Enzo is working through the cluster near the gate with the focused efficiency of a man for whom this language is native. He moves between them in close quarters, no wasted motion, everything direct and terminal—an elbow, a takedown, a knee applied with the patience of someone who knows exactly how long these things take and is not rushing any of it. One man tries to run. Enzo lets him get in four steps and then is behind him instead, and the man goes face-first into the concrete with Enzo's knee in his back and one arm wrenched skyward at an angle arms aren't designed for.
He zip-ties that one. The radio man. The one who was calling the shots.
Around us, the lot settles.
The fire has dropped to a smolder. The remaining attackers have either run or are on the ground or are zip-tied against the wall in a row, the ones still conscious making the face men make when they've arrived at the end of a plan and the end is not what the plan described. Three of ours need a hospital. Tonight. Two of theirs are dead in the lot.
Heavy. The monetary loss alone is going to land like a crater—the cargo, the vehicles, two drivers in hospital, a route that's now burned and will need to be rebuilt from scratch. I walk through the damage the way I always do, methodically, without the luxury of reacting to it.
I'm pressing my hand to my side when Enzo appears beside me. He looks at it, then looks at my face. He has blood on his shirt, most of it not his, the particular spatter pattern of close-range work. He exhales once through his nose.
Then his arm comes around my shoulders, steadying, weight-bearing, the grip of a man who has been here before and knows what after looks like.
"I'll take you home, bud."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
GIA
