“Breach in five.”
My pulse remains steady despite adrenaline sharpening every sense. Diana is inside that building, has been for hours,held by men who understand exactly how valuable she is and exactly how to leverage that value against me. The image of her restrained and bleeding loops through my mind on repeat—fuel rather than distraction.
“Breaching.”
The loading bay door explodes inward under shaped charges, the sound massive and immediate.
Alpha team pours through the opening with weapons raised, flashbangs detonating in rapid succession. Shouted commands in Russian and English blend with the sharp crack of suppressed gunfire.
Bravo breaches three seconds later through the east entrance, the reinforced door giving way under hydraulic ram pressure. I follow the tactical team inside, weapon tracking movement that resolves into a Sartore guard raising his own pistol with timing that’s too slow.
I fire twice. Center mass. He drops.
The team flows through the corridor with practiced efficiency, clearing rooms systematically. Two more guards appear from offices converted into makeshift living quarters—both neutralized before they can effectively resist. The suppressed weapons create mechanical coughs rather than explosive reports, sounds that won’t carry beyond the building’s walls.
We move deeper into the warehouse interior, following the tactical lead who’s coordinating with Alpha through encrypted channels I monitor peripherally. Diana’s holding location was identified through thermal imaging as a room near the center of the structure, away from exterior walls and accessible entry points.
Intentionally difficult to reach. Designed to buy time if rescue was attempted.
A Sartore lieutenant steps into the corridor ahead, automatic weapon already raised. The tactical team’s point man takes him down with a three-round burst that drops him before he can fire. We step over the body and continue forward.
The building’s layout is an industrial maze—corridors branching into storage areas, offices, loading zones that all look identical in night vision green. But the team moves with certainty born from hours of mapping the structure through architectural records and thermal surveillance.
We’re close. The central room is two corridors ahead.
Gunfire erupts from our left—Alpha engaging resistance near the loading bay. The comms fill with clipped reports of contact, threats neutralized, advancing position. I tune it out and focus on the path ahead.
The corridor terminates at a reinforced door, metal construction with industrial hinges designed to secure valuable inventory. Not blast-proof, but substantial enough that breaching will require more than the hydraulic ram.
The tactical lead signals halt, pulling shaped charges from his pack. “Thirty seconds to breach.”
I position myself against the wall beside the frame, weapon ready, every muscle coiled with tension that demands release. Diana is on the other side of that door. Alive or dead, injured or intact, still defiant or broken by hours in captivity—I’ll know in thirty seconds.
The charges detonate with concussive force that rattles my teeth. The door buckles inward, hinges tearing free, the metal frame collapsing into the room beyond.
Smoke and dust obscure visibility. I push through before it clears, before tactical protocols would dictate safe entry, driven by need to confirm Diana’s status with my own eyes.
The room materializes through the haze—concrete floor, industrial shelving along the back wall, fluorescent lights flickering overhead from the explosion’s impact.
Diana.
She sits in the same metal folding chair from the photograph, but the zip-ties have been cut and lie discarded on the floor beside her. Blood still streaks her face from the forehead wound, bruising dark around her wrists.
Except she’s upright, shoulders back, eyes tracking our entry with awareness that suggests she’s been conscious and alert throughout.
Defiant even in captivity.
Relief crashes through me with enough force that my chest tightens almost painfully. I holster the weapon and cross to her in three strides, hands already reaching to assess injuries I can see and searching for ones I can’t.
“How badly are you hurt?” The question comes out rougher than intended.
“Cuts and bruises.” Her voice is hoarse but steady. “They didn’t—Felix, they were waiting for you. This whole thing was bait.”
I’m aware. Lorenzo’s strategy was transparent from the moment the image arrived—provoke emotional response, force me into reckless action that demonstrates compromised judgment, create evidence the council can use to question my fitness for leadership.
I’ve given him exactly what he wanted by mounting this extraction personally instead of coordinating remotely.
“I know.” I pull her up from the chair and into my arms, needing to feel her breathing against me, alive and safe despite the hours in Sartore custody. “Can you walk?”
