The flight from Sao Paulo to a private airstrip sixty kilometers from the Orlov estate takes ten hours. I spend them the way I spend all transit time. Still. Silent. Running scenarios in my head, creating contingencies for a situation I don't yet understand. The pilot doesn't speak to me. He knows me well enough to know I don’t do small talk.
A car is waiting on the tarmac. Black. Armored. The driver is young, maybe twenty-five, with the kind of rigid posture that says ex-military or current muscle. He opens the back door without meeting my eyes.
The drive takes forty minutes through countryside that reminds me of places I don't think about anymore. Flat fields giving way to industrial complexes and factories. Then large warehouse businesses. We don’t turn into the city. We skirt around it until we meet the edge of a forest, the light thin and colorless through the cloud cover, like a photograph someone forgot to finish developing.
I watch the road. I count the turns. I note the security measures as we approach the estate. Cameras at the outer perimeter, spaced at thirty-meter intervals. A gate with biometric access that opens as the car approaches. Armed men at the entrance who nod at the driver without checking the car, which tells me they are expecting me.
The estate itself is large without being ostentatious. Stone and glass. Old money made comfortable. There are signs of domestic life everywhere. A small child's bicycle on the front path. Flower beds. A pair of small rain boots by the door. This isn’t a compound. It’s a home.
The driver leads me through the main door and down a hallway lined with photographs I don't look at. The house is clearly lived in, but kept tidy and clean. When the driver arrivesat a closed door, he knocks twice. A voice tells us to come in, as another mutters “about time.”
It’s a study, or an office. A heavy desk sits in the centre of the room, framed by a large window with a view of the garden. Leather chairs are scattered around, but none of them are occupied. The air smells like whiskey and sleeplessness.
Five men are waiting for me.
I studied them on the flight. Liam, the eldest. Killian, the volatile one. Aidan, the strategist. Connor, scarred and steady. Rafferty, the youngest of the brothers. I know their reputations. I know their territories. I know the rumors, the confirmed kills, the alliances they've built, and the enemies they've buried.
What I didn't know, until this moment, is what they look like when they're afraid.
Liam stands behind the desk. He's the tallest, the broadest, the one the others orient themselves around. His face is controlled, carefully blank in the way that only comes from sustained effort. But his hands are wrong. The knuckles are split and scabbed over, and there's a tremor in the fingers of his left hand that he's trying to hide by pressing them flat against the desk.
He's been hitting things. Walls, probably. Maybe people. He's been hitting things because something is eating him alive. The restraint of not tearing everything apart is etched in every line of his face.
Killian is pacing by the window. Short, tight circuits, like an animal in a too-small cage. His jaw is clenched so hard I can see the muscle jumping from across the room. He looks at me when I enter and his eyes are pure murder.
Aidan stands behind one of the leather chairs as still as stone. He's the one I watch most carefully. The quiet ones are always the most dangerous. His eyes track me the way mine tracka room. Exits, threats, angles. He's already assessing whether I'm competent enough to trust with whatever they're about to tell me. His expression gives nothing away, but his stillness is deliberate. Practiced. He's holding himself together by sheer force of will.
Rafferty stands with Connor against the far wall, arms crossed over his chest. Neither of them says anything, but their faces tell me everything I need to know.
This isn't business. This is personal. Someone has taken something from these men that they can’t survive losing.
"You're the Ghost," Liam says. It's not a question.
"Yes."
“Took you long enough,” Connor growls.
A vein flickers at Liam’s temple. "Sit."
I don't sit. I stand with my back to the wall beside the door. It’s an old habit; to always know where the exit is. To always keep the room in front of you. Liam notes this and says nothing, which tells me he understands the instinct, and also that he's done this kind of work himself.
"Our sister," he says. The words come out flat, drained of inflection in the way that happens when someone has said them too many times in too short a period, and the meaning has been sanded down to a raw wound. "Iris. She was taken two days ago."
Two days. My mind begins assessing the implications. Two days is long enough for the initial chaos to settle. Long enough for whoever took her to establish control. Long enough for the trail to start cooling.
It's also long enough for bad things to happen to a woman in captivity.
"From?" I ask.
"A shop in town," Rafferty says, his voice rough. "In broad daylight. She went to pick up a package for our mother. Lace for her niece’s summer dress."
I don’t know why he adds the last detail, but the disbelief in his voice tells me he still can’t quite believe this has happened...Is happening.
"The Ramunnos," Liam says, dropping a file onto the desk and sliding it toward me. "In Sicily."
I take the folder. Inside are photographs, surveillance reports, intercepted communications. The Orlovs have been busy. They've done the intelligence work already. They know who took her. They know where she's being held. A compound on the north side of the island owned by Salvatore Ramunno, a Cosa Nostra don who's been pushing into Bratva territory for the better part of a year.
"He's using her as leverage," Aidan says from behind his chair. His voice is measured, clinical. But his hands are gripping the chair back like he's trying to throttle the leather. "He wants our shipping routes through the Black Sea corridor. He took Iris to force negotiations."
