It’s a video feed. A grainy, black-and-white view of a hallway.
A hallway I recognize.
“That’s the compound,” I breathe.
“It’s not just the compound,” Amara says, her voice shaking now. “It’s inside. Alessio… someone with inside access is feeding this data to Vane’s server.”
I stare at the screen, a cold, sickening realization dawning on me. This isn’t just an old betrayal. Someone inside the compound is still feeding the machine.
And they’re closer than I ever imagined.
5
AMARA
The blue glowfrom the laptop screen bleeds into the grime of the printing press floor, cutting Alessio’s face into sharp, jagged planes.. My stomach does a slow, sickening roll as I stare at the grainy image. It’s the compound. Not just the north gate we drove through an hour ago—an interior hallway too, both rendered in stuttering pixels. There is a timestamp in the corner, white and blinking, matching the watch on my wrist down to the second.
They aren’t just tracking the gates. They have eyes inside the compound.
“We have to go.” Alessio’s voice isn’t a whisper; it’s a low-frequency vibration that hits me in the center of my chest. He doesn’t look at me. His eyes are fixed on the screen, his jaw so tight I expect to hear his teeth crack. The calm, steady surgeon I met in the clinic is gone. This is the man who has carried eleven years of evidence under his skin, and right now, every buried thing in him is awake.
“Alessio, wait. If they have a live feed, they know we’re here.” I reach for his arm, my fingers curling around the heavy wool of his coat. My pulse is a frantic bird trapped in my throat. I’ve spent ten years looking over my shoulder, but I’ve never seenthe person looking back. Now, the realization that the enemy is already inside the house—inside the fortress I thought was safe—makes the air in this warehouse feel like lead.
He snaps the laptop shut with a violent crack. “I know.”
He moves before I can blink. One hand lands between my shoulder blades, firm enough to steer me, his body already moving between me and the dark. He’s guiding me, shielding me, his body a wall of solid muscle between me and the yawning darkness of the printing press.
The smell of ink and old oil is thick enough to taste, clogging my lungs as we weave through the massive, silent machines. These metal giants look like sleeping beasts in the shadows, their rollers dripping with black sludge.
We’re halfway to the loading dock when the first shot rings out.
The sound is a physical punch, a deafening crack that shatters a window high above us. Shards of glass rain down like diamonds in the dark, tinkling against the concrete. Alessio doesn’t flinch. He dives, taking me with him, his weight slamming my shoulder into the side of an industrial paper cutter as glass rains down across my upper arm. My shoulder hits the cold steel, and a sharp, hot sting flares up my arm, but I don’t have time to process it.
“Stay down,” he snarls. It’s not a request. It’s a command from a man who has decided the world ends before I do.
He’s out from behind the machine before I can protest—drawing their fire away from me, putting himself between the muzzle flashes and the paper cutter. I’ve seen men be violent. I’ve seen the aftermath of what the Bellantis do. But I have never seen a man move with the sheer, lethal grace of Alessio Costa when he’s been pushed past his limit. He uses the machines like a surgeon uses bone and angle, cutting across the floor only when the gunmen give him the opening.
Two shadows emerge from the far end of the warehouse, their muzzle flashes illuminating the rows of paper stacks. Alessio doesn’t even slow down. He fires twice—steady, rhythmic pops that sound clinical compared to the frantic spray of the gunmen. The first shadow drops like a stone. The second tries to duck behind a pallet of newsprint, but Alessio is already there.
I watch, frozen, as he closes the distance. He doesn’t just shoot the man. He becomes a whirlwind of controlled rage. He catches the barrel of the guy’s gun, twisting it upward with a sickening snap of bone, and then he’s on him. It’s not a fight. It’s a controlled takedown, brutal and fast enough to keep me breathing. My heart is hammering against my ribs, a frantic rhythm that matches the thud of Alessio’s boots on the concrete.
He kills to get us out alive. The thought should make me run. The fact that it doesn’t scares me more. It should make me want to run to the next city and disappear under another name. But as I watch him stand over the bodies, his chest heaving, his eyes scanning the rafters for more threats, all I feel is a fierce, primal heat. Nobody has ever stood between me and the dark before. My brother tried to stand between the truth and the men burying it, and he died for it.
Alessio turns back to me, his face a mask of cold stone. “Amara. Move. Now.”
I scramble to my feet, ignoring the throb in my arm. We sprint for the side exit, the one that leads to the alley where the black SUV is idling. My boots skid across the floor, slipping on a patch of spilled ink. For a split second, my eyes snag on a shipping code at the bottom of a manifest clipped to a nearby desk—a routing number I know by heart.
I stop. I shouldn’t stop. The world is ending around us, but my eyes lock onto a name at the bottom of a manifest clipped to the desk.
Alvarado Vane.
Or someone wants me to think so. A blue-ink signature, still wet enough to shine.
“Amara!” Alessio’s voice is a roar.
I fold the manifest once, ink side out, and slide it into the inner pocket of my jacket, diving through the door just as another volley of bullets chews up the wood of the doorframe. Alessio is there, his hand catching me by the waist, hauling me into the back seat of the SUV before I can even find my footing.
He slams the door, the armored glass muffling the chaos outside, and shoves me across the back seat before climbing in beside me. The Costa driver hits the gas, tires screaming as the SUV peels out of the alley.
