We keep walking, out into the cool night air. The Costa brothers are there, a wall of dark suits and grim faces. Dominic stands at the center, his eyes like flint. He looks at me, then at Alessio’s hand tightly gripped in mine. He knows the master server is live and the warehouse smells wrong; he doesn’t say it, but the nod is a warning as much as a blessing. The silent acknowledgement of a man who knows what it means to want to keep a woman safe while the world falls apart.
“The South Loop. Wabash,” Dominic says, his voice carrying across the courtyard. “We cut Vane there. Lorenzo answers for the old warehouse after.”
A low sound moves through the men, grief turning itself into readiness.
Alessio leads me to his black SUV, close enough that his shoulder brushes mine. He helps me in, his touch lingering for one heartbeat too long before the mission takes over. As he climbs into the driver’s seat, he reaches over and grabs my hand, interlacing our fingers.
“We do this for Curtis,” he says, his voice steady now.
“For Carlo. For Riza,” I add.
“For all of us,” he whispers.
He shifts the car into gear, and we roar out of the compound gates. The trail has become a road, and we are driving straight down it. And as I look out the window at the flickering lights of Chicago, for once, forward does not feel like escape.
But as we hit the highway, a notification pings on my tablet. My heart stops.
I pull up the screen, my breath hitching. "Alessio."
"What is it?" he asks, his eyes never leaving the road.
“The physical bypass just pinged active,” I say, my voice trembling.
"What? By who?"
I look at the source of the activation signal. It’s not from the warehouse. It’s not from Vane.
“It’s from inside the compound,” I say, the horror dawning on me. “Either Turi left a dead-hand device running, or someone just used his override. Either way, the warehouse security just went dark.”
"Why would he do that?" Alessio asks, his knuckles straining on the steering wheel.
“Because someone’s using his override to make this look like help,” I say, staring at the screen. “Or Turi’s trying to open one door and doesn’t know Vane’s turned it into a slaughterhouse.”
The realization hits us like a gut punch. The anonymous tips, the warnings, the secret help—maybe they were atonement. Maybe Vane found a way to turn that atonement into a trap. The warehouse. The place where the first generation died.
"It’s a trap," I whisper.
Alessio doesn't slow down. If anything, he pushes the pedal to the floor, the engine screaming as we fly toward the South Side.
“Then let them come,” he says, his voice sounding like something from a nightmare. “I’ve been waiting eleven years for this fight. We treat it like a trap—eyes open, and nobody in that building walks away if they raise a gun. Then I come back for him.”
I look at him—the man I love, the man who would burn the world for me—and I realize that the war isn't just ending. It’s evolving into something much more dangerous. The mole isn’t only a traitor. Someone has turned his old sin into the architecture of another massacre. And we’re driving straight into the heart of it.
I grip my tablet, my mind racing through the code, looking for a loophole, a way to turn the trap back on the hunter. My brother died because he didn't have backup. I have a whole family of dangerous men behind me.
"I’m not letting you go in there alone," I say, my voice hard as diamonds.
"You don't have a choice, Amara," he growls.
"I always have a choice," I snap back. "And I choose to fight."
He looks at me, a quick, sharp glance, and for a second, I see the pride in his eyes. The surgeon and the accountant. The keeper and the hunter.
We hit the South Side, close enough to Halloran Freight that my brother’s last days press against the glass. The warehouselooms in the distance, a dark monolith against a sky just starting to gray toward dawn.
One relay is down. The traitor is exposed. The enemy is waiting.
And as we pull into the shadows of the 24th Street docks, I realize that the only way out is through.
