Chapter 2

“Two of them are,” Nico replied. “In the stables. Dino is asking them questions.”

“Tell Dino he has five minutes to find out if they deployed spotters to the outer boroughs,” Hector ordered, his voice clipped and flat. “If they don't talk, put them in the incinerator and double the patrols on the river crossing. Nobody leaves this valley without my signature. Understood?”

“Understood, underboss.” Nico hesitated, glancing toward Jemma’s glowing terminal. “What about the retrieval units? The old men?”

“Jemma is pulling their coordinates now,” Hector said, his voice dropping into that dark, unquestionable authority that made hardened killers flinch. “Have the black SUVs staged at the south tunnel. Blacked-out glass, heavy tactical gear, sterile plates. When she gives me an address, I want our rapid-response teams moving before the dust settles on the highway. We extract them, secure their hardware, and bring them into the fold where nobody can touch them.”

“On it,” Nico said, banging his fist against his chest in salute before disappearing back into the smoky corridor.

The door sealed shut again, the heavy deadbolts thudding into the steel frame with a finality that made the bunker feel like a tomb.

Jemma took a ragged breath, her fingers flying faster over the keys. Hector shifted his weight, his free hand coming around to rest on the armrest of her chair, effectively caging her between his broad frame and the desk. It was an overwhelming presence, suffocating yet strangely grounding.

“You’re trembling,” he murmured, his thumb brushing against her cheekbone, wiping away a fleck of dark soot she hadn't realized was there.

“I’m not,” she lied, though her pulse was fluttering like a trapped sparrow. “I just… Hector, if I make a single mistake in reconstructing these parity blocks, the memory will wipe itself. It’s an automated dead-man’s switch. Silvio designed it to destroy the ledger rather than let it fall into federal or rival hands.”

“You don’t make mistakes,” Hector said. He leaned down, pressing a firm, lingering kiss against her temple. His lips were warm against her cold skin. “You’ve never made a mistake since the night I brought you into this house. Trust your hands, Jemma. Trust what you know.”

She closed her eyes for a split second, inhaling the scent of him—smoke, fine wool, cedarwood, and the raw musk of pure adrenaline. It steadied her. In this violent, shadowy world where loyalty was usually bought with lead or extortion, Hector had never lied to her. He had shielded her from the uglier aspects of the business, keeping her clean, keeping her behind the digital curtain while he handled the blood. He was her protector, her sovereign, the man who had promised her that as long as he drew breath, no harm would ever touch her.

“Okay,” she whispered, opening her eyes. The green reflection of the code illuminated her pupils. “I’m in the tertiary cache.”

She bypassed a damaged sector where the blast had corrupted the sector headers. Her custom script, a recursive decryption loop she had developed specifically for the Giordano infrastructure, began stitching together the torn packets.

A progress bar appeared in the center of the terminal: **REBUILDING AIR-GAP ARCHIVE [14%]**.

“The first custodian,” Jemma said, her eyes tracking the incoming metadata. “The server logs are showing an active heartbeat from an IP address in Bayside, Queens. It’s routed through an old commercial bakery proxy.”

Hector’s jaw tightened. “That’s Matteo. Silvio’s first cousin. He’s managed the union pensions and the dockside kickbacks since nineteen-ninety.”

“His local storage just received a remote ping three minutes before the blast,” Jemma warned, her voice rising in alarm. “Hector, look at this. The attackers didn’t just detonate the physical vault—they sent an automated crawler through the local network right as the lines were severing. They were trying to scrape the custodian IP registry!”

Hector’s dark eyes flashed with lethal fury. He leaned closer, his chest pressing against her back, his hand flattening against the desk beside her keyboard. His knuckles were pale with tension.

“Did the crawl complete?” he demanded softly.

“No,” Jemma said, relief washing over her. “The blast severed the uplink before their scraper could resolve the full hex strings. All they got was encrypted noise. But if Matteo’s proxy registered the ping, he knows something is wrong. His protocol is to destroy his cold drive and flee if he detects an intrusion.”

“If he destroys that drive before we retrieve his key fragment, twenty million dollars in maritime assets vanish into the ether,” Hector said grimly. “And without our protection, Cavallaro’s hitmen will hunt him down at the airport or the train station before he can clear the state line.”

“I’m isolating his emergency locator beacon,” Jemma said, her fingers blurring. “Silvio put GPS transponders in their safe-deposit keycards, right? The ones linked to the secondary authentication?”

“Yes. Encrypted on the private Giordano satellite bandwidth.”

“I’m pinging it now.” Jemma hammered an execution command. A satellite map zoomed in on the borough of Queens, slicing through the residential grid until a steady blue dot pulsed over an unassuming two-story brick building near Little Neck Bay. “Got him. He’s still inside the residence. He hasn’t bolted yet.”

Hector reached into his pocket, pulling out a heavy, encrypted tactical radio. He keyed the mic, his eyes never leaving the pulsing blue dot on Jemma’s screen.

“Nico,” Hector commanded, his tone razor-sharp. “First target acquired. Matteo Giordano. Residential property on Bell Boulevard, Bayside. Take Team Alpha. Three vehicles, full suppressed loadout. Break the door if you have to, secure him, secure the black steel lockbox in his study, and bring him straight to the black site on Long Island. Do not engage local authorities. If Cavallaro’s people are on the block, neutralize them with extreme prejudice.”

“Copy that, boss,” Nico’s voice crackled through the speaker, accompanied by the throaty roar of modified V8 engines firing up in the subterranean garage down the hall. “Rolling out in thirty seconds.”

Jemma let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Her heart was hammering against her ribs. “They’ll get to him in time, right? It’s past midnight. The parkway will be clear.”

Hector hooked two fingers under her chin, gently forcing her to turn her head and look at him.

His face was close—dangerously close. His dark eyes held an intensity that made the smoke and the ruined mansion fade into insignificance. There was an absolute, terrifying certainty in his expression, the look of a man who bent the world to his will through sheer ferocity.

“Nico is the best hunter in this city,” Hector promised, his thumb softly brushing across her bottom lip. “Matteo will be safe before the hour is out. You did that, Jemma. With your mind. With those beautiful hands.”

A faint shiver ran down her spine, a heady mixture of relief and raw attraction. In moments like this, surrounded by the wreckage of an empire, she felt the sheer, gravitational pull of him. He was a monster to the world, but he was *her* monster.

“There are four more,” she whispered, her voice husky.

“Then find them,” he replied, his lips curving into a faint, dangerous shadow of a smile. “Keep going, tesoro. Clear the smoke. Give me every single ghost hiding in that ledger. When this night is over, and the Cavallaros are buried where they belong, this family will answer to me—and you will never have to hide in a bunker again.”

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