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“Marco.” Enzo catches my arm, his grip firm. “You need to be clearheaded for this. Lucia needs the enforcer more than the husband right now. If you let grief drive you, you’ll take risks the plan can’t absorb, and she’ll pay for it.” His fingers dig into my shoulder. “Can you be who she needs you to be?”

“I’m clear.” The words come out level and stripped of all emotion except for certainty. “The plan, the building, what we’re walking into, and what it costs to lose focus… I’m not going to lose focus.” I hold his gaze. “I know exactly what I’m doing, and I’m going to bring her home.”

He studies me for a moment, then nods. “Let’s go get your wife.”

The drive to Rockland County takes fifty-three minutes. I count every one, my weapon in my lap as I run mental scenarios I can’t stop and don’t want to finish. No one in the vehicle speaks. Nothing to say that the speedometer isn’t already screaming.

The complex rises out of the tree line, a relic of another era that the woods have been trying to swallow. We kill the headlights a quarter mile out and roll in dark, the road visible only by the moonlight filtering through the canopy. Crumbling brick and boarded windows come into view as we close the distance, and floodlights mounted on the upper floors cast harsh white pools across the surrounding area.

Cars sit parked in the back, and guards stand posted at the entrance, their flashlight beams sweeping in slow, practiced arcs. My wife is somewhere in that building…and in the hands of men who want to hurt her.

“Two teams.” Nico’s sharp command leaves no room for argument. “We hit the front to draw their attention and make them think that’s the location of the main assault. Marco’s team goes in through the basement entrance, locates her, and gets her out. No heroics, no detours. Just grab her and go.”

“And Bruno?”

“Bruno’s yours,” Nico promises with a heavy tone. “Whatever happens in there…whatever you need to do…we’ll handle the aftermath. Just bring her back.”

I nod once, then check my weapon, feeling the familiar heft of it in my palm. I also have a knife at my waist that I trust to do any job the gun isn’t suited for.

Then I move.

The basement entrance has a metal door half hidden by overgrowth. A keypad glows faintly next to it, confirming that this complex hasn’t been vacant as long as previously thought.

The guard doesn’t see me coming. I bring him down silently by crushing my arm against his windpipe until the life leaves him.

Inside, the passages stretch into darkness. The air is thick with dust and the fetid dampness of waterlogged walls. My flashlight cuts a narrow path through the black, illuminating broken equipment, collapsed ceilings, and the slow rot of a place that’s been waiting to die. But somewhere above me, there’s light and movement.

So I start climbing.

Voices carry through the hollow halls, distorted by distance and the strange acoustics.

I run faster through the dense, stale air. The corridors blur as my feet find the path without conscious thought, my hands keeping steady on the weapon.

Whatever happens tonight—whatever it costs—I’ll either get her out or die trying. There was never any other option

Chapter 35

Lucia

The world comes back in pieces, and each sense returns with its own particular violence.

First comes the sharp smell of antiseptic, which burns the back of my throat and turns my stomach. The chill comes next. Metal beneath my back leeches warmth from my spine, and straps bite into my wrists. The air’s so cold that it raises goosebumps on my bare arms.

My hearing returns next. Soft, familiar voices argue somewhere in the fluorescent-lit distance. Their words are indistinct, but the intent is unmistakable.

I open my eyes to the ceiling of an operating room.

I’m strapped to a table, my arms secured at the wrists, my legs bound at the ankles. My clothes have vanished, replaced by a paper gown that offers no protection against the cold seeping into my bones. My head throbs in rhythm with my pulse, while my mouth tastes metallic and bitter. Somewhere to my left, machines hum and beep.

I know this place. I saw it in Matteo’s files, in the photographs he took before he died. Bruno Caruso’s operating theater, where victims went in whole and came out in pieces.

I’m going to die in this room.

“You’re awake. Good.”

I roll my head toward the voice, and the movement causes a spike of pain through my skull.

Bruno Caruso stands in the doorway.