flash
Sophia Reed did not blink. She stood less than three feet from Alessandro Moretti, the scent of motor oil and burnt copper hanging in the air between them, yet she looked at him the way a master surgeon looks at an unexpected complication on the operating table—not with panic, but with clinical interest. / Chapter 7 / 8

Chapter 7 - THE RECKONING AT THE HANGAR

The private airfield was dead silent under the starlit sky.

A single sleek Gulfstream jet sat on the tarmac, its turbine engines idling with a low, expensive hum. Inside the glass-walled VIP lounge overlooking the runway, Marco Moretti—Alessandro’s trusted second-in-command—was pouring himself a glass of eighty-year-old scotch, checking his gold Rolex for the fifth time in a minute.

The door to the lounge clicked open.

Marco didn't look up, assuming it was his lead hitman returning with good news. "Did you finish it? Is Moretti in the dirt?"

"He's right here, Marco," a voice murmured from the doorway.

Marco froze. The glass of scotch slipped from his fingers, shattering against the polished marble floor with a sharp, crystalline crash.

He spun around.

Alessandro stood in the doorway, his silk suit immaculate once more, his expression as cold as a glacier. Beside him stood Sophia, her hands tucked casually into the pockets of her grease-stained coveralls, her eyes fixed on Marco like a cat watching a cornered mouse.

"A-Alessandro?" Marco stammered, color draining entirely from his face as he backed away toward the floor-to-ceiling windows. "How... your car... the trap..."

"The car had a bad ECU," Alessandro said, taking a slow, measured step into the room. "And your tech team is remarkably incompetent when it comes to secondary encryption."

"I can explain," Marco pleaded, his hands trembling as he reached toward his lapel where a concealed holster rested. "It was business! The syndicate was—"

He never finished the sentence.

With blinding speed, Sophia flicked her wrist. A heavy steel wrench flew across the room, catching Marco squarely across the knuckles of his right hand with a sickening crunch. He screamed, clutching his broken fingers as his pistol clattered uselessly across the marble floor.

Alessandro closed the distance between them in three long strides, grabbing Marco by the lapels of his expensive Italian suit and lifting him off his feet until his heels hung inches above the broken glass.

"You tried to kill me, Marco," Alessandro said, his voice dropping to a terrifying whisper. "You tried to blind me. And worse... you ruined my drive."

Alessandro didn't shoot him. He simply threw Marco backward through the glass partition, sending him crashing onto the cold concrete of the runway outside.

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The rain tapped a frantic rhythm against the glass of Marissa’s cramped, dimly lit kitchen, but the storm outside was nothing compared to the tempest raging inside Adrian Whitmore’s mind. Standing just beyond the rotting wooden doorframe of her apartment, hidden by the heavy shadows of the crumbling stairwell, the millionaire tried to steady his breathing. His expensive wool coat was soaked through, but he didn’t care. His eyes were entirely fixed on the scene unfolding a few feet away.

The rain tapped a frantic rhythm against the glass of Marissa’s cramped,...

My hand froze inches from the cold steel of the Sig Sauer P226. Beneath the amber glow of the bedside lamp, the source of the warmth against my side wasn't an assassin, an operative from a rival syndicate, or a traitorous lieutenant.

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The silence in the master bedroom stretched so tight I could hear the slow, heavy drip of my own pulse in my ears. Dominic Rossi’s dark eyes locked onto mine, burning with a feverish intensity that should have sent me running back down the hallway and out into the rain

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"Lock him in the cargo hold of that jet," Alessandro told the two local guards who had suddenly appeared from the shadows outside the hangar, having switched sides the moment they realized who was holding the cards. "Fly him to the middle of the Atlantic and drop him off without a parachute. I want him gone by midnight."

"Done, Mr. Moretti," one of the guards muttered, dragging the screaming traitor away toward the waiting plane.

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