Chapter 3 - DUSTING OFF THE GHOSTI released Scarface. He collapsed sideways into the booth, cradling his ruined hand, gasping for air. I didn't look at him. I turned toward the counter, where Priya stood petrified against the coffee maker.
I walked over, reached beneath the register, and pulled out the emergency cash envelope I’d saved from my meager tips over the last two years. I slid it across the counter to her.
"Take this, Priya," I said, my voice softer now, trying to ground her. "Get on a bus at four a.m. Go to your sister's house in Wisconsin. Don't go home. Don't look back. Forget you ever saw my face."
"Clara..." she choked out, tears running down her cheeks. "Who are you?"
"Nobody," I said quietly. "Just a ghost passing through."
Ten minutes later, I was sitting in the back seat of Cross's armored Maybach, tearing through the rain-slicked streets of downtown Chicago. The interior smelled of expensive leather, cigar smoke, and impending death.
In the passenger seat, Marcus—the second bodyguard—handed a heavy, black pelican case back to me. I popped the latches. Inside lay a pair of customized Glock 19s, suppressed barrels, dark matte finish, along with tactical combat knives and Kevlar body armor.
Handling the weapons felt like stepping into an old, terrifying pair of boots. My fingers stripped the slide, checked the chamber, and snapped the magazine back in place with mechanical, unthinking perfection.
"You haven't lost your touch," Cross remarked from beside me, watching my hands move in the dim light of passing streetlamps.
"You don't lose this," I said, racking the slide. "It just rots inside you until someone pulls the trigger."
"The facility is an abandoned meatpacking plant on the south side," Cross explained, pulling up a digital blueprint on a tablet. "Commander Vance has at least twelve heavily armed mercenaries on-site. They aren't street thugs, Evelyn. They are Vanguard remnants. Ex-Spetsnaz, ex-Gladio."
"I know how they fight," I said coldly. "I taught half of them."
"Your daughter is being held in the lower cold-storage basement," Cross continued. "Once we blow the perimeter, you have eight minutes before the local authorities respond to the silent alarms Vance put in place."
I looked at Cross, narrowing my eyes. "And what's your real angle, Daniel? You didn't track me down for eighteen years just to play savior to an orphan."
Cross stared out the tinted window as the rain lashed against the glass. "Vance didn't just kill my brother, Evelyn. He stole something from my family's vault twenty years ago. A encrypted hard drive containing the names of every high-level official bought and paid for by the syndicate. Vance uses it to keep himself untouchable. I want that drive."
May you like
"And if I find it first?"
Cross turned to me, his dark eyes hollow. "Then you better hope you find your daughter before I have to choose between revenge and your survival."
