Chapter 7 - The Shadow Network
Two weeks passed before the first retaliatory strike hit.
During that time, the penthouse transformed. Nina didn't return to her cramped apartment; instead, Lorenzo had moved her brother, Leo, into a private, high-security medical ward funded by Castellano capital, surrounded by specialists who had Leo walking within ten days.
In exchange, Nina became a ghost in the machine.
She learned to wear tailored dark suits instead of catering aprons. She learned how to read a room's blind spots, how to handle a silenced Glock, and how to command Grimm—who now answered exclusively to her—to track financial couriers through the crowded subways of New York.
It was midnight in a subterranean data exchange beneath the Financial District.
Nina crouched behind a concrete pillar, her breathing shallow and controlled. Grimm stood beside her like a silent shadow, his shoulder wound fully healed, muscles rippling under his charcoal coat.
"They're walking into the trap," Lorenzo’s voice murmured quietly through her encrypted earpiece. "Three couriers carrying the second half of the Bratva ledger. Take the phones, leave the bodies."
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"Copy," Nina whispered.
She didn't feel like a catering girl anymore. The terror that had gripped her heart two weeks ago had been forged into something hard, sharp, and unbreakable. She was no longer running from the monsters under the bed. She had become the monster that hunted them.
