Chapter 19 - The Fire Within the Walls
The shadows of the grand hallway became a killing floor. Three heavily armed intruders, wearing matte-black tactical gear and thermal night-vision goggles, crept past the ancestral portraits toward the master wing. They thought they were hunting a retired mafia boss living in comfortable semi-retirement. They had no idea they were walking directly into a trap set by two people who had mastered the dark arts of underworld survival.
Luca stepped out from an intersecting corridor, silent as a ghost. Before the lead operative could raise his submachine gun, Luca closed the distance with terrifying speed, driving the heavy butt of his pistol into the man’s temple with bone-crushing force. The operative collapsed instantly without firing a single shot.
At the other end of the hall, Nina moved with fluid, lethal grace. She slid behind a heavy marble pillar as two more intruders swept the area with weapon-mounted flashlights. Waiting until they overextended their formation, she fired twice with surgical precision—not to kill, but to neutralize their mobility, dropping both men with precise shots to their lower limbs.
"Secure the weapons," Nina ordered sharply as Luca joined her in the flickering emergency light.
"Check their comms," Luca muttered, ripping a tactical headset off the lead operative gasping on the floor. He pressed the receiver to his ear, listening to the scrambled digital chatter. A familiar, gravelly voice was echoing through the encrypted channel: “Target is isolated. Burn the villa to the ground if necessary. Do not let the Trevisi line survive.”
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Luca’s expression turned demonic. He crushed the headset beneath his boot heel. "It’s not a rival syndicate," he growled, looking up at Nina with grim realization. "It’s the remnants of the Russian Bratva—a suicide squad funded by Petrov’s hidden offshore accounts, sent here to settle a blood debt."
"Then let’s show them what a blood debt really costs," Nina replied, her eyes flashing with cold, unyielding fire.
