Mara Chen's POV
The warehouse is silent.
Mara and Valentina stand in the shadows of Konstantin's primary operation—a massive structure on the edge of Chicago's industrial district. Around them, forty-two of Valentina's soldiers check weapons, secure positions, communicate through earpieces.
This is war.
Mara is dressed in tactical gear now—body armor, loaded weapons, a knife strapped to her thigh. She looks like a soldier. She feels like something darker.
Valentina stands beside her, checking her own weapons with methodical precision. She's beautiful and lethal, and Mara can't stop watching her.
"You're staring," Valentina says quietly, not looking up from her gun.
"I'm memorizing," Mara replies. "In case this is the last time I see you alive."
Valentina finally meets her eyes. In the darkness, her expression is fierce and vulnerable at the same time.
"We're both walking out of here," Valentina says. It's not a hope. It's a command. "We survive this, Mara. Together."
She reaches over and squeezes Mara's hand.
"Ten minutes," Lucia's voice crackles through their earpieces. "Get in position."
Valentina leads her team forward.
The assault begins with precision.
Explosive charges blow open three loading dock doors simultaneously. Valentina's soldiers pour through, weapons raised, moving with practiced efficiency. Mara stays close to Valentina, covering her six o'clock position like she's been trained.
The first Konstantin soldiers are caught completely off guard. They fall before they can even raise their weapons. Blood spreads across concrete in dark rivers.
Mara moves through the warehouse like she was made for this. Her training takes over. Sight. Breathe. Squeeze. Kill. Repeat.
She's protecting Valentina. Everything else is secondary.
But then Marco appears.
He's supposed to be leading the fourth team, attacking the warehouse from the east entrance. Instead, he's moving toward them with three soldiers—soldiers wearing Konstantin colors.
Valentina sees him at the same time Mara does.
"Marco," Valentina says over the comms. "Where are you?"
Static.
Then Marco's voice, calm and cold:
"Right where I've always been, Valentina. On the winning side."
He raises his weapon.
It all happens in slow motion.
Marco aims at Valentina. Mara sees it like a terrible movie—his finger tightening on the trigger, his expression twisted with years of resentment, the moment that kills everything.
She moves on pure instinct.
Mara throws herself in front of Valentina, and Marco's bullet slams into her body armor. The impact is like being kicked by a horse. She staggers backward into Valentina, who catches her, holding her upright.
"Sniper!" someone screams.
But it's not a sniper. It's Marco, and he's already firing again.
Valentina returns fire, ice-cold and accurate. She doesn't hesitate. She doesn't question. She just shoots the man who's been with her family for fifteen years—shoots him three times, center mass, and watches him fall.
The soldiers with Marco die seconds later, caught in crossfire from Valentina's team.
"Mara," Valentina says urgently, checking the wound in her armor. "Are you hit?"
"No," Mara gasps. The impact knocked the air from her lungs, but the armor held. "I'm okay. We need to move."
They push deeper into the warehouse.
But something is wrong. There are too many soldiers. Too many gunners. Too much firepower.
"Boss, we're taking heavy casualties," Lucia reports through the comms. "East team is pinned down. West team is surrounded. This isn't right. There are too many of them."
Valentina's voice cuts through the chaos:
"It's the trap. They were expecting us. Marco warned them."
She grabs Mara's hand.
"We need to fall back," Valentina says. "Get the teams to the extraction point. Now."
But before they can move, a voice booms through the warehouse—amplified by speakers, echoing off metal and concrete.
Konstantin Volkov's voice.
"Hello, Valentina," the voice says. "You came. I wasn't sure you would, knowing it was a trap. But I guess love makes people stupid."
A spotlight ignites, and there, on a platform overlooking the warehouse floor, stands Konstantin. He's flanked by soldiers. And standing next to him, held by gunpoint, is Rosa.
Valentina's entire body goes rigid.
Rosa is bleeding. Her face is swollen from beatings. Her eyes are hollow with trauma and despair.
"Let her go," Valentina screams across the warehouse. "Let her go, Konstantin!"
"I could," Konstantin says casually. "But that's not what this is about, is it? This is about me taking everything from you. Your territory. Your organization. Your power. And the one person you love."
The spotlight swings to Mara.
"Mara Chen," Konstantin says. "The girl who killed my best enforcer. The girl who made you weak. The girl who gave me the leverage I needed to finally break you."
Mara feels every eye in the warehouse turn toward her.
She's the problem. She's always been the problem.
"No," Valentina says fiercely, pulling Mara close. "She's not a problem. She's my strength."
Valentina raises her weapon toward Konstantin.
But he just laughs.
"I admire your loyalty," Konstantin says. "So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you a choice. Real simple."
He places a gun to Rosa's head.
"You surrender," Konstantin continues. "You walk away from the Russo organization. You hand over all your assets, all your secrets, all your power. And you give me Mara Chen. Do that, and Rosa lives."
"And if I don't?" Valentina asks, her voice ice.
"Then I execute everyone in this warehouse," Konstantin says. "Your soldiers. Your captains. And your sister. I'll burn the Russo family to ash. And you'll spend the rest of your life knowing it was because you were too selfish to let go."
Valentina's hand trembles.
Mara can feel her breaking.
"Valentina," Mara whispers. "Don't do it. Don't give him what he wants."
"Shut up," Valentina says harshly. But her eyes are anguished.
"I'm giving you five minutes to decide," Konstantin announces. "Clock starts now."
He steps back, keeping the gun to Rosa's head.
Valentina pulls Mara behind a stack of shipping containers.
"We can get her out," Mara says urgently. "We can—"
"How?" Valentina asks desperately. "He has snipers positioned around this warehouse. He has three hundred soldiers. We have forty. We're trapped."
"Then we fight," Mara says.
"And Rosa dies," Valentina whispers.
Mara grabs Valentina's face and forces her to look into her eyes.
"Listen to me," Mara says. "You're a genius. You're brilliant. You rule this entire city. You didn't get here by surrendering. Think. What would you do if this wasn't personal? What would you do if it was just strategy?"
Valentina's eyes unfocus for a moment, and Mara can see her shifting from broken to tactical.
"The electrical grid," Valentina whispers. "All those lights, all that firepower, they're pulling massive power. If I can overload the system..."
She pulls out her phone and calls Tommy.
"Can you kill power to this warehouse?" she asks.
"Already on it," Tommy says. "Lucia said you'd need a distraction. How long?"
"One minute," Valentina says.
She hangs up and looks at Mara.
"When the lights cut, we run," Valentina says. "You go left toward the east exit. I go right. We meet at the secondary extraction point."
"What about Rosa?" Mara asks.
"I'm going to get her," Valentina says. "But I need you safe first. Promise me you'll get out."
"Valentina—"
"Promise me," Valentina demands.
"I promise," Mara lies.
They move into position.
Twenty seconds. Fifteen. Ten.
The lights go out.
The entire warehouse plunges into darkness.
For one perfect second, everything is chaos.
Mara sprints left like she promised, but she's not running for the exit. She's running for the platform where Rosa is held.
Valentina is already there, moving with lethal grace through the darkness. She's reached Rosa, and she's cutting the bonds with her knife when a figure emerges from the shadows.
Konstantin.
He's going for Valentina.
Without thinking, Mara changes direction. She launches herself at Konstantin, tackles him to the ground, and they're suddenly fighting on concrete in absolute darkness.
His fists are brutal. His strength is immense. But Mara has something he doesn't—she has everything to lose.
She gets her knife free and buries it in his shoulder.
Konstantin screams, and Valentina is suddenly there with her gun.
The shot is loud in the darkness.
Konstantin drops.
"Run!" Valentina screams.
They run—Valentina carrying Rosa, Mara covering them, soldiers chasing them through the darkness.
Gunfire echoes everywhere.
But they make it to the exit. They make it to the extraction point.
Lucia is waiting with the car, engine running.
They pile in, and the car accelerates before the doors even close.
For a moment, they're safe.
Rosa is sobbing in the back seat. Valentina is holding her, tears streaming down her face. Mara is bleeding from a wound in her arm that she doesn't remember getting.
But they're alive.
Then Valentina's phone buzzes.
A photo message arrives.
Mara leans over to look, and her blood turns to ice.
It's a brick. It's been thrown through a window. And it's attached to a note:
Your sister is next. — K
The location tag on the photo isn't Rosa's apartment.
It's Mara's childhood home.
The place where the adoption lawyers first met with her family.
The place where this whole nightmare started.
And in the photo, standing in the wreckage, holding a gun, is someone Mara recognizes.
Detective Sarah Kane.
The FBI agent.
She's not trying to take down the Russo family.
She's working with Konstantin.