Semua Bab Shadows of the Vow: Bab 41 - Bab 50

Antonioni's POVIn the morning, the 3PM meeting had taken another turn. It ended up starting earlier than 3PM, and I also started out by meeting with the security heads, after which park members joined us. The reason was that we needed to start finalizing on time.We chose twenty qualified men who'd go to war with us.Now I needed to stay with them to strategize one last time before leaving home. My right-hand men.After the sex with Annabelle, I had packed my bags and left for Diego's house.Shortly after, Milo and Bukky joined us there too. We would be leaving for Turkey from there.The air at Diego’s house felt like a countdown clock. Each tick was louder than the last. Weapons were laid out across the marble dining table like silverware. Maps of Istanbul and satellite overlays covered the living room floor. Everyone in that house understood what we were heading into. Not a mission. Not a favor. War.Bukky handed me the tactical device connected to our private radar feed. My six

Lorenzo's POV Naples didn’t sleep the night before we left.Not that I expected it to. The men I brought in didn’t need lullabies. They needed orders. And I gave them a few, just the ones that mattered.The penthouse was still. Top floor, soundproofed, wrapped in thick glass and thicker consequences. I walked barefoot most of the night. The marble cooled my head. Helped me think.Twenty men, seated, standing, checking weapons they didn’t call weapons. None of them asked questions. They were trained better than that. Most had seen death so many times, it probably smelled like perfume to them now.I didn’t speak unless I had to. No screens. No printed documents. Just my voice, and a floor plan burned into the glass dining table with laser ink.We weren’t hunting people. Not this time. We were infiltrating systems. Networks. Places that looked clean until you peeled back their skin and saw the sickness underneath. Luca seemed not to have given me the full picture, but I didn’t nee

Antonioni's POV We'd whoop Lorenzo's ass later on, the next day, but upon getting here, I realized I had business connections to deal with.As for the three strangers Luca talked about, the simple solution was to change the timing and confuse them. There's no need to fight ghosts.They didn't come from Lorenzo, which Luca has now confirmed. And since they didn't come from Lorenzo, the best means to devise was to change the time for the oppression and make them come in when my shadows must have started and ended the game. Humiliation. Classic.My men are taking care of Lorenzo and keeping track, and I trust them. I heard he's going after the ghost. Foolish! I've learned to fight ghosts only when they've stopped hiding and have decided to appear.Noise works for him, and that's fine. As for me, strategy works better. And I'm choosing strategy again over noise, to fight our common enemy. Everyone is interested in having what I have. And that says something. It means I have something. B

Antonioni's POV   The Valenos Suites had a pulse that didn’t match the rest of Istanbul. Too quiet. Too perfect. Too dead. The kind of place where monsters and ministers shared breakfast. Where a man could disappear behind a business card and reappear two weeks later in a headline nobody questioned.  I walked in wearing pressed linen, medical glasses, and a lanyard that labeled me as a senior researcher from the “Global Infectious Disease Policy & Preparedness Summit.” It wasn’t for protection. Not for me. I had protection. Names that never made the papers. Men who shook hands under long tables—ministers, military chiefs, business tycoons who owed me favors they’d sign in blood if it came to it. If anyone dared pull a stunt on Istanbul soil, I had the immunity of ten wolves. I

Antonioni's POV   The smoke hung thick in the air like a suffocating shroud, wrapping everything in a hazy silence broken only by the faint moans of the wounded.  The battlefield was littered with bodies. Some still, and some barely moving.  Amidst the carnage, five men were alive but wounded, slumped against the cracked earth and twisted debris. They were like debris themselves. Their breaths came in shallow gasps, pain searing through their limbs, and their faces were pale with exhaustion and fear. Matteo scanned the scene carefully, counting the fallen and the survivors.  His eyes caught the five who had somehow clung to life.  Oreo, the only one who had escaped, was nowhere in sight.  The rest, scattered like broken dolls, were dead. “We’ve got five,” Ma