All Chapters of THE MAFIA'S BLOODY POSSESSION: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Nikolai's PovThe Rossi warehouse was on the south side of the city and the raid took forty minutes.I came back at four in the morning with blood on my shirt and a folder in my hand and went straight to my office and called Rem."We have everything from the warehouse," I said. "All of it. Cross reference the names against the Volkov family records from twelve years ago. I want to know who gave the order and who carried it out.""That is going to take time," Rem said."Take it."I put the phone down and sat at my desk.The folder was from a locked room in the back of the warehouse. I had opened it on site, looked at the first page, and closed it again.I opened it now.The top file was operational records. Names, dates, locations. Twelve years of Rossi activity, improperly disposed of because someone had not expected anyone to get this far inside their operation. I went through it page by page and flagged the ones that were going to be relevant to Ace.Underneath the operational recor

 Ivan's Pov I found out because Nikolai found out first. He came to the gym where I was finishing a light session and he said, "Ace received the message two days ago. He did not show us until yesterday and he did not tell us he had already decided how to respond." I stopped what I was doing. "He had a plan to meet the sender," Nikolai said, looking at me.  "He changed his mind and came to us, but spent time with it alone first. Brief, but he hid it." I went to find Ace. He was in the library and he looked up when I came in and something in his face told me he already knew what I was there for. "Nikolai told you," he said. "Yes." I sat down across from him. "Tell me what you were planning." "I was not planning anything. I decided not to do it and I came to you

 Ace's Pov I knew it was a mistake before I left the building. I had been sitting with the footage from Rem's message for three days. Elias Castro meeting with the Rossi family boss eleven days before he sent me a message.  The logical conclusion was clear, I had accepted it intellectually and something in me had kept pulling anyway. He looked like my mother in the eyes. On the fourth day I told the guard I needed a pharmacy run and I went to the address in the east district. He was already there when I arrived. He was older than the photo, thinner, with his hands in his jacket pockets and his eyes on me the moment I came around the corner. "You look like her," he said. "More than I expected." I did not say anything. "You came," he said. "I thought you might not." 

 Ivan's Pov The explosion hit and I was moving before the lights came back on. Ace was in the office with Nikolai. I hit the corridor and went to the office door and pushed it open and they were both upright and unharmed and Nikolai already had his phone to his ear. "Garage," he said to me. "Rem is already there." "Ace." I looked at him. "Come with me." "Where are we going." "Away from the garage." I put my hand on his shoulder and moved him into the corridor and we went to the stairs and up two floors to the reinforced room Nikolai had built for exactly this kind of situation and I put Ace inside and stood at the door. Ace looked at me. "Ivan." "Stay in here until I know what the full situation is." "You are in the corridor alone." "I have been in worse corridors

HandledNikolai's Pov The guard's name was Leon Mares and he had been in our building for ninety four days. Rem confirmed it at two in the morning. The access logs, the device he had been using, the Rossi connection. All of it clean and documented. The footage had already been distributed to three known Rossi network contacts before we identified the source. I handled it the way things like this were handled and I did not bring Ace anywhere near that part of it. What I did bring him near, because he deserved to know, was the result. "It is done," I told him at breakfast. "Mares is no longer a threat and no longer in this building." Ace nodded. "The footage." "Three contacts received it. Rem is working on suppression but we cannot retrieve what has already been seen." I held his look. "I am sorry." He looked at