Semua Bab DEADLY FACADE: I Became His Obsession : Bab 161 - Bab 170

Vincenzo’s POVFour minutes and fifty-one seconds. I drove with the phone open on the dash, the countdown from Grigio’s device still ticking in bright red numbers. Lenny held on to the passenger handle as the SUV tore through morning traffic. Francesca’s voice came through the earpiece in short, urgent bursts… every team was trying to break the secondary timers on the other captains’ phones and failing.“Rossi’s device is locked behind a twelve-digit rotating code,” she reported. “Alessi’s is paired to a biometric we no longer have. Benedetti’s is counting down independently. We need the master override or they all send.”“Giovanni will know,” I said. “He taught half of those men how to build fail-safes.”Lenny’s voice was steady, but I felt the tension radiating from her. “And if he doesn’t? Or if he won’t?”“Then the files go out and we go to war with every family that smells blood in the water. Either way, we end the night kn

Vincenzo’s POVThe tracker had stopped moving six minutes ago. Three blocks east of the karaoke bar, in an alley that never saw real daylight even at noon. I already knew what we were going to find before we left the ruined front window and the two Irish bodies cooling on the broken glass.Lenny stayed on my left as we moved, she had not asked to come but had checked her magazine and followed. I did not waste time ordering her to stay behind. The Irish had made this personal to her the moment they put a red X on the place where we began, she had every right to see the cost.Luca met us at the mouth of the alley with two men. His face was carved from the same cold focus I felt in my own bones.“No movement on the tracker since it went dark,” he reported. “No panic signal or phone activity. The civilian net shows he left the bar’s back office at the end of his shift last night and never made it to the bus stop he always uses.”I n

Vincenzo’s POVThree civilians dead.The number sat in my chest like a live coal. I stood in the clinic parking structure with Lenny at my left, the two Irish bodies cooling on the concrete, and the physical therapist already being moved to a safe location under heavy guard. The morning sun felt too bright for the amount of blood the day had already demanded.Luca waited for orders while Francesca’s voice was steady in the earpiece, feeding real-time updates from the expanding civilian net. Every soft target we could identify now had shadows. It was no longer enough.“We stop chasing the cards,” I said. “We go at the men holding the deck.”I turned to Luca. “Pull every piece of intelligence we have on Irish mid-level operators still breathing in this city. Safe houses, courier routes, the bars they use to move money, the warehouses they think we don’t know about. I want synchronized hits starting in forty minutes. Make sure there are no s

Vincenzo’s POVTwelve minutes… The number burned in my head as the SUV tore north through midday traffic. Luca drove on high speed as I sat in the passenger seat checking the magazine on the rifle across my lap for the third time. Lenny’s voice still echoed in the open channel— steady, determined, already moving with Francesca toward the same target.We arrived the old apartment building, the place where I had first watched her from across the hallway. Where she had glared at me like I was every man who had ever hurt her. Where Shadow had escaped and she had run into traffic without hesitation. The first walls that had ever contained both of our lives at the same time.The Irish were going to turn it into a slaughterhouse to make a point.“Status on Lenny’s team,” I said.Francesca answered immediately. “Six minutes out. We’re coming in from the east. Building has two main entrances, one fire escape on the north side, and a basement servi

Vincenzo’s POVThe math was simple and ugly. Forty minutes until Caroline finished her shopping and drove home to an empty house. Two hours and twenty minutes for us to cover the distance even with clean vehicles, pre-arranged fuel stops, and every traffic light we could own along the route. The Irish team was already closer. They would be waiting when she turned onto her quiet street.I drove the first leg myself. Lenny sat in the passenger seat, body angled toward the road as if she could will the miles to shrink. Her face was pale but set. The same expression she had worn in the Commission chamber and the shipyard and the hallway of her old apartment building. Grief and rage braided into something that would not break.Francesca’s voice came through the secure channel, calm and precise. “Local assets upstate are limited. I have two men who can reach the grocery store in twenty-eight minutes. They can delay her without her knowing—flat tire, spilled cart