Lex's phone buzzes. "Location confirmed. Harbor facility. Finn's alive. Viktor's there. We move in four hours."
The room accelerates. Entry points, team assignments, communication protocols, ammunition count. Nico coordinating three assault teams with the fluid precision of a man who's been running operations since he was twenty-two. Cormac on the phone to Dublin, calling in muscle. Declan checking weapons at the side table with the quiet focus of aman who intends to use every one of them. Ronan closing his sketchpad and opening a tactical map on his phone, the artist becoming the analyst in a single gesture.
The moment passes. The window closes. The words I was going to say dissolve into the operational noise, and I swallow them the way I've been swallowing nausea for five days. Again.
Four hours later. The teams are assembled in the Elysium basement. Greek and Irish soldiers shoulder to shoulder. Men who would have killed each other a month ago now checking each other's equipment and exchanging nods. The alliance made flesh.
Lex crosses to me. He holds out a gun. The Beretta. Nico's Beretta. The one from the nightstand, the one I trained on, the one I slept beside for weeks before I learned what it could do. The grip is warm from his hand.
I take it. Check the magazine. Rack the slide. Fourteen rounds. My hands don't shake.
Across the room, Nico is strapping a Glock 19 to his thigh. His tactical weapon, different from the nightstand Beretta, chosen for the assault. He watches me handle the gun and the war on his face is visible: pride and terror, the same two things he felt at the range, magnified by the knowledge that this isn't paper targets and ear protection. This is his wife with a loaded weapon walking toward the man who took her brother.
I cross to him. Put my hand on his chest. Over his heart. The gesture that's become ours — my palm finding his heartbeat, the physical proof that he's alive and here and mine.
His hand covers mine. Presses.
I think,I'm carrying your child and I'm walking into a building where men will shoot at me and if I die tonight you'll find out at the autopsy.
I think: if I tell you now, you'll bench me. You'll send me to the car. And Finn will still be in that chair.
I think,forgive me.
"I'll be right beside you," he says.
"I know."
Three teams. Three locations. Fourteen rounds in the Beretta and a secret beneath my heart. My brother is bleeding in a chair somewhere in this city and the man I love is strapping on a weapon and the war that started with four dead Greeks in a warehouse is about to end or escalate and I am standing in the middle of it carrying more than anyone in this room knows.
Whatever happens tonight, two things are certain: I will get my brother back. And the woman walking into this fight is not the woman who walked into Elysium thirty-two days ago.
She's more dangerous now. In every possible way.
Chapter 26
Nico
Before The Storm
Nico
* * *
Three teams. Three locations. One chance to get this right.
I stand at the map table in Elysium's basement and divide my family into groups that might not all come home. The blueprints are spread across the surface: harbor facility, Dorchester warehouse, waterfront industrial complex. Three pins. Three entry strategies. Three sets of men who are looking at me for orders that will determine whether they see morning.
Team one: mine. Harbor facility. Viktor's confirmed location. Finn O'Brien is inside that building, along with whatever remains of Viktor's command operation. I take Stavros, four Greeks, two Irish soldiers, and my wife.
My wife. Who learned to shoot twelve days ago. Who carries the Beretta like she was born with it. Who is walking into a building full of men with automatic weapons because her brother is bleeding in a chair, and she will not be left behind.
Team two: Cormac and Declan take the Dorchester warehouse with eight Irish soldiers. Cormac hasn't stopped moving since the video, but his energy has shifted. The pacing has gone from the random churn of rage to the measured rhythm of a man calculating entry points and ammunition counts. He's a general now, not a brother. Generals survive. Brothers get killed running into rooms without checking the corners.
Team three: Lex leads a joint Greek-Irish unit to the waterfront industrial complex. Lex looked at the blueprints, nodded once, and started checking ammunition with the methodical focus of a man who communicates through preparation rather than words. My brother has never needed a briefing longer than thirty seconds. He reads the situation, calculates the optimal approach, and executes. It's what makes him the best enforcer in the eastern syndicate. It's also what makes him nearly impossible to know.
I brief each team leader on communication protocols. Primary channel, backup frequency, extraction points, fallback positions. If one team hits resistance beyond capacity, they radio. If radio goes dark, the others don't pause. The mission is Finn. Everything else is secondary.
Stavros and I go over the harbor facility blueprints for the third time. Main entrance: reinforced steel, breaching ram required. Loading dock on the south side: likely barricaded but accessible. Service door on the east, partially obscured by shipping containers. Satellite imagery shows a four-second window when the exterior patrol rounds the northeast corner. That's our secondary entry.