Vice steps aside.
We enter through the dock.
Cold slaps me first. Not normal air-conditioning. Storage cold. Flower cold. Funeral cold. It slides under my cut and bites the sweat on my skin. Rows of plastic buckets line the wall, white roses bobbing in chemical water like the room is growing apologies for the dead.
Gunfire breaks from the front.
Diablo’s team hits loud.
Every head inside turns that way.
Vice and I move through the back shadows between stacked crates and metal shelving. A Mutherfuker runs past with a shotgun, eyes on the front entrance. I hook an arm around his throat from behind, drag him into the shelving, and slam his head into the metal upright. Once. Twice. His knees give. I take the shotgun and toss it to Vice.
“Thought you liked knives,” he says.
“I’m growing as a person.”
“Proud of you.”
A bullet punches through a crate near my shoulder, exploding wet green stems across my face.
“Fuck personal growth,” I mutter.
We push deeper.
The warehouse opens into a wider cold room lit by buzzing strips overhead. White roses everywhere. Crates. Buckets. Plastic wrap. Blood on concrete. Men in ugly white cuts firing toward the front. Magic’s laugh echoes from somewhere near the office stairs, dark and delighted.
Then I see her.
Center-left, exactly where Alpha said.
Lady is chained to a metal chair near the cold room wall, wrists cuffed behind her through the chair back, ankles strapped to the legs. Her hair is wild. Her cheek is swollen. Her lip is split. A white rose is tucked beneath one cuff like a sick little corsage.
My whole body forgets the plan.
Her head lifts.
Those dark eyes find me through smoke, flowers, and gunfire.
For half a second, everything stops.
Lady’s alive.
And still mean. Thank Christ.
Then her mouth moves.
I can’t hear it over the shots, but I know the shape.
Gringo.
Relief hits so hard it turns straight into rage.
Boca appears behind her with a gun in one hand and a phone in the other. He grabs her hair and yanks her head back.
I shoot him.
Not in the head. I want him alive long enough to regret learning my name.