HOMECOMING

HOMECOMING
LUCA ROMANO - POV
The Chicago skyline cuts the dawn sky like something broken. I've got binoculars pressed hard enough against my face that my eye sockets ache. Three blocks between me and the estate. Should feel safe.
Doesn't.
Too many vehicles crowd the circular drive. Black SUVs. Government plates. Unmarked sedans with that particular shine that screams federal money. Men in windbreakers move with the swagger of people who carry badges and know exactly how much power that gives them.
My hands are steadier than my pulse.
"FBI." The word tastes sour. "Twenty agents, maybe more. Tactical gear on the perimeter."
Marco's voice crackles through my earpiece, static underneath. "Search warrant?"
"Viktor's at the gate with paperwork." I zoom in. Our head of security looks like he's choking on his own tongue. "He's not fighting it."
"Smart man." Dante sounds almost amused. Almost. "Resisting federal warrants is how you collect felonies."
I shift position. My knee screams. The truck bed yesterday beat me worse than most fights. Through the binoculars I watch agents fan across the property in practiced formation. They've done this before. Know their choreography.
Not looking for evidence.
Looking for bodies.
"They want us," Nico says. Bitter edge to his voice.
The estate sprawls below me, all stone and iron and legacy. Marco learned strategy in Vincent's study. Dante memorized manipulation at the dinner table, watching Vincent turn enemies into assets with nothing but words. Nico discovered he could drive anything with an engine in the garage where Vincent kept his collection.
I learned that violence could be clean. Necessary. Even beautiful if you did it right, if you did it to protect what mattered.
We found Isabella there too. The first time. Before Vincent erased the memory so thoroughly I didn't know what I'd lost until she came back.
"Luca." Isabella's voice carries harmonics that weren't there before the amplifier. Music and broken glass. "What else?"
I force myself to keep scanning. Looking for patterns, weaknesses, anything.
"Surveillance vans." Two vehicles parked at angles that cover every blind spot. "They're not just raiding. They're waiting for us to come home."
"Predictable." Marco sounds cold. Numbers and angles, no feeling. "They know we need resources."
"Needed." I watch an agent haul a box of files toward a van, our whole lives cataloged for prosecutors. "Past tense now."
My phone vibrates. Tommy Chen's number. The informant I've paid for five years to never ask questions and never tell lies. Three words on the screen: Call me. Urgent.
"Need three minutes," I tell Marco.
"Make it two." He disconnects.
Tommy answers before the first ring finishes. "Luca. Leave Chicago. Right now."
"Why?" Through the binoculars I see another agent exit carrying Isabella's medical bag, the one from her apartment. My trigger finger twitches. Muscle memory.
"Word's out about the girl." Tommy's talking fast, tripping over consonants. "What she can do. Every crew from Milwaukee to St. Louis knows you're harboring someone who heals anything. Worth millions to the right buyer."
Cold spreads through my chest. Down my arms. "How'd it leak?"
"No idea. But it's everywhere. Dark web. Underground auctions. Private military. Someone even posted video from Montana. Shows her healing broken bones in seconds."
Nico's arm. Compound fracture. Bone through skin. Isabella's eyes going silver, her hands glowing, everything knitting back together in half a minute.
Someone filmed it.
Someone was always watching.
"How bad?" My voice sounds distant.
"Three million for her alive and functional. Half that for intel. Every independent operator in the Midwest is mobilizing." Tommy pauses. Drops his voice lower. "Luca. The Russians posted it."
The Bratva. Not criminals playing at violence. Actual soldiers. Ex-Spetsnaz. Men who make us look soft.
"Thanks." I hang up before he can pile on more bad news.
"Report." Marco's command cuts through my earpiece.
"Isabella's compromised. Someone leaked video of her abilities. Bounty. Three million. Bratva contract."
Silence. Heavy enough to suffocate.
Then Dante, "The bank vault's definitely under surveillance. They'll be waiting."
"Still need the booster." Isabella's harmonics fragment at the edges. Fear bleeding through. "Seven days before degradation starts."
"We'll manage." Empty promise. I have no idea how.
I turn the binoculars back to the estate. Agents moving through rooms like ants through sugar. Photographing everything. Our whole lives becoming evidence.
Movement. Second floor. Vincent's private study.
A woman stands at the window. Not an agent. Wrong posture, wrong energy. She's looking directly at my position.
Like she knows.
I zoom in. The focus takes three tries because my hands won't stay still.
Sarah Hart. Isabella's mother. Standing in Vincent's study like she belongs there.
"Problem." I keep my voice flat. Professional. The way I sound before violence starts. "Sarah Hart's inside."
"What?" Isabella's voice spikes. "That's impossible. She's at the hospital. Protected."
"She's in Vincent's study." I watch Sarah turn away from the window, talking to someone I can't see. "Looks comfortable."
"She told them." Marco states it like fact. "She gave us to the FBI."
"No." Isabella sounds hollow. "She wouldn't. She's my mother."
"She visited three days ago." Dante's typing, keys clicking through the connection. "Pulling security logs. Confirmed. Sarah Hart. Escorted by... log's corrupted. Can't see who walked her in."
"Check federal evidence." Marco's already moving pieces I can't see yet. "They seized our footage."
More typing. Then Dante swears, creative and thorough.
"Federal logs are missing the same footage. Someone scrubbed Sarah's meeting from both systems. Our security and FBI evidence. That's not corruption. That's surgery."
Nobody asks who. We're all thinking the same name.
The Architect.
Someone with access. Someone who could delete footage, plant evidence, orchestrate federal raids at the exact moment we're bleeding out.
I watch Sarah exit the study. An agent escorts her downstairs, gentle hand on her elbow. Protective. Like she's cooperating witness, not suspect.
My phone buzzes. Tommy again.
Your mother sold you out. Federal witness protection. Full immunity. Thought you should know.
Except we don't have a mother. Haven't since Nico was three.
Unless he means Isabella's.
I forward it to Dante. Watch the dots that mean he's reading.
"Confirmed." Dante sounds sick. "Sarah Hart entered witness protection two days ago. She's testifying to a grand jury. About enhanced individuals. About Isabella. Everything."
Through the bond, I feel Isabella shatter. Not dramatic. Quiet. Like ice cracking under weight. Her mother. The one person she trusted without question. The person she sacrificed everything to save.
Just burned her alive.
"Why?" Isabella's voice is small. Nothing like the woman who can heal anything, kill anything, reshape reality with her mind.
"Protection." Marco's clinical. Dissecting it. "Sarah knew you wouldn't leave. Couldn't escape. So she brought the law down. Forced the separation she couldn't negotiate."
"She destroyed us to save you," I add. Quiet.
"She destroyed me." Isabella's harmonics crack. Split. "Everything I did. Every choice. Keeping her safe. Curing her cancer. Giving her life back. And she repays me by burning down the only home I have?"
The bond floods with rage. Pure. Amplified. Dangerous.
Buildings shouldn't shake but the ground is trembling. Small tremors growing stronger. Localized earthquake.
"Isabella." I use the voice for calming victims. Scared children. "Control it. The amplifier makes everything stronger."
"Maybe I don't want control." Her voice drops, goes cold. "Maybe anger is exactly what I need."
The shaking stops. But her fury stays compressed through the bond. Waiting. Coiled.
I pick up the binoculars with hands that won't quite steady. Focus back on the estate.
Sarah Hart's being loaded into a black SUV. Federal protection. Witness security. She's looking back at the mansion. Face wet.
But she's leaving anyway.
The SUV pulls into traffic. Disappears.
"New plan." My voice sounds rough. "Everything we had is gone. Resources. Safe houses. The bank vault's compromised."
"Underground then." Nico's trying. "Street level. Stay mobile."
"With Isabella broadcasting her location to every enhanced in the city?" Dante's skeptical. "We'd last twelve hours."
"So we don't hide." Marco's got that tone. The chess game three moves ahead. "We make noise. Control the narrative. Turn visibility into an asset."
"How?" I ask, even though part of me already knows.
"We let them find her. Our terms. Our timeline. Our battlefield."
"That's insane." But I'm seeing it. The logic. The trap. "You want to use Isabella as bait."
"I want to use Isabella as a queen." Marco corrects. Sharp. "Most powerful piece on the board. Queens don't hide."
Through the bond, Isabella's rage crystallizes into something colder. Purpose. Direction. Calculation that mirrors Marco's strategic mind.
"Not hiding anymore." Her harmonic voice steadies. "Mother betrayed me. FBI wants to cage me. Underworld wants to buy me. Fine. Let them come. Let's see who survives."
My phone buzzes. Tommy again.
Sarah Hart's debrief mentioned Protocol Omega. Said Vincent activated it before he vanished. Connected to your sister. Thought you should know you have a sister.
I read it three times. Each word a punch.
We don't have a sister.
But according to federal testimony, we do.
And Vincent activated something called Protocol Omega before disappearing.
"Marco." I forward the text. My hands are shaking now. Can't stop them. "We've got a bigger problem than the FBI."