Chapter 45: POV LILI

Rafaele’s smile was the kind that made lesser men piss themselves.

Arrogant. Crooked. Confident because he’d spent years believing he was the overlooked heir.

But Matteo didn’t flinch. He didn’t shout.

He didn’t even blink.

He simply released my hand.

Which meant one thing.

War had already begun.

I shifted my weight subtly, angling myself half a step behind and to the right—Matteo’s blind side, the one he trusted only me to guard. The SUV doors slammed as our men anchored their position around us, guns raised, shoulders tight with the quiet promise of violence.

Rafaele spread his hands like a performer welcoming applause.

“Look at this turnout,” he drawled. “You always did like an audience, cugino.”

Louis muttered under his breath, “Fucker walks up like he owns the block.”

Dante cracked his knuckles. “Let me kill him. Just one bullet—”

Matteo lifted a hand. The world obeyed.

Rafaele chuckled. “Still the puppet master, I see.”

“And you’re still a bitch who hides behind other men,” I said.

Every head snapped toward me.

Rafaele’s grin faltered—but only slightly.

“Ah,” he said, eyes gliding over me like a stain. “The infamous Lilianna.” He clicked his tongue. “You look too much like your father. Shame he didn’t live to see the mess his daughter crawled into.”

Matteo moved so fast that the air cracked.

One second he was beside me.

The next his gun was pressed under Rafaele’s jaw, lifting him onto his toes.

“You mention her father again,” Matteo said, voice low and lethal, “and I’ll rip your tongue out and shove it down your fucking throat.”

A muscle jumped in Rafaele’s cheek.

But he didn’t back down.

He leaned into the gun.

“Good,” he whispered. “Get angry. Petrov wants you emotional. Easier to kill.”

Matteo shoved him back, disgusted.

Rafaele adjusted his collar like he hadn’t just been seconds from death.

“Petrov sends a message,” he said. “A simple one: come to the warehouse alone. No army. No wife—”

“I’m not his wife,” I snapped.

Rafaele smirked. “Yet you stand like one.”

“Try speaking again without getting blood on your shirt,” I shot back.

Dante snorted. Louis coughed to hide a laugh.

Rafaele’s eyes hardened.

“You go in alone,” he repeated to Matteo. “Or Arman dies.”

Matteo’s jaw flexed. “Arman’s already dead.”

Rafaele shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Petrov likes to play.”

Play.

That word made bile rise in my throat.

My father had been killed in one of Petrov’s games.

Rafaele stepped back slowly. “You have one hour, cousin. Then the whole city bleeds.”

He turned.

And just as Dante lifted his gun to shoot him in the back—Matteo grabbed his arm.

“Not yet,” Matteo said. “He’s bait.”

Rafaele disappeared into the shadows with the confidence of a man who thought he’d already won.

He hadn’t.

\---

As soon as we were inside the brownstone again, chaos erupted.

Louis barked orders. Dante argued with two lieutenants. Weapons were checked and rechecked. Someone slammed a magazine into a rifle so hard the sound echoed like a gunshot.

But Matteo stood completely still.

Not frozen.

Processing.

I stepped to his side, my voice low. “Talk to me.”

He didn’t look at me. Not yet.

“My cousin,” he murmured, “the last blood I have in this world… is trying to take everything from me.”

I cupped his jaw gently, forcing his head toward me. His eyes were fire and ice warring inside a storm.

“That bloodline ended the moment he betrayed you,” I said. “Family isn’t DNA. Family is loyalty.”

His throat tightened. “He wants me alone, Lili.”

“He wants you dead,” I corrected.

He didn’t deny it.

Louis approached, his expression grim. “Boss, we can set up snipers behind the brownstone. Track him. Follow him. Take him out before he reaches Petrov.”

“Then Petrov detonates the warehouse,” Matteo said flatly. “Killing Arman. Killing anyone he’s holding. Killing our leverage.”

Dante dragged a hand through his hair. “So what? We save Arman? After everything that traitor did?”

“Arman answers to me,” Matteo said. “No one else takes my justice.”

His voice was a knife.

I stepped forward. “Then we go with the plan.”

Matteo’s eyes snapped to mine. “The drainage route?”

“Yes.”

Louis frowned. “But Rafaele wants him alone.”

I smiled coldly. “He’ll think Matteo is alone.”

Dante raised a brow. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means,” I said, crossing my arms, “that the Russians and the Syndicate always underestimate the one thing that keeps Matteo alive.”

“Which is?” Dante asked.

Matteo already knew.

His eyes softened, barely.

“Her mind.”

“Not just my mind,” I corrected. “You’ve trained me. You know how I move. How I think. Petrov doesn’t.”

I pointed to the map.

“There’s a service tunnel under the drainage corridor. Narrow, but usable. I go there. With two of Louis’s quietest men.”

Louis blinked. “You’re going in?”

“She’s not going alone,” Matteo snapped.

“I won’t be.” I shook my head. “But listen, Matteo—Petrov doesn’t know I’ve been off-grid for years. Doesn’t know I trained with Genovese guards. Doesn’t know my father taught me his war strategies. Your cousin knows your moves. Petrov knows your reputation. Neither one knows mine.”

I stepped closer to him.

“You walk in through the front. Alone. Exactly as they expect.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but I touched his chest, grounding him.

“And I tear the floor out from underneath them.”

Louis exhaled like he’d just watched a bomb detonate.

Dante grinned like a man seeing blood in the water.

Matteo, though… his jaw clenched hard.

“You’re not expendable.”

“That’s good,” I said. “Because I’m not dying tonight.”

He grabbed my face suddenly, fiercely. “Lili—”

“I don’t need your permission,” I whispered. “Just your trust.”

His forehead hit mine. His breath shaky against my lips. “You have more than that.”

I kissed him once, sharp and fast, before pulling away.

“Then let’s get ready.”

\---

Thirty minutes later, we rolled out.

The convoy moved through the streets like a silent storm. Windows tinted. Engines low. The city felt too quiet—like it sensed blood was coming.

In the lead SUV, Matteo sat beside me, gun resting on his thigh.

He hadn’t let go of my hand since we left the brownstone.

“Last chance to tell me no,” he murmured.

“I’m not going to,” I said, squeezing his fingers. “You need me in that warehouse.”

He didn't respond.

But the muscle in his jaw ticked, a private admission of the fear he’d never speak aloud.

City lights streaked across his face—gold, then blue, then red. A kaleidoscope of violence waiting to erupt.

“You’re shaking,” I said softly.

He exhaled through his nose. “Not from fear.”

“Then what?”

He turned his head slowly, eyes locking onto mine like a gravitational pull he had no chance of escaping.

“From what I’ll do,” he said, voice low, “if they touch you.”

Heat unfurled in my chest, dark and fierce.

“We both know they’ll try.”

His smile was a blade. “Exactly.”

The SUV slowed as we approached the rendezvous point. The warehouse district rose around us like a graveyard of rust and shadow.

Louis pulled up behind us in the second car. Men filed out, armed but silent.

The night air smelled like rain and steel.

Matteo turned to me one last time. “If anything goes wrong—”

“It won’t.”

“If it does,” he insisted, voice hardening, “you run. You get out. You grab Callum and—”

I pressed my palm over his mouth.

“Matteo.”

His chest rose under my touch.

“I’m not leaving you,” I said. “Not tonight. Not ever.”

His eyes burned.

Then he kissed my palm, slow and reverent, before lifting my hand to his lips.

“Then it ends tonight,” he murmured.

“As long as we end it together.”

We stepped out.

Wind whipped through the empty dockyard, rattling metal, stirring dust. The faint hum of distant street lamps buzzed like static.

Louis and Dante crouched beside the hood of the SUV, waiting for final instructions.

“This is it,” Matteo said.

Dante nodded grimly. “We breach from the north side once you give the signal.”

Louis checked his rifle. “You sure about this, boss?”

Matteo didn’t look at him.

He looked at me.

“Yes,” he said. “I trust the woman leading the infiltration more than I trust the ground we’re standing on.”

A fire lit under my ribs.

I pulled the hood over my head, strapped my vest tight, and checked the knives at my hips.

Matteo’s voice dropped to a whisper meant only for me.

“Come back to me.”

I didn’t give him an answer.

I just smirked and stepped into the shadows.

\---

The tunnel was narrower than I expected.

Damp. Cold. The air thick with mildew and old oil. Two men followed behind me—quiet, professional, lethal shadows.

We moved without speaking.

Above us, I could hear muffled footsteps. Voices. The scrape of metal.

Petrov’s men.

We reached the access grate. Rusted. Loose. Perfect.

I crouched, peering through the slats.

The warehouse floor was lit with harsh yellow bulbs. Pallets stacked high. Oil drums. Crates covered in tarps.

And in the center—

Arman.

Tied to a steel beam. Barely conscious.

A few feet away from him…

Rafaele.

Smirking like he’d already carved Matteo’s tombstone.

Petrov paced nearby, surrounded by guards.

I inhaled slowly.

“Positions,” I whispered.

The two men flanked me. Weapons ready.

I tapped my comm.

“Matteo?”

His voice crackled softly in my ear.

“Say the word.”

I stared at Rafaele.

At Petrov.

At the place where my father had been betrayed years ago.

I bared my teeth.

“Light it up.”

\---

One gunshot shattered the night.

Matteo had entered.

I felt the ground tremble as hell broke loose.

And I pushed the grate aside, climbing into the war I was born for.