Chapter 143 Rocco
A pungent smell of rust and oil filled the air in that abandoned port warehouse. Every step I made echoed faintly through the shadows, my senses stretched thin.
Too quiet.
Too still.
I waved my hand at the two guys behind me to spread out, my fingers brushing against the grip of my gun, running over the cold ridges as if guided by muscle memory. The old place had been shut down for years, but these crates were new, stacked neatly and stamped with a symbol I was beginning to see often. My stomach turned when the flashlight beam hit one of the metal boxes.
Camillo’s mark.
A serpent coiled around a dagger.
For a moment, all I heard was the slow drip of water leaking from the ceiling. My pulse picked up speed, steady, rhythmic, like the hum of an engine before a crash. I crouched low, brushing the dust off a crate's side, eyes narrowing.
“This is yours.” I muttered.
One of my men, Enzo, leaned in. “Could be a message, boss.”
No, Camillo didn't leave messages. He left bodies.
A low clang came from somewhere deeper within. I froze. My men instinctively drew guns. Another sound, scuffle, then a smothered oath.
"Lights out," I ordered.
The flashlights died. The darkness swallowed us whole.
I moved first, my boots quiet on the concrete floor, my breath measured. My hand slid along the wall, then finally reached the inner corridor. The smell was different there: smoke, gasoline, something metallic. A trap. My gut screamed it.
Then I saw it-thin wires stretched across the doorway, glinting faintly under a crack of moonlight.
Tripwires.
“Fall back,” I hissed, waving my hand.
But it was too late.
A gunshot tore through the air. One of my men went down instantly, the echo slamming through the warehouse like thunder. I ducked behind a crate, returning fire, bullets snapping through the dark. Sparks flew where metal met metal.
“Ambush! Move!”
The air thickened with gunpowder and the metallic stench of blood. I heard Enzo yelling from the far side; his voice was breaking between bursts of bullets. My focus narrowed: movement ahead, a silhouette ducking behind a steel column. My finger squeezed the trigger. The man dropped before he could aim again.
But there were more. Too many.
The shots came from all directions now, the echoes bouncing off the walls. I slipped into a side aisle, my shoulder brushing something warm, blood. My own. A bullet had grazed me, tearing through muscle. Pain burned sharp and hot, but I pushed it aside. I'd felt worse.
My men were falling back, dragging the injured. The exit was thirty metres away, and the gunfire wasn't letting up.
Then, I heard a voice from across the room.
“De Luca! Still alive, huh?”
That voice. The one I'd heard years ago just before the shot that nearly ended me.
Camillo.
My jaw clenched. I turned, catching a glimpse of him through the smoke, his outline framed in firelight from a burning crate, a mocking smile on his lips. He raised his gun in a lazy salute before vanishing into chaos.
Rage flared hot and bright. I wanted to follow him, to drag him out and finish it. But more men were pouring in through the side entrance. I grabbed Enzo’s arm.
“Get everyone out. Now!”
We ran, dodging debris as an explosion tore through the far side of the warehouse. The shockwave lifted me off my feet and slammed me against a wall. My ribs screamed, ears ringing. Smoke and dust filled the air.
I was up, coughing, half-blind. My shoulder throbbed, the bullet having grazed it; blood soaked through my shirt. No time to stop. We had to move.
When we finally reached the outer gate, the building behind us was in flames. The fire painted the night sky red, an omen of sorts.
Enzo dropped beside me, winded. “You think it was him, boss?”
I didn't answer immediately. My gaze fixed on the burning serpent mark seared into the collapsing structure.
“It was him,” I said finally, my voice low. “I saw him. And he wanted me to know.”
I wiped the blood from my hand before it stained the screen of my phone and sent a quick coded message to Riccardo: Warehouse got burnt. I saw Camillo. No word to Fiorella.
The last thing I wanted was her seeing me like this: bleeding, grim, caught between rage and exhaustion. She'd already carried too much.
I leaned my head back against the car seat, city lights blurring past. Every throb of pain in my shoulder reminded me how close I’d been, how deliberate Camillo’s game was.
He wasn’t after money.
He wanted chaos. And if he was moving this openly, then the next move wouldn’t just be against me. He’d go for Fiorella. The thought was like a blade, twisting in my chest. I tightened my grip on the wheel, jaw locked. Over my dead body.
We needed to hurt him, kill him.
The bastard still doesn’t want us to see fully and talk.
Still appearing like a ghost in the night. He should have stayed dead and be a ghost and not moving like a reaper now.
We need to figure out a way to put a stop to him soon before we lost more than we already have.
“We’ve got to make him pay boss, he has been doing too much lately.”
“Oh trust me, he will pay. With his life.”