Chapter 2 Chapter 2
Enzo
The war room was too quiet. Not the comfortable kind of quiet—this was the kind that pressed itself against the skin, thick with waiting and breathing and dread. The kind that made a man want to break something just to hear the sound. Lola’s vitals ran down the center screen. Five clean lines, endless movement. A heartbeat he knew better than his own. Dottie—Baba Yaga, depending on the level of honesty in the room—stood beside him like the carved figurehead of an old ship. Steady. Unmoved by the storm. Jake worked the keyboard with the intensity of a surgeon and the posture of someone who’d forgotten caffeine was optional for humans. Dom and Gino hadn’t spoken since they entered; both leaned against opposite walls like pillars holding up the damn building.
A spike hit the monitor—Lola’s pulse jumping fast and sharp. Enzo’s hand curled into a fist before he even registered the movement. Jake blew out a breath. “There it is again. Same pattern. Pain stimulus.” The words slid under Enzo’s ribs like a hooked blade. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.
“What kind.”
“Hard to say without eyes inside.” Jake’s fingers flew. “But the speed of the spike…electric, maybe. Or a concentrated impact.”
Another spike. Higher. Then another, closer to the first. Enzo dragged a hand over his mouth, smothering the low growl sitting in his chest.
Dottie didn’t flinch. “She’s adapting. That’s why the intervals are changing.”
Enzo turned his head toward her. “Explain.”
“She’s counting. Matching her breath to the timing. Keeping her mind ahead of the pain so it lands where she chooses.” Dottie tapped her cane against the floor—soft, decisive. “I taught her that.”
Jake nodded at the monitor. “She’s regulating the crash, too. Look at the drops.” He zoomed in on the line. “She doesn’t stay high. She drops back into control in seconds. That’s not normal. That’s training.”
Enzo stared at the screen, jaw tight. Pride and rage tangled into a single rope in his chest—hot, choking. “She shouldn’t need that kind of control,” he said quietly.
“No,” Dottie agreed. “But she has it. And that’s why she’s alive.”
Another spike hit, violent enough that Dom pushed off the wall. Enzo didn’t look at him. Didn’t look at any of them. His eyes stayed on the line that mapped every moment of her pain in real time.
“She walked into their net,” Gino said, voice low, “and she still gave us something to trace. That wasn’t an accident.”
“Of course it wasn’t,” Jake muttered, adjusting another window on the screen. “If she didn’t walk in on her terms, we’d still be trying to figure out which continent to search.”
“State,” Dottie corrected. “She told me once—if they ever came for her, she’d choose the battlefield. That was years before she ever met your impatient, over-dressed self.”
Enzo didn’t rise to the bait. He watched another spike hit the monitor, and this time something in him cracked open—not in panic, but in cold, deliberate fury.
“She’s holding steady after each hit,” Jake said softly. “That’s not weakness. That’s survival.”
Enzo exhaled slowly, the sound sharp around the edges. “I know.” He hated that she had to use those skills, but he was fucking grateful she had them.
Jake tapped the side screen, pulling up the map—deep forest, fog-heavy, green smothering gray. “We traced the last clean signal to northern Oregon. Dense timber, low population. It lines up with the old federal mining tunnels.” He switched windows; the view shifted to topographical lines. “Underground, shielded, rad-stone deposits in the rock. Makes outside tracking a nightmare.”
“But not impossible,” Enzo said.
Jake hesitated, then nodded. “Not impossible. Not for me.”
The next spike came harder. Longer. Her heart rate jumped into triple digits. Enzo stepped closer to the screen like proximity might anchor her.
“She’s still fighting,” Dottie murmured, watching the line with a frightening sort of serenity. “If she were breaking, those drops would vanish. The spikes would spiral. She wouldn’t come down at all.”
“And you’d tell me,” Enzo said.
“I wouldn’t have to.” Dottie tipped her chin at the screen. “You’d feel it before the numbers even caught up.”
Another spike hit. Then a clean, swift drop—almost defiant. Enzo’s hand pressed flat to the table. “She’s pissed.”
“Oh definitely,” Jake said. “That recovery curve? She’s not recovering. She’s retaliating. That’s the kind of graph you get when someone decides pain is an inconvenience.”
Gino whistled under his breath. “That’s our girl.”
Dom didn’t smile. He didn’t have to. The tension in his shoulders eased half an inch. Enzo’s pulse hammered in time with the jagged lines on the screen. “She shouldn’t be alone in there,” he said, voice low.
“She won’t be for long.” Dottie rested her hand over his forearm—not gentle, but grounding. “But don’t waste her suffering by letting it make you stupid. She walked in with a plan. Honor it.”
He nodded once—short, sharp. “Jake,” he said, “I want every inch of that facility. Schematic, staff roster, ventilation. I don’t care if you have to hack a goddamn weather satellite. I want a way in.”
“Working on it.”
“Dom—prep the team. Quiet. No one outside this room knows what we’re doing.”
“Already on it.”
“Gino—get me a plane on standby. Range for Oregon. No manifest, no trail.”
“Done.”
Another spike slammed across the monitor, Enzo watched it burn its way across the screen, watched her heart rate climb and fall, climb and fall. He didn’t panic. He didn’t fall apart. He just stared at the proof that she was still alive, still conscious, still choosing to force her body back under her control. “She’s not breaking,” he murmured. “Of course she's not.”
Dottie hummed agreement. “She’s doing exactly what I taught her.”
“And I,” Enzo said, voice turning cold and absolute, “am going to do what she taught me.”
Jake looked up. “Which is what?”
Enzo’s eyes stayed on the monitor. “Burn down anyone who touches what’s mine.” The words were still leaving his mouth when the room shifted — not physically, but emotionally. Jake froze mid-keystroke, Dom straightened like he’d been called to the front lines, Gino muttered something that might’ve been a prayer or a threat and Enzo didn’t wait to clarify which. He snapped the cord on the monitor’s speaker control, dragged it toward him, and flipped the switch. Lola’s heartbeat filled the room, not loud but present. A real-time pulse, her pulse; his pulse now, apparently. The steady rhythm rolled through the speakers like a war drum wrapped in silk.
Controlled.
Precise.
Alive.
Good girl. Keep breathing for me.
He didn’t say it out loud, instead, he exhaled once, sharp, and said: “Out. All of you.”
Dottie arched a brow. “Vincenzo—”
“Just for a minute.”
She studied him with those witch-bright eyes, measuring whether he was about to shatter or bare his teeth. Then she nodded, gathered Jake and the boys with a flick of her cane, and shepherded them out. The door clicked shut, silence again but this time it was private.
Heavy.
Sacred.
Enzo stepped closer to the monitor, hands braced on either side of it, head bowed like he was praying to a god he didn’t believe in. Lola’s heartbeat whispered through the speakers in perfect intervals.
Stable.
Strong.
Focused.
She’s fighting. Just like she promised me she would.
But then a spike, quick, sharp, violent. His jaw locked. Another spike. Shorter. Faster. Too close together.
“For fuck’s sake, gattina (kitten)…” he breathed. He slammed his palm down on the console — not in panic, but in fury so cold it barely registered as emotion. This wasn’t a man losing control, this was a man choosing what he was going to destroy first.
He straightened.
The heartbeat steadied again because she was doing it, not him, regulating. Overriding pain with will.
He closed his eyes.
She shouldn’t have to do that. She shouldn’t even fucking know how.
But she does. And it’s saving her.
Another small spike flickered. “Alright,” he murmured. “Enough sitting.”
He hit the intercom. “Dom. Training facility. Now.”
A beat.
Dom answered, “Already moving.”
Enzo killed the intercom, rolled his sleeves to his elbows, and walked out like a man headed to kill something with his bare hands.
The second he stepped into the hall, Dottie intercepted him — cane planted, chin raised, her energy the only thing capable of making him stop mid-storm.
“Vincenzo Marchesi,” she snapped. “You will not break your hand before we even leave Nevada.”
“I’m not breaking anything,” he said. “I’m regulating.”
“That’s what idiots call self-harm.”
He grit his teeth. “Step aside, Dottie.”
She didn’t.
She looked him dead in the eyes and said, “When Lola gets home, she will need you. Not the version of you that’s bleeding rage. The version that makes her feel safe.”
He swallowed something sharp, then — softer, but still jagged — “I need to hit something that won’t die.”
Dottie’s mouth twitched, somewhere between disapproval and respect. “Fine. But don’t be dramatic. Dom’s skull can only take so much.”
She stepped aside.
Enzo moved.
He hit the training facility like he’d been launched. Dom was already there, cracking his neck, stretching his shoulders, grinning like a man who wasn’t sure if he was about to survive this.
“Boss,” Dom said. “You sure you don’t want pads?”
“No.”
“Cool,” Dom muttered. “This is going to suck.”
The second Enzo stepped onto the mat, Lola’s heartbeat played over the speakers.
Because he turned it on.
Because he needed to fight to the rhythm of her still being alive.
Dom heard it and muttered, “That’s creepy as shit.”
“Fight,” Enzo said.
Dom threw the first punch. Enzo didn’t dodge, he took it, let it crack his jaw sideways, let it burn, let it distract him from the spikes he had no way of stopping.
Then he hit back.
Dom skidded half a foot, boots squeaking. “Jesus Christ, boss—”
“Again.”
Another hit.
Harder.
Spilled adrenaline everywhere.
Lola’s heart monitor spiked again — sharp, electric — and Enzo attacked so fast Dom barely blocked in time.
“Okay—okay—fuck—Enzo—”
“Again.”
Dom punched.
Enzo punched harder.
The monitor spiked again and Enzo roared, pivoted, slammed Dom to the mat with a shoulder drop so brutal the floor echoed.
Dom wheezed, “What the fuck did she marry—”
The door slammed open.
Dottie’s cane cracked against the wall. “That’s enough.”
Enzo didn’t look away from Dom, chest heaving.
Dom raised a shaky hand. “Thank you,” he whispered to the ceiling.
Dottie marched forward like God coming to collect a debt. She poked Enzo’s ankle with her cane. “Are you quite finished throwing your tantrum?”
He dragged a forearm across his brow. “Yes.”
“Good.” She turned to Jake, who trailed behind her. “Show him.”
Jake lifted the tablet, face grim. “Found it,” Jake said. “Dottie caught the first anomaly. I confirmed it. Marco’s rerouting your overseas shipments. Slowly. Quietly. And he’s been doing it for months.”
Dom, still flat on the mat, groaned, “Oh, now I wish you’d kept hitting me.”
Enzo’s eyes went dead and calm. “Get up,” he said to Dom. “We’re moving.”
Dottie jabbed her cane at him again. “No. First, you breathe. Then, you look at the numbers. Then, you react. In that order.”
“Dottie—”
“Vincenzo,” she snapped. “Do not make me hit you with this cane. Because I will.”
Jake cleared his throat. “Just to be clear, she will.”
Enzo exhaled once, long and slow.
“Fine. Show me everything.”