Chapter 102: Ren

Ren

I already noticed the cameras an hour ago, tucked into the corners of the warehouse ceiling, dark lenses angled toward the main floor. I mentioned it once, quietly, to Matteo, and made sure to keep myself out of their range every time I moved. I stick close to the far wall, behind a stack of crates, close enough to hear everything but far enough that no lens catches more than a shoulder or the edge of a jacket. Whoever's watching this place through those feeds gets Matteo, Marco, Alessandro, and Valentino. They don't get me. As far as anyone on the other end of that camera knows, I'm still ash scattered somewhere over a stretch of empty sky, and I intend to keep it that way for as long as it's useful.

We drop the shipment thread for now. Alessandro's still chasing the handler's name, cross-referencing it against every database he can reach, headphones on, muttering half-finished sentences to himself the way he does when he's fully absorbed in something. There's nothing left to do standing over his shoulder while he works, so the rest of us regroup near the table, spreading out the last of the folders, and that's when Valentino says the thing I've been waiting for him to say since we found that first folder full of fake passports.

"I want to call my father."

I look up from the page I'm holding. "No."

"I wasn't asking for permission." His voice comes out flat, already braced for the argument he clearly expects. "General Russo has resources neither of us has. Military intelligence, satellite access, people who can move faster and quieter than anyone in this room. He's her father, Ren. He has a right to know his daughter's missing."

"He has a right to nothing." The words come out harder than I mean them to, but I don't take them back. "Where was that right when she needed someone showing up for her? You told me yourself he barely looked at her growing up. Now she's gone and suddenly he's got a right to know?"

"He's still her father."

"That's a title, not a relationship." I set the page down, meeting his eyes across the table. "You really think a man who couldn't be bothered with his daughter for twenty-some years is going to suddenly become useful the moment it's convenient for you?"

"I think he has resources we don't." Valentino's jaw tightens. "I think pride is a luxury we can't afford right now, and I think you're letting your own history with him cloud whatever's left of your judgment."

"My judgment is fine."

"Is it?" He steps closer. "Because from where I'm standing, you'd rather burn through every favor you've got left in the underworld than make one phone call that might actually get her found faster."

"You want to hand my location to a general," I say, low and even. "You want to tell a man with government clearance exactly who I am, exactly what I do, exactly how deep this family runs. You understand what happens the second he learns you're working with me. He disowns you on the spot. Maybe worse. You'll be lucky if he doesn't have you arrested standing right here."

"I don't care what happens to me."

"I do." The words surprise me even as I say them, but I mean every one. "You're the only person in this search who actually knew her before any of this. I'm not risking that over a man who never earned the right to help her in the first place."

Marco and Matteo stay quiet near the crates, watching the exchange without a word, and Alessandro's typing slows just enough that I know he's listening too, even with his back turned.

"He could set up a full unit," Valentino says, quieter now, though no less stubborn. "Trained people. Real intelligence resources. Not four men in a warehouse chasing shell companies."

"And the second that unit finds out who's actually funding this search, they pull out, or worse, they turn on me. You think whoever's holding her is going to keep her alive if a military operation starts closing in loud enough for the whole world to notice? People like that don't surrender. They disappear, and they take her with them."

Valentino doesn't answer right away, and I watch something war behind his eyes, the practical soldier in him weighing every angle against the brother desperate enough to grab at any resource that might move faster.

"You're asking me to trust four men and a warehouse full of paperwork," he says finally, "over the actual military."

"I'm asking you to trust that quiet works better than loud, when the people you're chasing have already proven they're four years ahead of everyone trying to find them."

He shakes his head slowly, something exhausted and furious both crossing his face at once. "Fine. Do it your way. But if anything happens to her, if we lose this because you wouldn't swallow your pride and pick up a phone, that's on you. Her blood is on your hands, Ren. Not mine."

"I know."

"Do you?" His voice cracks slightly on the question, raw in a way I haven't heard from him yet. "Because you talk like a man who's already decided he's going to win this. I don't have that luxury. I've seen what happens when people wait too long to ask for help."

"I'll find her without the fucking military," I say. "I don't need an army. I need people who already know exactly how this world works, because they live in it the same way I do."

He stares at me a long moment, and whatever he's about to say, he decides against it. He turns instead, grabbing his jacket off the back of the chair, and walks out of the warehouse without another word, the door slamming hard enough that dust drifts down from a beam overhead.

Nobody moves for a second after he's gone.

"He'll come back," Matteo says eventually, not quite a question.

"He better." I drag a hand down my face. "He's still the only person here who actually grew up with her."

I turn to Matteo properly, and whatever exhaustion was sitting in my chest a moment ago hardens into something considerably more useful.

"Drop whatever else you're working on," I say. "I want you reaching out to every crime lord who owes this family anything. Every contact across every border we've ever done business with. Tell them Amelia Russo is missing, and I want eyes and ears working this from every corner of the underworld starting tonight."

"And if they refuse?"

"Then you tell them I'll have their head on a spike and parade their naked, headless body through the streets for everyone to see exactly what happens to people who decide my family's business isn't worth their time."

Matteo doesn't flinch. He's heard me make worse threats before, and he simply nods, already reaching for his phone. "I'll start with the ports. If she's somewhere in the Gulf like Valentino thinks, somebody moving cargo through those waters has crossed paths with whoever's holding her."

"Good. Go."

He leaves without another word, already dialing before he's even out the door, and Marco goes back to his crates, sorting through the last of the hard drives with the same methodical focus he's had all day.

Alessandro finally looks up from his laptop, and something in his expression tells me he's been chewing on a question he's not sure he should ask.

"What if she ends up being killed," he says quietly. "What then?"

"That won't happen." I dismiss it fast, too fast, and I can see he notices.

"But what if it does?" He holds my gaze despite the obvious risk of it. "Have you actually prepared yourself for that possibility, Ren? Because right now you're running on pure conviction, and conviction doesn't change outcomes."

Something hot and violent rises in my chest, fast enough that for one full second I genuinely consider crossing the room and putting my hands around his throat just to make him stop talking.

"Then I'll kill every fucking person involved," I say, low and vicious, "and then I'll kill myself."

The room goes utterly silent.

"You'd really kill yourself," Alessandro says slowly. "For her."

"That's a first." Marco's voice comes from behind the crates, completely amused. "She's got you completely under some kind of spell."

"Shut the fuck up," I snap, though there's no real heat behind it.

I turn away from both of them, pacing back toward the table, and I refuse, absolutely refuse, to let the thought Alessandro just planted take root anywhere in my mind. She is not going to die. She can't. Not when I still haven't told her the truth about what she actually means to me, not when the last real conversation we had was full of threats and unresolved fury instead of anything close to what I actually feel.

I think about her voice the night she promised to put a bullet between my eyes, and something twists sharp and aching in my chest, because even now, even with everything currently on fire around us, some part of me still finds that particular memory almost fond. She'd probably kill me herself if she ever heard me admit that out loud.

I pick up the nearest folder just to have something to do with my hands, flipping through pages I've already read twice without absorbing a single line of them. Marco goes quiet behind me, and I catch him and Alessandro trading a look I'm not supposed to see, the particular wary glance of two men deciding whether it's safer to say anything else or just let me sit with it.

Nobody says anything else. The only sound left in the warehouse is the low hum of Marco's equipment and the occasional creak of the metal roof settling against the wind outside.

The warehouse door opens again, and I turn fast, half expecting Valentino to have come back already, but it's just Matteo, phone still pressed to his ear, waving urgently for my attention.

"Ren." He covers the receiver with one hand. "You need to hear this."

I cross the room in three strides, taking the phone from him, and press it to my ear.

"Who is this," I say.

A low, unfamiliar voice answers, careful and measured. "Someone who heard you're offering considerable incentive for information about a missing woman."

My pulse spikes immediately. "What do you know."

"Not much yet. But I know someone who might. A broker who moves people through the Gulf on a semi-regular basis. He doesn't usually talk to outsiders." A pause, deliberate. "For the right price, I could arrange an introduction."

"Name your price."

"We'll discuss that when you're standing in front of me." Another pause, longer this time. "Tomorrow night. I'll send the location through your man here. Come alone, or don't come at all."

The line goes dead before I can push for anything more, and I hand the phone back to Matteo, my mind already racing through every possible way this could be a trap, and every reason it might be worth walking into one anyway.

"Well?" Marco asks, watching my face.

"We have a meeting," I say. "Tomorrow night. Somebody who might know a broker moving people through the Gulf."

"Might be nothing," Matteo says carefully.

"Might be everything." I hand him back his phone, already turning toward the door Valentino walked out of an hour ago, some new, sharpened focus settling into my chest alongside the fear that's been sitting there since the moment I first learned she was gone. "Either way, I'm going. Alone, like he said."

"That's a terrible idea," Alessandro says.

"Probably." I pull my jacket off the back of the chair. "But it's the first real lead we've had all day that doesn't come from a folder or a hard drive. I'm not letting it slip past me because it might be dangerous. Everything about this entire situation is dangerous. I stopped caring about that the moment I watched a plane explode with my own face supposedly still inside it."

Marco exchanges a look with Alessandro, something wary passing between them, but neither of them argues further. They know me well enough by now to understand exactly how pointless that argument would be.

I step outside to find Valentino, because whatever else has happened between us today, he deserves to know about this before I walk into it, and because some stubborn, hopeful part of me still believes he'll want to be there when we finally get somewhere real.

He's leaning against the SUV at the edge of the field, arms crossed, staring out at nothing, and he doesn't turn when I approach.

"I'm not calling my father," I say. "But we might have something anyway."

He glances over, surprise flickering across his exhausted face. "What kind of something."

"A meeting. Tomorrow night. Somebody who might know a broker moving people through Gulf ports." I stop a few feet away, giving him space to decide how angry he still wants to be. "I'm going alone. But I wanted you to know before I left."

He studies me for a long moment, something complicated working behind his eyes, anger and hope and exhaustion all fighting for space at once.

"Alone is stupid," he says finally.

"Probably."

"You could be walking into an ambush."

"I know."

"And you're going anyway."

"I am."

He shakes his head, though something almost like reluctant respect flickers across his face despite himself. "You really are as reckless as everyone warned me you'd be."

"That's not the first time I've heard that today."

"I'm sure it won't be the last." He pushes off the SUV, straightening, and for a moment I think he's going to argue further, tell me exactly how bad an idea this is. Instead he just exhales hard, some of the fight finally draining out of his shoulders. "Be careful. Whatever else is true about you, Ren, she'd never forgive either of us if you got yourself killed chasing a lead that turns out to be nothing."

"I'll be careful."

"You'd better be." He turns back toward the warehouse, falling into step beside me as we walk back inside together, and something in that simple, silent gesture tells me more than any apology could. Whatever fractures today's argument put between us, we're still standing on the same side of this, both of us chasing the same impossible hope.

Inside, Marco and Alessandro are already back at work, and Matteo's still on the phone, working through another name on whatever list he's building. I watch them for a moment, all of them exhausted and furious and refusing to stop anyway, and something steadies in my chest despite everything still sitting unresolved.

Marco catches my eye and jerks his chin toward the door. "You want backup for tomorrow night? I could sit in a car two streets over. Wouldn't get close enough to spook anyone."

"No." I shake my head. "He said alone. If he's watching, and I have to assume he is, I'm not giving him a reason to walk away before we even start talking."

"You sure about that."

"No," I admit. "But it's the call I'm making."

Marco doesn't push further. He's worked for this family long enough to know when an order is actually a request and when it isn't, and this one isn't. He goes back to his hard drives, and Alessandro pulls his headphones back on, already buried in another database search, and Matteo finally drops into his seat, scrubbing a hand over his tired face.

"Two more names on the list," he says. "Nobody's said no yet. A few of them sounded scared enough to actually mean it when they said they'd look."

"Good. Keep going."

"I will. But you should eat something before tomorrow night." He nods toward a bag of food someone brought hours ago that none of us have touched. "Can't walk into a meeting running on fumes, Ren. Not smart."

He's right, and I know he's right, but the idea of sitting down to eat while she's somewhere out there feels like a betrayal I'm not sure I can stomach, literally or otherwise. Still, I grab a piece of bread out of the bag and force myself to eat it, because collapsing from exhaustion the night before a meeting that might actually matter helps nobody.

Valentino settles into the chair across from me, quiet for once, and for a while none of us talk. The warehouse feels different than it did an hour ago, less like a dead end and more like the start of something, fragile as that hope still is.

Tomorrow night, I get a name. Maybe a real one. Maybe the first thread that actually leads somewhere instead of another dead end.

Whatever it costs me to get there, I intend to walk into that meeting and walk back out with something worth bringing her home to me.