Chapter Fifteen
“SHIFTING ALLEGIANCES
DON ROMANO'S POV
The rain drums against the warehouse skylight as I pore over the security footage for the seventeenth time.
Onscreen, Eagan’s men back away from the decoy chapel, their boots sliding through fake blood we pumped into the sprinklers. The Vasquez-branded butcher shop down the block is now empty, its doors opening out to a deserted street.
Vittorio rubs his temples. "She never took the bait."
I snap the laptop shut. Astrid Sage must be screaming in one of my cells by this time, her broken fingers forcing out a confession detailing Eagan’s operations. Instead my warehouses burn all over the city, while that orphan bitch is untouched.
The side door creaks open. Blair Vasquez walks through, her emerald dress changed to tactical black. She smells like gasoline and gunpowder.
“You promised me war,” she says, “not a fucking comedy show.”
Blair slaps a photo down on the table: Victor Hunt’s eldest son emerging from a brothel, his guards visibly absent.
“The Hunts have been picking off sailors from the ports,” she purrs. “Enough to purchase private armies.”
I follow the Cyrillic tattoo on the boy’s neck — Bratva ink. "You're suggesting?"
"An alliance." She taps her stiletto against the Hunt insignia on the map between us. "We gut them together. You take the docks. I get the casinos."
The math is sound. Now that the Hunts were out, the Vasquez-Romano bloc would have control over sixty per cent of the city. Eagan would be cornered.
“And what keeps you from stabbing me in the back?” I ask.
Blair's smile is all teeth. “The same thing keeping you—we both want Eagan’s head on a spike first.”
She produces a USB. The video shows Eagan and Astrid in his study, examining papers labeled Lot 15. His hand rests at the small of her back. Protective. Possessive.
Blair’s nails claw into my desk. "He loves her. And love makes men stupid."
Victor Hunt arrives at midnight, his usual swagger muted by the bandage on his neck. Last week someone tried to slit his throat — probably one of Blair’s girls.
"Romano." He nods at my men, with their holstered guns. "You seen the news? Eagan's little whore—"
Blair’s knife glints at his jugular. “Say another word, and I’ll finish what my dancer started.”
Victor pales. "What the hell is this?"
I pour three fingers of bourbon. "A lesson in loyalty."
The screen flashes with evidence of Hunt’s Bratva connections — weapons shipments, coded ledgers, even video footage of his son toasting the Pakhan.
Blair pushes him away and lets him go. "Choose. Die tonight as a traitor or die next week as a hero when Eagan ‘exposes’ you.”
Victor steadies his whiskey glass. "You want me to play bait."
“Better than being a corpse,” I say.
Three nights later, Hunt’s “secret” meeting with the Bratva is a complete success.
Too perfectly.
The men of Eagan strike like clockwork, blasting the dockside warehouse to hell. But the crates are packed with sand. The Bratva enforcers? Blair’s heartless guns for hire in cheap suits.
Through the surveillance van, I watch Eagan come to that realization a second too late.
Astrid isn't with him.
The camera shakes as Hunt’s voice bellows through a loudspeaker: “Looking for somebody, King?”
Then the shot switches to live footage of Astrid — alone in Eagan’s library, rifling through the Lot files.
Blair taps her earpiece. "Move in."
Blair fidgeting with the wire tucked under her emerald dress, the ruby brooch at her collar catching the light of the camera lens. "Remember—he'll test it."
I light a cigar, monitoring the monitors in our makeshift surveillance room. "Let him. The bug's in your bracelet."
Looking into a mirror, she smirks while applying blood-red lipstick. “Five minutes to showtime.”
The scheme is straightforward, Blair gives Eagan an ultimatum to join her against the Hunts, he refuses because he’s not a fool, and then she makes sure to leave a “forgotten” USB loaded with fake intel.
A classic honeypot play.
Vittorio hands her the drive. “Hunt’s shipping routes are on this map. The fake ones."
Blair slips it into her cleavage. “Let’s see how long it takes for him to bite.”
The study in Eagan reeks of leather and gun oil. He doesn’t get up as Blair walks in, just continues to clean his Glock.
"Come to stab me again?" he asks without looking up.
Blair sinks into the chair opposite him. "Come to make you rich."
She presents the terms: joint offensive against the Hunts, divided territories, no double crosses.
Eagan's laugh is a dry crack. "And Romano?"
“I think I’m here to kill you.” She leans forward. “But we both know he’s the actual problem.”
Through the hidden camera I watch Eagan’s fingers tense on the gun. He's not buying it.
"Let me guess," he says. "You've got proof?"
Blair dramatically pulls out the USB. "Everything.”
Eagan takes it... and pours it into his whiskey glass.
The feed cuts to static.
Blair leaves suddenly, just as planned, her “rage” sending a vase of lilies smashing on the marble floor.
Vittorio curses in the surveillance van. "He knew."
I rewind the footage. Blair’s bracelet never left Eagan’s sight. The bug.
"Not entirely." I gesture toward the glass in which the USB sinks, its casing already degrading. "The drive was waterproof."
The real trap was never in the data — it was in the nano-tracker in the plastic. And now coursing through Eagan's bloodstream.
Midnight at the docks. For instance, Eagan’s men close in on Hunt’s warehouse, just as our false intel led him to believe.
But it's not drugs they find.
It's Blair.
She is among the crates, Hunt’s heir shackled at her feet. “Took you long enough,” she calls into the shadows.
Eagan emerges into the light, his pupils grotesquely dilated. The tracker’s working — his reflexes will be slowed by 0.3 seconds. Just enough.
Blair draws her pistol. "Romano sends his regards."
“Then suddenly the entire warehouse blows up.
The roof of the warehouse vibrates under my knees as the explodes at dock 7, lighting up the harbor. Through my sights, I watch Eagan scurry toward dock 12 — exactly where we want him.
Vittorio's voice hissing in my earpiece: “He took the bait. Alone."
In the smoke, Blair Vasquez appears, pulling Hunt’s unconscious heir by the collar. The boy’s leg has made a bloody smear on the concrete. She dumps him close to the extraction van and clicks her earpiece.
"Romano. Package secured." Her voice has the exact combination of exhaustion and triumph. "Eagan took the bait?"
I adjust the scope. "He's inside now."
The radio crackles again. “But at this point, Don—tracker shows Eagan’s heart rate elevated but steady. He knows it's a trap."
Of course he does. This man has survived this long for a reason. Because knowing that a trap exists and not falling into it are two separate things.
“Begin containment protocol,” I say softly.
The first shipping container blows up before I even finish speaking. Not enough to destroy — only to discombobulate. Through the scope, I see Eagan stagger as debris pours down. His left arm dangles uselessly at his side — Bogdan’s work before Blair finished him off — but his right hand never relinquishes its grip on that damned Glock.
Vittorio tenses beside me. “The Bratva squad needs to be engaging at this point.”
Just like that three shadows step forth from the maze of containers. Ivanov's best men. They carry themselves with rehearsed precision, outflanking positions.
Eagan doesn't shoot. Doesn't run. Just stands there in the open, head cocked as if he’s tuning in to some private joke.
Then—
The head of the first Bratva enforcer snaps back before he’s even done firing up his rifle. The other clutches his throat — wire glinting in the low light. The third has little time to scream before the shipping container behind him opens.
Lorenzo Ivanov staggers out, gold tooth ripped out, face a ruined mess.
“Romano—” he gases up at the rafters, where he knows I’m watching. "It's a—"
Eagan shoots him in the forehead.
In the Surveillance Van
Vittorio grabs my arm. "We need to go. Now."
I shake him off, and watch through the scope as Eagan crouches down next to Ivanov's body. Ignoring the dead man’s body, he pulls something from the man’s pocket — a burner phone — and holds it up to the security camera.
The screen crackles to life with a feed: Astrid, sitting serenely in my study, leafing through my ledger.
She glances up at the camera and mouths: ‘Your turn.
The bullet blows the skylight open a moment after Vittorio jerks me back.
"Go!" He pushes me out to the fire escape.
There, Eagan is already in motion — not toward the exit, but deeper into the warehouse. Down the underground tunnels. Toward my other safehouse.
Vittorio loses his breath as we enter the alley. "They knew. The whole damn time."
I check my watch. But Blair has to be at the rendezvous by now. The Hunt heir in tow. The Bratva pacified. The docks still ours.
"Doesn't matter." I smoke a cigar with steady hands. "Phase two starts now."
The last thing I see before the car screeches away is Eagan coming out of the warehouse, Ivanov’s blood still wet on his shoes.
His two fingers salute his temple tarnished by his sarcasm.
Checkmate.