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311
The Reckoning

There in the command center, Valentina watched as four screens erupted with live feeds from each raid team. Her heart pounded in her chest as she observed Lucas step ghostlike through Judge Romano's apartment. He was cold. He was efficient. He was everything that terrified her about him, and everything she adored about him.

Two hours later, as the sun rose over Naples, the first team smashed through the thick doors of the judge's luxury penthouse. She saw Lucas’s face on the screen, his blue eyes determined and desolate. His men flowed through the house with exacting economy, spreading through room after room like liquid. She had never seen him like this before. He was not the one that would hold her at night. He was something else entirely.

Judge Romano ran. Valentina saw him run off toward a service exit, his gray hair disheveled, his face chalk white with fear. Lucas moved faster. He intercepted him before he could even get to the door, slamming him into the wall with one massive hand splayed over his wind pipe. Romance was not happening now. Only justice.

The judge struggled, but Lucas didn't release his hold. He said something she couldn’t hear on the video feed, but she could read his lips. Where are they? What did you do?

Lucas’s men did a sweep of the apartment and brought him hard drives. Rows and rows of data. More precisely, years and years of crimes kept in tiny plastic boxes. Romano had kept everything. Videos. Financial records. Statements from those who had vanished and reappeared as different people. There’s the evidence of a system in shambles.

Valentina saw him struggle to speak, his hands moving and mouth working. He was begging. She could also read the form of his words: Please. I can help you. I can give you names. I can give you everything.

Lucas did not care. He studied the hard drives in his hands, then he looked at the judge, and something about his face let Valentina know that this motherfucker didn’t give half a shit about Romano’s life right now. Lucas nodded and his men led Romano out. The judge would be turned over to federal officials. The judge would spend the rest of his life behind bars. The judge would at last confront what he had wrought.

One council member down. Three more to come.

Valentina looked back down at the other monitors. Team Beta was already engaged at Police Chief Greco's. Gunfire flashed across the screen like fireworks. Greco had prepared for this. He had a big security force and they were prepared to die for him. Two of Lucas's men fell. Then three. Over the radio, she heard their names being called: There were only about 10 women in camp, and she was among a small group who’d noticed symptoms of what people there had been calling “walking pneumonia.” “And I thought it was so big that I daubed my chest with black iodine,” Bakken said. And on top of the generalized fear and contemplating death, McClinton thought: She couldn’t walk away from this.

But Lucas's team was better. They were faster. They looked as if they had been practicing for this their entire lives. And Greco, looking defeat in the face, decided to fight. He went for his gun and Team Beta shot him. The police chief dropped like a rock to the kitchen tile. He was dead before he came to rest.

These were finally discovered by his own men in the basement. Children. Little kids with names and dates and medical forms. Greco had profited from their pain. Greco had seen their fear, and he had cashed in.

Valentina felt the tears on her face.

Team Gamma's raid was different. At the sight of the tactical team, Senator Vitelli surrendered. His mistress was at her apartment, in bed, when they entered. He threw his hands up there and then. He was done running. He told them everything. He provided them with the location of the main vault. He described what the council had done to them. He had been blackmailed into it all those years ago, he told them, and he had never found a way out.

Vitelli would be placed in witness protection. He would simply live out some quiet existence far from Naples. He’d have his punishment but it would be enough to let him breathe.

Then came the last team. Raid Delta. The final target.

Dr. Russo operated a small clinic in the city center. He was respectable. He wore nice suits. He had a kind face. He was a pediatrician with a special expertise in caring for at-risk children.

He was also the basest of monsters.

Valentina watched on the screen as Lucas and a few of his men approached the clinic in afternoon light. Then, she came face to face with herself onscreen. She had insisted on coming. Lucas had protested against it, but she’d insisted. Some things were too important to be looked at from a distance.

They burst through the clinic doors like a boom. The receptionist tried to call after them but Lucas sidestepped around her. Dr. Russo sat in the back room, and when Valentina saw what he was doing the whole world went white.

A child. A little girl with dark hair and frightened eyes. She was perched on an examination table in nothing but her underwear. Russo was touching her. He was ogling her as if she were a slab of meat. As if she were not a person with a soul and a heart and a future.

Lucas lost himself.

Valentina had never witnessed him be out of control. Not like this. His face went absolutely white, and then it flooded with something so black and angry, she’d hardly recognized him. He seized Russo by the collar and he dashed him against the wall. His fists descended again and again. Blood splattered the white tiles. Russo had his face caved in from Lucas’s fury.

Valentina moved without thinking. She seized hold of Lucas's arm and she pulled as hard as she could. Rage filled his eyes and he spun to face her, hating her, ready for a second to hurt her too. Then he saw her. He saw her face. He saw that it was her.

“We need him alive, to testify,” she said, and there was an emotion in her voice that she could hardly contain. Rage. Grief. It was because of her fury at what she had just seen.

Lucas stopped. He stepped back. He dropped Russo to the floor, a broken thing.

Valentina turned to the child. She was weeping quietly, her body trembling. She went over to her and she got herself a blanket, she wrapped her very cautiously. She took her little hand in hers.

“The monsters aren’t there anymore,” she whispered. "You are safe. I promise you. You are safe."

Social services came. They carried the child to those who would help her heal. They led Russo out, away to a cell.

They finished collecting the evidence. They photographed everything. They documented every crime. Nothing, they made sure, could be lost or hidden or forgotten.

Valentina's phone rang.

Elena’s number was flashing there.

She answered it immediately. "Elena?"

“Valentina, come out of there!” Her voice was pure panic. “Elena had never sounded like this. I just broke the last page of your mother's evidence. The fifth council member. It is not who we thought. It is someone close to you. Someone you trust completely. They’ve been giving the council information on whatever you do.”

Valentina's blood went cold. "Who? Tell me who."

“Luca’ second,” Elena replied, her voice choking out. “The one who replaced Matteo after he was arrested. It turns out he has been pulling for Marco all along. And your command center right now, according to tracking. The place Alecia and Kennedy and Liv are hiding.”

The world stopped.