2025-04-24 21:18:46Dino tightened his fists, his breath steady as he crouched behind an overturned car. The night air smelled of gasoline and sweat.
They had been cornered by Alejandro's men in an abandoned warehouse near the port. Five men armed to the teeth. They weren’t leaving anything to chance this time. “Elena, stay low,” Dino whispered. Her pulse pounding in her ears. Elena nodded. The warehouse had become a battlefield. A shot rang out, sparking off the metal near Dino’s head. He moved. He rolled forward in a blur, grabbed a rusted metal pipe, and struck one of the gunmen across the jaw. The man crumpled before he could even react. The others turned. Another shot. Dino twisted. He didn’t stop despite feeling a burning pain across his upper arm as a bullet grazed him. He lunged at the next man, slamming his knee into his gut, then cracking his elbow against his skull. Two down. Three to go. Dino ducked as a thug charged, swinging a crowbar, grabbed the man’s wrist, and yanked. The crowbar clattered to the ground as Dino delivered a brutal kick to the knee. The man screamed. Then the lights cut out. A sudden hush fell over the warehouse. Elena gasped. “Dino?” He whispered. ”I'm here.” The battlefield was engulfed in darkness, turning it into a guessing game. Echoes of footsteps were heard, but it was impossible to tell where they came from. Dino reached for Elena’s hand. “Stay behind me.” Another gunshot. A lighter flicking open. A spark illuminated the shadows. Alejandro’s voice. Cold. Cruel. Confidence. “Hermano, you can’t run forever.” --- His men had failed him again. Alejandro leaned against a stack of crates, watching the flame from the lighter dance between his fingers. Dino was better than he expected. Not just a former actor. A fighter. A survivor. Now a problem. But everyone had limits. Alejandro smirked. “Burn it.” He closed the lighter with a snap and turned to one of his remaining men. The thug hesitated. “Boss?” His smile didn’t waver. “Set the whole place on fire. Let’s see how well my dear brother fights when the walls are melting around him.” The thug nodded and tossed a Molotov cocktail. The glass shattered. Fire erupted. --- Flames surged, licking at the walls. Smoke curled toward the ceiling, filling the warehouse with thick, suffocating heat. Dino grabbed Elena’s arm. “We need to move now.” They were running out of time. A metal beam groaned overhead, the fire eating away at the supports. Dino sprinted, dodging falling debris, his grip tight on Elena’s wrist. A bullet slammed into a crate inches from them. Dino whirled, shielding Elena as another thug advanced, gun raised. Too close. Dino lets go of Elena, steps forward, grabs the man’s arm, twisting it at an unnatural angle. The gun fired wildly before clattering to the floor. With a brutal blow, Dino knocked the man unconscious. Elena grabbed the fallen gun. Her hands shook, but she held it steady. The fire spread fast, cutting off their exit. The loading bay was their only way out. And Alejandro was waiting. --- “Brave, Dino. Very brave.” Alejandro smirked as he stood by the warehouse doors, as the fire cast his shadow against the wall. Dino stepped forward, fists clenched. Alejandro chuckled. “But foolish.” He pulled a gun from his coat and aimed it directly at Elena. Dino froze. Alejandro’s smirk widened. He had won. --- A gunshot rang out. Elena screamed. In the blink of the moment, she thought of her father, hoping he is still alive. Dino’s world tilted. One of them was hit. But who?
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Chapter 140
The rain had slowed by dawn, but the chill lingered. The warehouse in Milan was quieter now, but inside its steel walls, the tension had never been louder.Riva lay on a medical cot, her breathing shallow but stable. A white bandage wrapped tightly around her thigh, stained with faint pink. Tomiwa stood guard at the door, rifle slung casually over his shoulder, eyes alert for any sign of The Crows.Dino stood by the window, staring out at the grey morning light. His fists clenched as he replayed Riva’s warning over and over again in his mind. The Crows.Paula approached silently. "She’ll recover. She said they tracked her from Zurich. They're ghosts. She barely got out."Dino nodded. "Sanchez planned this in layers. Mirador, Navaro... and now a third unit completely off-grid. This wasn’t just legacy preservation. He wanted scorched earth if he ever went down."Paula looked over her shoulder, then lowered her voice. "Alejandro’s been... distant. Since yesterday. He hasn’t said a word t
Chapter 139
The warehouse in Milan reeked of oil, gunmetal, and burnt rubber. Rain drummed against the corrugated roof in a steady rhythm, each drop a drumbeat to the gathering storm.Dino paced in the shadows, his jaw tight, the weight of their victories doing little to ease the tension clawing at his nerves. Zurich had been a win—but it was only a scratch on the surface. Mirador was in custody, but his silence thus far was a louder scream than any confession.Sergio stood by the makeshift monitor wall, watching a live feed from the G-8 security compound where Mirador was being held. “Still nothing. Not a damn word.”“He knows his fate,” Paula muttered, crossing her arms. “If he speaks, he dies by the hands of Sanchez’s loyalists. If he stays quiet, he’ll rot.”Tomiwa walked in then, soaked to the bone but with fire in his eyes. “Intercepted chatter. A coded message was left outside the Zurich site. It’s from Sanchez. He’s trying to reach someone.”Dino’s gaze snapped to him. “Who?”Tomiwa tosse
Chapter 138
The storm hit Genoa that night. Rain lashed at the windows of Dino’s high-rise office, now serving as the nerve center of their alliance. Lightning split the sky in violent forks, illuminating the tension that never truly left the room.Dino stood before the massive glass pane, the city below flickering with half-dimmed lights and panic. News of the vault explosions had sent shockwaves across Europe, and while the world tried to make sense of the attacks, Dino was several steps ahead. He had to be. Especially now that Sanchez was no longer a shadowy cartel figure pulling strings—he was caged. But dangerous still."He won’t stay quiet," Tomiwa muttered, tossing a newly intercepted message on the table. It was written in code, but the threat was loud and clear. Capello and Elena. They were targets.Sergio, seated at the corner of the room with a pistol on the table before him, let out a low whistle. "Man’s in prison, and he's still swinging blades. This guy is relentless.""And smart,"
Chapter 137
The soft hum of fluorescent lights buzzed in the concrete bowels of the high-security prison outside Palermo. Inside a heavily guarded wing, Sanchez sat behind reinforced glass, his face older but no less venomous. His once-expensive suit was replaced with an orange jumpsuit, but his eyes burned with undiminished rage.Two guards flanked the security post while a prison psychologist observed him from the other side of the partition. He barely blinked."I want to send a message," Sanchez said coolly.The psychologist raised an eyebrow. "This isn’t a press room."Sanchez leaned forward, revealing a stitched scar on his temple, a reminder of his violent capture. "Then write this down. Tell Capello... and Elena. The walls of this cage won't last forever. And when I get out, I’ll bury them both."The guards stepped in, but Sanchez didn’t resist. As they dragged him back into his cell, he laughed—low and venomous."Time doesn’t heal debts. It just fattens them."---Milan – Rooftop Safehous
Chapter 136
The dawn was bleak over Milan, casting long shadows across the shattered skyline. The fallout from the strikes against Mirador had left a void — and in that silence, new threats were already clawing to the surface.Dino stood in the armory, his fingers brushing over the cold steel of a modified pistol. The vault explosions, the fall of Vexler, and the disruption of Mirador’s European backbone — it was everything they had fought for. But there was no triumph in his eyes. Not yet.Sergio approached, his face smeared with soot and cuts. “The final reports are in. Vexler’s entire chain collapsed. Offshore accounts frozen, the Lisbon office burnt out, and the rest — scattered. We should be celebrating.”Dino looked up slowly. “We took out the snake’s head. But the body is still thrashing.”Alejandro strode into the room, black gloves in one hand, the other holding a blood-stained dossier. He hadn’t said much since the strike in Madrid. Something had changed. The Alejandro who had stood bes
Chapter 135
The Swiss Alps stood like eternal sentinels under a gray sky, their peaks sheathed in white silence. Somewhere beneath them, the Genesis facility awaited.Sergio tightened his gloves and adjusted the scope on his rifle. He crouched behind a snow-covered ridge, eyes fixed on the distant structure nestled into the mountain face. The facility wasn’t marked on any map. No lights. No footprints. Just shadows.Beside him, Tomiwa checked the schematics again. “Thermal says two heat signatures inside. Small security. This is more a tomb than a lab.”Sergio nodded. “Still. Whatever Vexler left behind, it was worth hiding this deep.”Tomiwa shifted his gaze toward the other ridge, where Alejandro stood alone, silent, staring down at the complex below. The wind howled around him, but he didn’t flinch. He looked like a ghost—or worse, a man reborn.“He’s different,” Tomiwa muttered.Sergio glanced up. “Back to his old self.”“More like... what he was trying not to be.”---Back at the temporary b
