blood and war.

traitor in the room

Chapter 4: The Traitor in the Room

The safehouse stank of mildew and old cigarettes. Jayce pushed through the rusted metal door, Maya's flash drive burning a hole in his pocket. The warehouse district had been dead for years—perfect for what came next.

Inside, two figures waited in the dim light of battery-powered lamps.

Rico "The Bull" Martinez leaned against a support beam, arms crossed over his barrel chest. Scars mapped his knuckles like a street atlas. He nodded once when Jayce entered. "Thought you might've gotten yourself killed on the way over."

"Not yet." Jayce moved to the center of the room where a folding table stood covered in stolen city maps and blueprints.

The second figure stayed in the shadows near the back wall. Tall, thin, moving with the careful precision of someone who'd spent time in cages. His face was all sharp angles and suspicious eyes.

"That's Bones," Rico said. "Demolitions expert. Did eight years in Rikers for blowing up an ATM network. He's solid."

Bones stepped forward into the light. His fingers were stained with chemical burns. "I don't work for free."

"Nobody does." Jayce dropped a stack of cash on the table—half of what he'd earned in the fight pit. "Consider it a down payment."

Bones counted it quickly, then pocketed the bills. "What's the target?"

Before Jayce could answer, Maya burst through a side entrance, laptop bag slung over her shoulder. Her hair was pulled back tight, eyes alert and scanning. "We've got a problem. Grim's people are sniffing around the café. I had to scrub my hard drives and bail."

"They know about you?" Jayce asked.

"Not yet. But they're looking." She set up her laptop on the table, fingers already flying across the keys. "We need to move fast. What'd you get from Ghost?"

Jayce pulled out the backpack he'd taken from Grim's runner. He unzipped it and dumped the contents on the table. Plastic-wrapped bricks of white powder scattered across the blueprints. Street value of maybe two hundred grand.

Rico whistled low. "That's a lot of product."

"It's a sample." Jayce leaned over the table, studying the maps. "Ghost was making a delivery to one of Grim's distribution warehouses. Pier 19, down by the old shipping yards."

Maya pulled up satellite images on her screen. "I've been monitoring that location. Heavy security. Armed guards rotating every six hours. Cameras on every corner. Motion sensors on the perimeter."

"How much product we talking?" Bones asked, suddenly interested.

"Three million, maybe more." Jayce traced a finger along the warehouse outline. "Grim moves it twice a month. Next shipment comes in forty-eight hours."

The room went quiet. Even Rico shifted his weight, suddenly nervous.

"That's suicide," Maya said. "Grim will have twenty guys minimum protecting that much weight."

"Thirty," Jayce corrected. "But most of them are idiots with guns. They're expecting rivals, not a precision job."

Bones circled the table, studying the blueprints. "You want to hit it during delivery?"

"After." Jayce pointed to a side entrance. "They unload through here. Takes them two hours to process everything and log it in their system. That's when they're vulnerable—tired, distracted, counting money instead of watching doors."

"Security system?" Maya asked.

"I need you to kill it. Cameras, alarms, everything. Can you do it remotely?"

Maya chewed her lip, thinking. "If I can get access to their network. I'd need to physically plant a device inside their router. That means someone goes in first."

"I'll do it." Jayce straightened up. "I get in, plant the device, get out. Then we wait for the delivery. Once Maya cuts the power, we breach from three sides simultaneously." He looked at each of them. "Rico, you and I go through the main entrance. Bones, you take the back loading dock. Maya stays mobile in a van, coordinating and watching for cops."

"What about resistance?" Rico asked. "Thirty guys don't just roll over."

"We don't give them a choice. Fast and overwhelming. In and out in eight minutes max."

Bones tapped the blueprint. "I can rig charges on the support beams here and here. Controlled demolition. Building comes down twenty minutes after we leave, destroys any evidence."

"No." Jayce's voice was sharp. "No bombs. We're not murderers. Guards get zip-tied and left in the parking lot. Anyone tries to be a hero, we put them down non-lethal. But nobody dies unless they force it."

Bones shrugged. "Your call. Charges would be cleaner."

"It's not up for debate."

Maya pulled up building schematics. "There's a ventilation system running through the east wall. Maintenance access is usually unsecured. That's your entry point for planting the device."

They spent the next two hours hammering out details. Entry routes, exit strategies, equipment lists, contingencies. Maya mapped guard patrol patterns from hacked security footage. Bones calculated load-bearing capacities and blast radiuses despite Jayce's veto. Rico cleaned weapons with methodical focus.

By the time they finished, dawn was threatening the horizon.

"We good?" Jayce asked, looking at each face.

Rico cracked his knuckles. "I'm in. Been wanting to bloody Grim's nose for years."

"Equipment will cost," Bones said. "Five grand up front."

Jayce nodded. "Maya will wire it. What about you?"

Maya closed her laptop slowly. Her eyes met his, and for a moment something flickered there—hesitation? Guilt? Then it was gone.

"I'm in," she said quietly.

"Then we hit it tomorrow night." Jayce rolled up the blueprints. "Get rest. Check your gear. We don't get a second chance at this."

They dispersed slowly. Rico left first, melting into the early morning streets. Bones followed, already texting his equipment contacts. Maya packed up her laptop but lingered.

"Jayce."

He turned. "Yeah?"

"Why are you doing this? Really?"

"You know why. Grim took everything from me. From all of us."

"That's not an answer." She stepped closer. "You could run. Take the money from those fights, disappear. Why start a war you might not win?"

Jayce thought of Trey's grave. Of his father's betrayal. Of Malik's whispered apology before pulling the trigger that never fired.

"Because running is just dying slow," he said. "At least this way I choose the battlefield."

Maya studied him for a long moment, then nodded. "Okay. I'll see you tomorrow."

She left.

Jayce stood alone in the empty warehouse, listening to the city wake up outside. Somewhere in the distance, sirens wailed. The war had already started. Everything now was just momentum.

He pulled out the burner phone and sent a single text to an unknown number: Tomorrow. Pier 19. Be ready.

No reply came. He didn't expect one.

Twenty-four hours later, everything went perfectly.

Jayce slipped into the warehouse through the ventilation shaft exactly as planned. He planted Maya's device in the router room, a small black box with blinking lights that meant nothing to him but everything to her. He was out in seven minutes, unseen.

The delivery arrived on schedule. Three trucks, two dozen guards, Grim's lieutenant supervising with a clipboard. They unloaded pallets of product wrapped in industrial plastic. Jayce watched from across the street through binoculars, counting heads and weapons.

"Thirty-two hostiles," he whispered into his radio. "Maya, you ready?"

"Device is active. On your signal."

"Bones?"

"Back entrance is clear. Charges are set to blow the locks."

"Rico?"

"Let's do this."

Jayce took a breath. "Kill the lights in three... two... one... now."

The warehouse went dark. Shouts erupted inside. Flashlight beams cut through windows.

"Go!"

Rico kicked through the front entrance, Jayce right behind him. Bones blew the back locks with shaped charges that sounded like thunder. They flooded in from three directions, weapons raised, shouting commands.

"On the ground! Now! Hands behind your heads!"

It was chaos. Guards scrambled for weapons. Jayce fired twice—rubber bullets that dropped men like stones. Rico moved like a wrecking ball, smashing anyone who resisted. Bones swept the back section, his shotgun booming.

Eight minutes. That's all it took.

Guards lay zip-tied and groaning in the parking lot. The product was loaded into their van. No fatalities. No major injuries except broken bones and bruised egos.

They peeled out as police sirens closed in, Maya driving like she was born behind a wheel. Two blocks away, they ditched the van and split into a backup sedan. Five blocks after that, they switched again.

By midnight, they were back at the safehouse, surrounded by three million in stolen product and the knowledge that they'd just declared open war on Grim Holloway.

"Holy shit," Rico breathed, staring at the stacked bricks. "We actually did it."

Bones was already calculating. "We move this smart, we're set for life. Five ways, clean split."

"Four ways," Jayce corrected. "I know a guy who needs medical supplies. He gets a cut for helping us fence this."

Nobody argued.

Maya pulled out a bottle of whiskey she'd stashed in her bag—good stuff, not the bottom-shelf poison. She poured four glasses.

"To the beginning," she said, raising hers.

They toasted. The whiskey burned going down, but it tasted like victory.

Rico laughed, the sound genuine and surprised. "We just robbed Grim Holloway. We're either the bravest people in this city or the dumbest."

"Probably both," Bones muttered, but he was smiling.

Jayce felt something unfamiliar in his chest—hope, maybe. Or purpose. His crew. His war. His terms.

For the first time since crawling out of that warehouse beaten and broken, he felt alive.

Maya's phone buzzed.

She glanced at it, face neutral, then slipped it back in her pocket. "Just spam."

But Jayce saw something in her eyes—a flash of something wrong. Before he could process it, his own burner phone vibrated in his jacket.

He pulled it out.

Unknown number. An image attachment.

He opened it.

His blood turned to ice.

It was a screenshot of a text message. Maya's phone number at the top. The message read: Good work infiltrating his crew. Payment sent. -G

Below it, a bank transfer confirmation. Fifty thousand dollars. Deposited three hours ago.

Jayce's hand tightened around the phone. He looked up slowly.

Maya was watching him, her face pale, eyes wide with something that might have been fear or might have been guilt.

The whiskey glass slipped from Rico's hand and shattered on the concrete floor.

"Jayce..." Maya started, her voice barely a whisper.

He raised his gun and pointed it at her head.

Nobody moved.

Nobody breathed.

The safehouse that had felt like victory thirty seconds ago now felt like a tomb.