KAEL

The convoy moved through the city like a mechanized serpent, twelve vehicles, sixty armed personnel, enough firepower to wage a small war.

Which was exactly what we were about to do.

I sat in the lead vehicle, tactical vest secure, weapons checked and loaded. The wound Hayes had stitched up after my confrontation with Sabrina throbbed dully, but I barely registered it. Pain was irrelevant. Only the mission mattered.

Extract Aria. Eliminate threats.

Everything else was noise.

Hayes sat beside me, coordinating with the other teams via encrypted radio. "Alpha team in position at main entrance. Bravo approaching service entrance. Charlie, that’s us, ready to breach the delivery tunnel."

I checked my Glock one final time. Seventeen rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber. Backup piece at my ankle. Combat knife strapped to my thigh.

Everything I needed to paint that underground facility red.

"All teams, stand by," Hayes said into his radio. Then, to me: "Sir, once we breach, it’s going to be chaos. Stay behind cover, let my men, "

"No."

He looked at me, and whatever he saw in my expression made him fall silent.

"I’m not hiding," I said quietly. "I’m leading this assault. That’s not a request."

Hayes studied me for a moment longer, then nodded slowly. "Understood."

The vehicles stopped three blocks from the target. We’d go the rest of the way on foot, quieter, harder to detect.

I stepped out into the night air, the weight of my gear familiar and grounding. Around me, tactical teams assembled in practiced formation. SWAT. My private security contractors, all ex-military, all trained killers who’d followed me into worse situations than this.

Agent Morrison approached, his own team fanning out to secure the perimeter. "Mr. Roman, we’ll hold the outer cordon. Make sure no one escapes."

"Especially Andrew," I said. "If he’s in that building, I want him alive."

"And if he resists?"

I met his gaze. "Then make him regret it."

Morrison nodded and moved off to position his people.

Hayes gathered Charlie team around me, eight men, their faces darkened with camouflage paint, eyes sharp and alert.

"The delivery tunnel entrance is here." He pulled up the schematic on his tablet, highlighting our route. "Fifty meters through the tunnel, then we’re in the underground level. Unknown number of hostiles. Priority one is locating Ms. Thorne and getting her out."

"Rules of engagement?" one of the men asked.

I answered before Hayes could. "Anyone armed is a target. Anyone who gets between us and Aria is a target. Anyone who doesn’t drop their weapon immediately is a target." I paused. "Are we clear?"

Eight heads nodded in unison.

"Let’s move."

We approached the tunnel entrance through an alley littered with debris and abandoned equipment. The metal grate covering the entrance had been recently used, fresh scratches on the concrete, oil residue still wet.

Hayes and another operator lifted it carefully, minimizing noise. Below, darkness yawned like a mouth.

I went down first.

The tunnel was narrow, damp, the walls slick with condensation. Our boots squelched in puddles that smelled of rust and rot. Somewhere ahead, machinery hummed, the same sound that would mask our approach until we were right on top of them.

We moved in formation, weapons up, night vision engaged. The tunnel stretched ahead for what felt like miles but was probably only fifty meters, just as Hayes had said.

Then, light ahead. An opening.

Hayes signaled for us to hold position. He crept forward, peering around the corner, then returned.

"Two guards at the bottom of the stairs," he whispered. "Armed. Looks like AKs."

"Can we take them quietly?" I asked.

"Maybe. If we’re fast."

"Do it."

Two of Hayes’s men moved forward, suppressors attached to their weapons. I watched them work, smooth, professional, decades of training condensed into seconds of lethal efficiency.

Two muffled shots. Two bodies dropping.

We moved immediately, stepping over the corpses and ascending the stairs into the underground facility.

The first thing I noticed was how large it was. This wasn’t just a wine cellar, it was a full underground complex, probably built during Prohibition for bootlegging. Multiple rooms branched off a central corridor. Concrete walls. Industrial lighting. Perfect for hiding criminal operations.

Perfect for holding a kidnapping victim.

And that’s when everything went to shit.

"CONTACT!"

The shout came from somewhere ahead, followed immediately by the staccato bark of automatic weapons fire.

The corridor erupted in chaos.

Gunfire from multiple angles. Muzzle flashes in the dim light. The smell of cordite and concrete dust. Bullets ricocheting off walls, sparking in the darkness.

Los Fantasmas hadn’t just been waiting.

They’d been ready for us.

"AMBUSH!" Hayes shouted into his radio. "All teams, we are engaged! Multiple hostiles!"

I dropped behind cover, an overturned table, and returned fire. My first shot caught a man leaning out from a doorway, the bullet taking him in the throat. He went down gurgling.

My second shot missed as the target ducked back.

My third didn’t.

Training took over. Years of it. Muscle memory from a dozen deployments, a hundred firefights, countless hours on the range honing my skills to a razor’s edge.

I moved.

Not hiding. Not waiting.

Advancing.

Hayes was shouting something, probably telling me to stay down, to let his people handle it, but I couldn’t hear him over the roar of blood in my ears.

Someone appeared in my peripheral vision, weapon swinging toward me. I put two rounds center mass before he could fire. He dropped.

Another one. Headshot. Down.

I was moving through the corridor like I’d done this a thousand times before.

Because I had.

This was what I was made for. What I’d spent a decade perfecting. The United States Army had taken a young man with anger issues and refined him into a weapon. Taught him to kill efficiently, dispassionately, perfectly.

They’d called me "The Reaper" in Afghanistan.

Because when I came for you, you were already dead. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

Ivan was the first to crack that part of me but I lost him too quickly so it was easy to quietly slip back into that part of me..

But then Aria came along and softened it. Had made me want to be something other than a killer. Had made me choose gentleness, vulnerability, humanity.

But Aria wasn’t here.

And the old Kael, the Colonel, the Reaper, was back.

A man rounded the corner ahead, firing wildly. I dropped to one knee, steadied my aim, and put a bullet between his eyes. His head snapped back and he crumpled.

"CLEAR LEFT!" someone shouted.

"MOVING RIGHT!"

The firefight was spreading throughout the facility. I could hear Alpha and Bravo teams engaging upstairs, their gunfire mixing with ours in a deafening symphony of violence.

I reached a door, kicked it open, weapon up.