Chapter 295: What The Fuck Is Happening?

The convoy’s security detail...two per truck, fired a few shots for appearance’s sake and then scattered, running in opposite directions as they’d been instructed. The men on Dante’s assault team didn’t bother chasing them. They had bigger fish.

They hit the trucks. Loaded them with the fake cargo. Loaded them with the fake cash. Celebrated their victory while Dimitri’s teams tracked every vehicle, every man, every movement.

"Phase two is a go," Dimitri said once he had confirmation that the ambush was complete.

The second convoy proceeded without interference. The real cargo made it to the distribution center in Red Hook. And Dimitri’s teams began the process of following the vehicles that had participated in the ambush, narrowing down where they were going, who they were meeting, where Dante was hiding.

But something was wrong. Something felt off.

"Sir," Marco’s voice came through the comms, and there was a quality to it that made Dimitri’s instincts scream alarm. "We’re picking up a secondary channel. Encrypted, military-grade. It’s not Dante’s usual security frequency."

"Details," Dimitri demanded.

"Three words," Marco said. "Repeat, three words. ’It’s a trap.’ Then the channel goes dark."

Dimitri’s blood went cold.

He was already moving before the thought fully formed. Before he could finish processing what that meant.

"Standby," Dimitri commanded, his voice shifting into the cold calm of a man operating on pure instinct and training. "I’m checking something."

He pulled up the video feeds from the ambush. Slowed them down. Watched the security personnel scatter. Watched them run in what was supposed to be panic and desperation.

And there....freeze frame. The man on the left side of the first truck. The one who was supposed to scatter west. He was wearing an earpiece. An earpiece that Marco’s team hadn’t accounted for.

Because it wasn’t part of the operation.

"Fuck," Dimitri hissed.

They’d been outplayed. Dante had a mole. Not just in Dimitri’s organization....because Jennifer was still in the safe house, still under watch, still hadn’t had contact with anyone else, but somewhere deeper. Someone who knew about the trap. Someone who knew the operational details.

Which meant either Jennifer had told someone else, which is impossible, or....

Or Dante had his own intelligence network. His own ability to track encrypted communications. His own way of knowing what was about to happen.

"All teams, consolidate," Dimitri ordered, his mind already moving through the implications. "Pull back to the primary safe houses. We need to...."

The explosion cut him off.

Secondary monitor. One of the vehicles that had ambushed the convoy. It detonated in a massive fireball on the Williamsburg Bridge, taking three of Dante’s men with it.

Then another explosion. On a side street in Astoria, a second vehicle went up.

Then a third.

Then all six of Dante’s vehicles that had been involved in the ambush were burning.

"What the fuck is happening?" Mike’s voice came through the comms, panicked for the first time since Dimitri had known him.

Dimitri already understood.

Dante wasn’t trying to beat them. Dante was trying to cover his tracks.

Every vehicle that had participated in the ambush was being destroyed. Every piece of evidence was being erased. Every man who might have talked was being eliminated, along with anyone in the near vicinity who might have seen something.

It was a scorched-earth response. It was Dante saying: I’m not running anymore. I’m coming for you. And I’m not leaving anything behind that you can use against me.

"Marco," Dimitri said, his voice deadly quiet. "Status on the location of the secondary intelligence channel. The one that said ’it’s a trap.’"

"Triangulating," Marco said. "The signal originated from... Jesus Christ, sir. It originated from inside your penthouse."

The world went still.

The penthouse. Eve.

Dimitri was already moving, already running toward the exit of the van, already throwing orders that no one would hear because he was too busy moving, too busy becoming the thing that he’d worked so hard to convince himself he’d put away.

"Lock down the building," he said, his voice a lethal whisper. "No one in, no one out. Kill anyone who tries."

"What about the penthouse?" Marco asked.

"I’m going," Dimitri said. And he hung up the comms because the next part he couldn’t broadcast. The next part was between him and Dante.

The next part was going to end in blood.

Lots of it.

The drive from Brooklyn to Manhattan took twelve minutes. Dimitri made it in seven, running red lights, running stop signs, cutting off traffic with an utter disregard for consequence or safety that would have terrified anyone who was in the car with him.

But he was alone. Just him and the raging, all-consuming need to get to Eve before anything happened to her.

The building was locked down. His security team was in position, weapons visible, making a statement about what would happen to anyone who tried to breach the perimeter.

"Report," Dimitri commanded as he entered the lobby.

"Penthouse is secure," his lead security officer said immediately. "No breaches. No unauthorized access. Eve is asleep in the bedroom. We have two men in the room at all times, rotating every two hours."

Dimitri’s heart rate slowed from the lethal pace it had been maintaining. Only marginally, because the threat might not be over, but enough to let him think.

"The intelligence channel," he said. "Where did the signal originate?"

"We traced it to a phone," the security officer said. "Found it in the penthouse. Burner phone, hidden in the air vent near the bedroom. We’re running diagnostics to see who was on the other end."

Dimitri felt a spike of cold fury.

Someone had placed a phone in his penthouse. Someone had been monitoring his operations in real-time. Someone had been close enough to Eve to plant surveillance equipment, and Dimitri hadn’t known about it until it was too late.

"Take me to the penthouse," he said. "And get every security feed from the past seventy-two hours. I want to know how someone got in here without being detected."

The answer came as he was ascending to the top floor.

A maintenance person. Someone whose credentials checked out. Someone who’d requested access to the HVAC system to do routine maintenance. Someone who’d been on the approved list for weeks, no red flags, no indication that they were anything other than who they claimed to be.

Someone who worked for Dante.