Page 45 of Angelo’s Vengeance (The Commission #3)

ANGELO

There was something brutal about the Romanian sky in April. Not stormy. Not serene. Just blank — like God turned his face away.

We landed under fake names with burner phones and adrenaline stitching our plan together like a half-healed wound. No greetings, no customs, on a runway that was hidden from the tourist traps of Bucharest. Just a convoy of black vehicles waiting like vultures, engines rumbling low.

The warehouse on the outskirts appeared to have been ravaged by time and left behind. A rusted monolith with broken windows and concertina wire strung like barbed lace along the fence. The kind of place nightmares grew teeth and mercenaries were bred.

But someone had been here recently. Tire tracks. Fresh gravel. A crooked security camera blinked like a drunk eye above the east gate.

“Too sloppy,” I muttered.

“Or bait,” Maxim said beside me, arms crossed. The wind ruffled his coat, but he didn’t flinch.

Ilias was glassy-eyed, binoculars pressed to his face. “She’s here,” he said, voice grave. “She has to be.”

“She’s careful,” Maxim added. “But this? This would be arrogance. She’d have to think we’re slower than we are.”

“Or she wants us to come,” Conall said, cocking his rifle like he was cracking his knuckles.

The edge of Irish in his voice was sharper here, which had been added in by his father through sheer violence, not by any exposure to the actual beauty of Ireland.

I wondered if Conall knew that the colloquialisms he used in his speech sometimes echoed the father he hated.

I stood with them on the overlook, wrapped in black, pistol heavy on my hip.

Santelli. That name used to be a shield.

Lately, it felt more like a brand that had been ironed onto my soul.

Carlotta would hear it in the silence before we shattered her doors.

If the others thought I would hold back, they thought wrong.

She was close. I felt it—like a splinter buried deep. Or at least… she’d been here recently enough to poison the air.

We split into teams.

I took Ilias. He moved like a man who’d forgotten how to walk without rage. The kind of fury that didn’t roar anymore — it simmered, low and slow, under the skin.

The side entrance was chained, but the lock had been tampered with — not professionally. Sloppy. Someone in a hurry, or someone cocky.

“Camera’s looping,” I whispered. Veronica’s tech team, all the way in New York, had hijacked the feed. The glitch was subtle—just enough to buy us time.

“Got ninety seconds before it resets,” I said, crouched beneath the rusted frame of a side door. My gloved fingers brushed the rusted hinge. “This place is wrong.”

“Feels like a shell,” Ilias said. “Like something used to be here, but it’s been gutted.”

He was right. The inside was hollow. Too clean in places, too abandoned in others. Like someone had scrubbed the crime scene but forgot to take the bodies, we moved in.

The corridors were narrow, lit by emergency strips that buzzed like insects. Shadows warped and shifted, distorting the crates and busted machinery into jagged silhouettes. My eyes adjusted, but the unease stayed.

Ahead — voices. Slavic.

I tapped Ilias on the shoulder, and we flanked. Four men. Complacent. Young, or maybe just stupid. Not mafia — no tattoos. Mercs. I hated mercenaries. They fought for paychecks, not blood. There was no soul behind that, and I couldn’t respect it.

Ilias’s silencer hissed. The rest flinched a little too late, jerking around to see their comrade fall. Ilias was a shadow — rifle butt to the throat, one clean break as I moved through the space like a blade. One shot to the chest. One to the head. No hesitation.

Thirty seconds. Four bodies .

“They’re not mafia,” Ilias said quietly, scanning the room. “Mercs. Same as before.”

“Carlotta doesn’t trust anyone she doesn’t buy.” I crouched, rifling through one of their vests. No insignia. No dog tags. “NATO gear. Black market. High-grade.”

“Too bad she can’t buy better quality mercs.” He gave a dark chuckle, looking over the pile of bodies.

“No shit,” I agreed.

We discovered the nerve center buried deep beneath the concrete, with lights flickering overhead in dull strobes, the kind that turned time syrupy and strange. Screens covered one wall, displaying ports, shipping manifests, customs data — not just from Romania, but also Dubai, Trieste, and Piraeus.

“She’s not just siphoning Ilias’s trade routes,” I said. “She’s building an empire.”

Veronica’s voice crackled through our comms. “These routes were activated three weeks ago. Coordinated across four continents. This was planned long before Barone.”

“Trace them,” I said. “Every route, every transaction, every fake identity she’s tied to these ports.”

“I already started,” Veronica said. “But you won’t like it.”

“I don’t need to like it,” I whispered. “I need to end it.” This just solidified for me that while I’d been living my life away in New York, forgetting that my mother existed, she had been plotting, planning, and thriving.

Not only that, but she had been doing so in the one industry that I had been trying to eradicate from the Santelli name — trafficking.

She must have been laughing at me the entire time.

I ground my teeth together. I’d been a fool for not seeing the bigger picture.

The basement reeked of damp concrete and burnt circuits. It was a surveillance hub cobbled together from stolen parts and black-market dreams. Cables coiled like snakes. Screens flickered. There was a low hum that vibrated through my bones.

“Plug into port three,” Veronica’s voice crackled in my ear. “Top left. I’ve got you.”

I slotted the USB and waited.

She worked fast. “Encrypted drives, multiple archives—wait. I’m in.”

One screen lit up. Surveillance stills. There were ports, shipping lanes, and container yards.

Ilias stepped closer, tension rising. “She’s moving goods across borders and using my shipping lanes.

That’s why she studied the Anthakos network.

It was always about logistics. That’s why she was in New York.

It had all been a little bit of a magic show.

A diversion. She wanted us looking in one direction while she was focused here in Europe. ”

“She’s been piggybacking on every legal channel you built. Not just goods,” Veronica said. “Weapons. Personnel. High-value transfers masked through dummy cargo.”

The truth shattered through me. Of course, she had. The old ways weren’t enough for her. She wanted something global. Untouchable. We had been thinking small. She’d just used us .

“Trace every line. Every transaction. Every hidden dock and shell company,” I said.

“We unravel her like a thread. Let’s start buying our own mercs.

I want a location. Next time we fly out.

Let’s make it count. I have an idea. Let me percolate on it a little, “ I said, toeing a cable.

It might be insane, but if we want to catch her in person, then maybe we need to be a little crazy.

Ilias might not like it much, but it might be the only way.