Page 44 of Vows Made in Silence

I don’t wait for clearance. I’m already out of the SUV, weaving through cover, my Glock raised and steady.

Turk falls in behind me. “We breach the west entrance. You take point.”

I nod. We move.

The west door’s reinforced. Doesn’t matter. A flash charge sends it flying inward, smoke curling into the corridor beyond.

I enter with my finger on the trigger and murder on my breath.

If he’s in this place—if even a hair on his head is out of place—every man in this compound dies.

My mind snaps back to the last time I saw him.

And now? Now I’m this close to losing him and her again.

It can’t happen.

I didn’t crawl through a decade of silence, pain, and shadows to lose everything now—not after learning I had something real. A family. A son. A second chance with the only woman I ever loved no matter how much I tried to hate her.

I didn’t survive hell to let Gallo take what belongs to me now.

13

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Blood of My Blood

We clear the first corridor fast—two down, both armed, neither quick enough. The hallway reeks of gun oil, old mold, and something worse—fear.

Turk covers my six while the rest of my soldiers fan out. Every corner is a risk. Every closed door could be him—or a trap.

“Clear left,” someone barks. “Movement ahead—south stairwell.”

My pulse kicks harder. That’s the basement. That’s where I’d stash something precious. Something I wasn’t ready to lose.

We descend, steps quick and silent. The stairwell spirals like a drain, and at the bottom, there’s a steel door. Reinforced. New locks. Fresh bolt plate.

Daniel.

I move to breach when Turk touches my shoulder. He doesn’t speak. Just nods to the small surveillance camera above the door.

They’re watching.

Let them.

I look into the lens. Cold. Unforgiving.

“I’m coming for him,” I whisper. “And when I do—you’ll wish you’d taken me out at the gallery.”

I raise my fist.

Signal to breach.

We go in hard.

The blast is deafening, the steel door torn from its hinges in a cloud of smoke and sparks. My men pour in like a black tide, sweeping room by room as I move with ruthless precision.

Two guards rush us, armed and yelling in clipped Sicilian. They don’t make it past the doorway. One takes a round to the chest. The other, I disarm with a blow to the jaw and finish with a bullet to the temple. Fast. Brutal. Necessary.