Chapter 2

Sierra POV

My words hung in the frigid air, a challenge that froze the tense tableau on the helipad. The wind howled, a counterpoint to the sudden, stark silence between us.

Lucas stared, his dark eyes wide with a shock that went deeper than mere surprise. Sylvia gasped, clutching her hands to her chest in a pantomime of horror. They were utterly unprepared for such defiance from a subordinate.

Lucas took a menacing step forward, his jaw set like granite. "What did you say?" he demanded, his voice a low growl. "Who are you to speak to a Don of murder?"

I pulled the silver chain higher, letting the dog tag dangle in the harsh glare of the floodlights. The name engraved upon it caught the light—Andy Falcone. And I watched the color drain from Lucas's face.

His eyes locked on the metal tag; his chest ceased to rise and fall. "The Lena you knew is dead," I told him. "What stands before you is what crawled out of the ice after seven years, a thing kept alive only by the promise of this day."

Lucas staggered backward, his expensive boots slipping on the icy concrete. He shook his head, a gesture of pure, instinctual denial. "Lena?" he whispered, the name a fragile, broken thing.

He had believed I had thrown myself from a cliff with Andy's body seven years ago. I offered him a smirk that held no warmth, only the chill of the grave.

Sylvia let out a piercing shriek. She pointed a trembling finger at me. "Andy wandered off! He fell into a crevasse on his own!" she screamed. "You were a negligent mother! It was your fault!"

I did not waste a second. I closed the distance between us and struck her across the face with the back of my gloved hand. The sound was a flat, wet crack that cut through the wind. She collapsed to the ground, blood blooming instantly from her split lip.

I stood over her, my shadow eclipsing her trembling form. "Speak of my son again," I said, my voice low and even, "and I will personally drag you to the summit and leave you for the wolves."

I turned my attention back to Lucas. He was paralyzed, staring at me as if I were an apparition. It was time to dismantle his world.

I flung the communications log from seven years prior against his chest. The bundled papers struck him with a dull thud. "Seventeen calls," I said. "That is how many times I begged for extraction while Andy's fever burned him alive."

I pointed to the bleeding woman on the ground. "Sylvia intercepted every one. She told the men on duty that the Underboss was not to be disturbed."

Lucas looked down at Sylvia, his breathing turning ragged. I did not let him look away.

"She bribed a medic for a roll of gauze and faked a sprained ankle," I said, each word a hammer blow. "Then she called you, screaming that Lucy had fallen, that she might have a concussion, that she needed immediate evacuation." Lucas's breath caught in his throat. "You had a choice," I continued. "Your wife and your heir, stranded on a freezing mountain with a dying child. Or your mistress, weeping about a sprained ankle and a scared little girl." I let the silence stretch. "You chose wrong."

Lucas turned a deathly pale. He grabbed Sylvia by the collar of her coat and hauled her halfway from the ground. "Is it true?" he screamed, his face inches from hers. "Tell me!"

Sylvia sobbed, her eyes darting away, her silence a damning confession. Lucas dropped her as if she were a thing of filth.

"A mistress of less than a year," I mused aloud. "And you trusted her over your wife of five." I made him see the final moments. "Our son cried for his father. He said he was cold. He kept asking when Daddy was coming." I paused, letting the image sink into him like a blade. "His breathing slowed. Then stopped.He died believing you had abandoned him."

The powerful Don of the Regional Syndicate broke. His expensive boots lost their purchase on the iced-over tarmac. He did not so much kneel as lose the strength to stand, slumping against a guardrail and sliding into the grimy slush. He buried his face in his hands, and his body was wracked with great, heaving sobs.

"Forgive me," he choked out between gasps.

I looked down at the pathetic ruin of a man. "Forgiveness is a word for priests," I told him. "It cannot give me back my son, nor the seven years I have lost."

Lucas bowed his head until his forehead touched the frozen concrete. "Please," he begged. "Save Lucy. She is innocent."

Sylvia crawled over, grovelling at his side in the muck. "Please," she pleaded, her blood dripping onto the white snow.

"She is twenty-two years old," Lucas whispered, his voice cracking. "A geology student. She loves climbing. She knows nothing of the family's sins. She came to see the territory her father fought for." I said nothing. "She is not her mother," he pressed desperately. "She is innocent in all of this."

Before I could answer, the radio on Wayne's belt crackled to life. The Syndicate Comms Operator's voice was tense with urgency. "Secondary avalanche on Devil's Ridge!" the voice announced over the static. "All signals from the bunker are gone."

A pause. Then, the words that changed everything. "Structural integrity is compromised. The avalanche severed the auxiliary oxygen line. We're estimating two hours of breathable air, maximum."

I stared at the radio. Two hours. It was not enough time—not for a proper extraction, not even for the chopper to reach the ridge. The girl was already as good as dead. And yet.

I closed my eyes, and in the darkness behind my eyelids, I saw Andy. I remembered the fierce grip of his small fingers on my shirt, a desperate grasp for life that lasted until the very end. I remembered his voice, thin and reedy, asking if Daddy was coming. And I remembered the silence that followed—the silence of a child who had stopped believing. I opened my eyes and stared down at the man kneeling in the snow. "I will take the mission."