CHAPTER TWO
1370 Words
The air reeked of sweat, blood, and rich men’s cologne. The underground club pulsed like a living thing, music thudding against Camila’s ribcage as she walked through the velvet-curtained entrance into the chaos below.
Cigar smoke curled around chandelier light. The crowd was a sea of expensive suits, silk dresses, and hollow eyes craving c*****e. In the ring, two men were tearing each other apart, blood dripping onto the black mat like spilled wine, she had learnt from lucien that this was one of Enzo's buildings.
Camila barely glanced at them.
She wasn't here for entertainment.
She had gotten her face altered just enough with makeup and a brunette wig, and blended into the mess of wealth and violence.
She scanned the floor, then saw him.
Enzo Navarro, member of the oh-so famous Navarro cartel. Slicked-back hair, arrogant smirk, a Rolex too shiny for his rank. The kind of man who left messes behind him and never looked back. One of those messes had been her brother.
Camila's fingers curled around the old photograph in her coat pocket. The blood had faded, but she still saw the stain. Still saw Luca’s smile. Still felt the coldness of his hand the day she found him.
But it hadn’t started with Luca.
Years ago, her father once a feared power broker in the underworld vanished after an internal coup. Betrayed by men he’d once called brothers, he disappeared without a trace, leaving behind whispers and a war. Camila was just a child then. Her mother took Camila and Luca into hiding under new names. But ghosts of power don’t go quietly.
They were found.
One rainy night, brakes failed. The car spun. Camila remembered her mother clutching her rosary so tight the beads bruised her skin. She remembered the sound metal screaming. Glass shattering. The darkness.
When she woke up in the hospital, her brother was beside her, bruised but alive.
Her mother wasn’t.
It was declared an accident.
But Camila never forgot the silence that followed. The paid-off investigators. The missing CCTV footage. The black car with no plates that had followed them for weeks after they left the hospital. They stayed underground courtesy of her grandma who passed on a year later maybe from grief or old age, she could only guess.
From that moment, Luca became her only family and her reason to survive.
Years later, Luca re-entered the underworld under a new alias, convinced he could get close to the men who’d betrayed their blood. “They won’t recognize me,” he’d said. “I’ll get in. I’ll find the truth.”
He got in.
He didn’t get out.
His body had been found in an alley, with a single gun wound to the center of his head. The hit was blamed on Enzo Calvi. A cartel retaliation, they said. Routine business. Case closed.
But Camila knew her brother. And she knew what he told her the night before he died.
“If anything happens to me, it wasn’t the Navarros. You need to disappear, Cam. Don’t trust anyonenot even the ones closest.”
That voicemail played on repeat in her mind. Every night. Every morning.
It wasn’t the Navarros.
So who the hell was it?
And why now, after all these years... Is she being hunted too?
Camila’s grip tightened around the photo and they she tucked it away out of sight.
Enzo disappeared into a back hallway lined with neon red lights.
She followed.
Each step tightened the coil in her chest.
She hadn’t planned to make a move tonight, only watch, confirm, retreat. But watching him so calm, so alive, it made her blood boil.
Her footsteps were silent, smooth.
Enzo stopped at the end of the hallway, checking his phone.
She moved.
Her knife was drawn in a blink, the grip steady, aimed for his throat
"You really thought that’d work?" Enzo spun, faster than expected, gun drawn.
She ducked.
The shot missed. The sound roared through the corridor.
Panic exploded outside screams, stomping heels, scrambling bodies.
Camila slammed into Enzo, the two of them crashing into the wall. She kneed him hard, grabbed his gun, and twisted
He headbutted her.
Her vision blurred.
She slashed.
The blade kissed his shoulder. Not deep enough.
He shoved her off and ran.
She cursed and gave chase.
They crashed into the back room behind the bar, just past the kitchen. Bottles shattered. Ice spilled across the floor. Enzo stumbled over a stool.
Camila didn’t hesitate.
She grabbed his collar, yanked him back, and with one fluid motion, sliced the blade clean across his throat.
His eyes went wide. His hands clutched at the wound, blood spurting between his fingers as he collapsed.
She stepped back, chest heaving, blade trembling slightly in her hand.
“For Luca,” she whispered.
"Enough."
A cold voice behind her.
She turned.
And what she saw startled her a bit.
Tall, handsome, Broad-shouldered. Black shirt, no tie. Dark eyes like frozen obsidian. A scar that cut diagonally along his jaw, too precise to be accidental but still wasn't able to diminish how handsome he was.
He stared at her and at Enzo’s crumpled, bleeding body then back at her.
She didn’t know him. But the fury in his eyes told her everything.
"You killed him," he said, voice dangerously low.
She didn’t answer.
Enzo’s blood pooled at her feet.
Kairo stepped forward slowly, controlled.
"You don’t know what you’ve just done."
Camila’s eyes grew wide.
Still, she said nothing.
Kairo’s gaze dropped to Enzo’s face for the briefest second grief masked with rage.
"That was my cousin."
Camila took a step back.
"You're Navarro," she said quietly.
His jaw clenched.
"The next in line."
Her pulse quickened.
"s**t" Camila cursed internally. Next in line? That has to be kairo, rumor has it that he is stone cold, merciless and brutal. The absolute worst and the boss of the Navarro cartel. Well not yet technically anyways, but the old man would die soon so kairo would be new New Navarro cartel boss. "Danm I've got to run" she thought.
She turned and bolted out the service door. Rain hit her face as she sprinted into the alley.
Footsteps behind her.
He was coming.
She ducked behind a dumpster, twisted down a side path, her heart hammering. She kicked a crate into his path but he leapt over it like a wolf.
She spun, knife ready.
Kairo slowed.
"You're not Syndicate," he said. His voice was calm. Controlled. Dangerous.
She didn’t answer.
"But you fight like one."
She lunged.
They collided like storm and steel. Fists. Elbows. Steel and bone. She was fast, but he was trained brutally efficient. He caught her wrist, twisted, and slammed her into the wall. Rain slicked down his face as they locked eyes too close, too breathless.
His breath hitched.
So did hers.
Then she headbutted him, hard.
He staggered.
She vanished into the dark.
Gone.
Kairo stood still for a long time, blood trickling from his temple, heart pounding.
Then he looked down.
A photo lay on the wet concrete near his feet.
He picked it up.
Luca Moretti.
Young. Smiling. A name scribbled on the back.
He picked it up, dusted it, tucked it into his pocket and left.
Who the hell was she?
Rain soaked him as he stepped back inside, his mind a war zone. His men were already moving locking exits, pulling footage, making calls.
But it was too late. She was gone.
By midnight, Kairo was in a dark corner office above the ring, a glass of bourbon untouched in front of him. Surveillance footage looped on the screen.
Camila. In the hallway. Behind the bar. The moment she slit Enzo’s throat.
He paused.
Zoomed in on her face. Unfamiliar, Lethal.
There was no fear in her expression only vengeance.
A patch sewn inside her coat flickered into view. Off-books. Not military. Not cartel. Elite. Independent.
His throat tightened.
She wasn’t just an assassin, it was personal and as much as he didn't care all too much about the dead cousin of his, but no one messes with the Navarro family and she, well she had to be thought a lesson.
- Writer
