Vows of Vengeance

Chapter 8: Unlikely Savior

Chapter 8: Unlikely Savior

****Dante’s Point of View****

Pain has a peculiar way of becoming background noise. It lingers, then dulls, then morphs into something you almost forget to acknowledge—until it flares up in sharp reminders. The gash on my shoulder throbbed with every movement, and the bruises on my ribs made breathing a calculated effort. But none of it compared to the weight of what I’d discovered in that warehouse.

Luca had known. Tracked me. Anticipated me.

And the photo…

Isabelle.

That kiss wasn’t just a memory anymore. It was a target. A threat. Proof that whatever we shared—no matter how fleeting or real—could be weaponized.

I didn’t know what hurt more. The betrayal… or the idea that maybe she was still trying to protect me.

The safehouse Theo led us to this time wasn’t much more than a dilapidated farmhouse hidden behind overgrown hedges and weather-worn stone. But it had something the others didn’t: silence. No humming electronics. No backdoor signals. Just analog walls and the faint scent of cedar and dust.

Silas was resting upstairs, stitched and sedated. Theo paced downstairs, flipping through burner phones.

I sat in the corner of the small sitting room, cross-legged with the hard drive on the floor before me.

I hadn’t told them about the second video. The one I found encrypted behind layers of firewalls. A conversation between Matteo and Eva Monroe.

The woman who started it all.

She was alive.

She had faked her death three years ago after a corporate raid burned through the last known Vault facility.

And Matteo…

He had trusted her.

I watched the video again.

“Victor wants to burn it all,” Matteo said. “He thinks a scorched earth leaves no witnesses.”

Eva: “Then don’t let him. You have access to the Lazarus backbone. Trigger the divergence.”

Matteo hesitated. “It’ll implicate Isabelle.”

Eva: “Then tell her the truth. Or don’t. Just don’t let them win.”

He nodded. “I’m trusting you.”

Eva: “You always did.”

And then the video cut to black.

I stared at the frozen screen, fingers curled into fists.

Matteo had died for this. For truth. For a future Isabelle was somehow at the center of.

And I had no idea which part she was playing.

---

By nightfall, I couldn’t sit still.

I left the farmhouse, Theo shouting something behind me about staying low. But the streets called louder.

I needed answers.

Or maybe I just needed to bleed something that wasn’t grief.

I found them in an alley off Lexington—three Syndicate scouts tailing a courier. They recognized me too late.

I dispatched the first with a broken pipe.

The second with a knee to the throat.

The third tried to run.

I caught him, slammed him against a dumpster.

“Where’s Luca?”

He spat blood. “You think he’s hiding?”

I twisted his arm. He screamed.

“He’s setting the table,” he gasped. “You’re the main course.”

“What does that mean?”

“Means you’re walking into his game. And Isabelle? She’s the trophy.”

I hit him again. “You don’t get to say her name.”

He laughed through broken teeth. “You really don’t know, do you?”

I stared.

“She’s not just part of Lazarus,” he wheezed. “She’s the failsafe.”

I dropped him.

Not out of mercy. Out of shock.

The failsafe?

No. That couldn’t be right.

But deep down, something in me knew it was.

And it meant I had to find her.

Now.

---

The trail led to a warehouse near the edge of the docks—abandoned in records, but very much alive in energy. The kind of place where betrayals were etched into the floors.

I moved fast, low to the ground, cutting the power before slipping through the side entrance. My boots made no sound.

Inside, stacks of crates formed a labyrinth.

And in the center of it—

Her.

Isabelle.

Her hair was loose. Her coat heavy. She stood alone, back to me, staring at a projection of coordinates and digital schematics.

I should’ve stayed hidden.

I didn’t.

“Isabelle.”

She turned.

Her eyes locked on mine.

Something cracked open inside me.

Then movement—a shot fired.

She screamed, leapt forward.

Pain. Bright, sharp. My side.

I hit the ground.

Shadows moved behind us—men with guns. Syndicate soldiers.

Isabelle spun, firing back. She dropped two, ducked behind a crate, dragged me with her.

“Damn it, Dante!” she hissed, pressing gauze to my side.

“You’re welcome,” I gasped.

“You call this help?”

“I call it showing up.”

More gunfire.

She reloaded. “I had it handled.”

“Sure you did.”

“Shut up.”

We moved together, back-to-back, shooting, ducking, rolling. Her precision was surgical. My rage was a blunt instrument. But together, we carved a path through the chaos.

When it was over, we stood amid the bodies, panting, bloodied, trembling.

I looked at her.

She looked at me.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I knew they’d come for me. And I didn’t want them to find you first.”

“I’m not your mission.”

She hesitated. “No. You’re more than that.”

Silence.

Then she stepped closer.

“Do you want to know the truth, Dante?”

“No more lies.”

She nodded. “Then come with me. I’ll show you everything.”

And somehow, I believed her.

Because in that moment, she wasn’t a Raze.

She was Isabelle.

And I still wasn’t done saving her.

Even if she never asked me to.

****Isabelle’s Point of View****

The first thing I saw when the lights cut out in the warehouse wasn’t the monitors, or the crates, or the shadows moving in. It was the silhouette in the doorway. Dante.

Every instinct I had screamed for control—containment. But my heart beat too loud to ignore, and when I turned and saw him bleeding into the dark, all my rules shattered.

The Syndicate had followed me here. Of course they had. I’d stolen something they’d kill to erase. And the one person I hadn’t planned on seeing again had just walked into a trap I’d set for myself.

For a second, I was paralyzed. Not by fear, but by the agony of seeing him again—real, whole, and stupidly heroic, as always. Then the gunfire started.

I didn’t have time to think. I ran toward him.

The shot caught him in the side before I could reach him. He went down hard, mouth twisting in a silent curse, blood seeping through his shirt.

I screamed and dove, returning fire.

Crates shattered. Sparks burst overhead.

I grabbed Dante, dragged him behind the closest stack of cover.

“You i***t,” I muttered, pressing gauze into his side.

“You’re welcome,” he groaned.

I wanted to laugh and scream at the same time. But there was no time for either. I rolled, took another shot, dropped a man who had been flanking us.

Dante kept fighting, too. Of course he did.

Together, we moved like we’d done it before—back-to-back, fluid, efficient. We’d never trained together, not formally. But in that moment, we didn’t need to. We knew each other’s rhythms. We filled in each other’s blind spots.

And when it was done, when the bodies fell and silence returned, we stood there in the wreckage, panting, bloodied, staring at each other like strangers too familiar to ignore.

He was the first to speak.

“Why?”

Because I still loved him. Because even if I tried to deny it, it screamed from every corner of my soul.

But I couldn’t say that. Not yet.

“Because I knew they’d come for me,” I answered. “And I didn’t want them to find you first.”

He blinked. “I’m not your mission.”

“No,” I whispered. “You’re more than that.”

We stood in silence, tension crackling between us.

Then I stepped forward, heart thudding. “Do you want to know the truth, Dante?”

His jaw tightened. “No more lies.”

I nodded. “Then come with me. I’ll show you everything.”

---

An hour later, we were deep underground, in one of Matteo’s backup vaults—locations only I knew about, maps burned into my memory from the day he entrusted them to me. The vault walls were lined with steel shelves, old server towers, and physical documentation Matteo had hidden from everyone. Even me. Until recently.

Dante stood in the middle of the room like a statue, his face unreadable. I hated that I couldn’t read him anymore. But I understood it, too.

I gestured to a file on the desk. “This is everything Matteo found about the Lazarus Protocol before he died. He kept it from Victor, from Elijah… even from you.”

Dante didn’t move.

I forced myself to keep going.

“Lazarus was never just about elimination. It was about rewriting legacy. Victor planned to use it to rebuild the Syndicate from the ashes—after orchestrating its collapse. Matteo discovered that the Protocol wasn’t just a kill list. It was a reset button.”

Dante’s voice was hollow. “And what were you, Isabelle? Another asset?”

I flinched. “I didn’t know what I was until Matteo showed me.”

He finally looked at me. “Then tell me.”

I stepped closer, each word a knife. “When I was fourteen, Victor had me implanted with a neural key—an access point to the Lazarus servers. I was the only failsafe. If anyone ever gained control of Lazarus, Victor could use me to shut it down. Or erase everything.”

Dante’s breath caught. “You’re the key.”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I didn’t want you to look at me like this,” I whispered. “Like I’m a weapon.”

He turned away. “You should have trusted me.”

“I did. I do. But this… this is bigger than both of us.”

He ran a hand through his hair, pain radiating off him. “Isabelle, I watched my brother die trying to uncover the truth. And now I find out you were at the center of it?”

I swallowed hard. “Matteo believed in me. Even when I didn’t. He didn’t want to expose me. He wanted me to choose who I became. That’s why he left me the message.”

Dante’s shoulders stiffened. “And Eva Monroe? She’s alive, isn’t she?”

My eyes widened. “You found that too.”

“She’s pulling strings behind the curtain. You were working with her?”

“Not at first. But yes. She reached out after Matteo died. Said she could help finish what he started. That she owed him.”

Dante’s silence was louder than a scream.

“I’m not the enemy,” I said quietly. “But if I have to be the villain to end Victor’s game, I will.”

He turned to face me again.

For a second, I thought he’d walk away.

But then… he stepped forward.

“I’m tired of losing the people I care about.”

“I’m tired of being one of them,” I whispered.

And when he kissed me, it wasn’t soft or slow.

It was desperate. Fierce.

Like we were both drowning and only each other could keep us afloat.

---

Later, as we sat on the floor surrounded by Matteo’s legacy, I leaned my head against his shoulder.

“We don’t have much time,” I murmured.

“Luca’s making moves,” he agreed. “Victor’s unraveling. Elijah’s in the wind.”

“And Eva?”

“Still out there.”

I looked at him. “Are we really ready for what’s coming?”

He laced his fingers with mine. “Probably not.”

“But we’re not alone anymore.”

He kissed my knuckles. “No. Not anymore.”

And for the first time in a long time, I believed it.

****Third-Person Point of View****

Outside the ruins of the ambushed warehouse, shadows converged beneath the moonlight, wearing the colors of ghosts and killers. The city around them pulsed with unaware life, oblivious to the war being waged in alleys and boardrooms.

But within the secret channels of global syndicates, whispers had already spread—Dante Vale was alive. Isabelle Raze had resurfaced. The Lazarus Protocol was no longer a dormant legend. It was active, hunted, and dangerous.

High above the skyline, within Victor Raze’s glass tower, Elijah stood alone on the balcony, his hands gripping the stone railing. Below him, the lights of the city blinked like stars swallowed by smog. His lips curled around a grim thought.

They were all still breathing.

Victor stepped out beside him, his face carved in cold marble. “It didn’t work,” he said without surprise. “She protected him.”

Elijah didn’t look away. “She always does.”

“You underestimate her.”

“I know her better than you do.”

Victor scoffed. “You only know the version of her that wanted out. The version that loved your brother. You’ve never seen what she becomes when cornered.”

Elijah turned, face dark. “And what about you, Father? Have you?”

Victor’s eyes narrowed. “She’s your blood, Elijah. But never forget—she was forged from mine.”

Inside the tower, Victor’s private council awaited in the war room. A long, obsidian table stretched before them, the Lazarus screen humming with alerts.

One by one, the Syndicate heads offered their verdicts: Isabelle had become a liability. Dante Vale was too unpredictable. Luca Moretti was pressing closer to their operations, threatening the balance.

Victor let them speak. Let them believe they still had choices.

Then he pressed a single key.

“Activate Red Cell Protocol.”

Gasps.

One of the older men stood. “Victor, that protocol was never meant to be used internally.”

Victor’s stare silenced him. “The internal threat is the most dangerous one.”

And with that, the Syndicate was now at war with itself.

---

Elsewhere in the city, in an abandoned metro tunnel converted into an underground safe zone, Luca Moretti listened as his operatives reported the ambush failure.

“She saved him?” Luca asked, voice low.

“Yes. Killed five of our best.”

Luca turned to face the steel wall where Isabelle’s image had been pinned for weeks. It was old, the edges curled, her expression frozen mid-turn.

“She’s always been impossible to predict.”

A younger operative asked hesitantly, “Do we engage again?”

Luca shook his head. “No. We wait. She’ll go to ground, take him with her. But she can’t stay hidden forever.”

He lit a cigarette, the flame casting shadows beneath his eyes.

“And when she surfaces again…”

He exhaled. “We take back what was stolen.”

A second operative approached with a tablet. “Also… this came in.”

He handed the screen to Luca. A video had been decrypted from one of Victor’s crashed servers.

Luca played it.

Isabelle. Speaking with Elijah.

“I want out,” she said. “I gave you what you needed. Let me go.”

“I can’t protect you anymore, Isabelle.”

“You never protected me. You used me.”

The video froze.

Luca smiled coldly. “There it is. The fracture.”

He turned to his men. “She no longer belongs to either of them. She’s a free agent now.”

“What does that mean for us?”

Luca’s eyes gleamed. “It means she can be turned.”

---

Far from the war rooms and strategies, in a remote coastal villa cloaked in fog, Eva Monroe watched the chaos unfold through a ring of monitors. Her sanctuary hummed with energy—flickering lights, data streams, digital threads pulled tight across global networks.

She leaned back in her chair, eyes locked on the most important feed: Isabelle and Dante, huddled together inside Matteo’s vault.

So it begins, she thought.

Beside her, an AI interface read aloud the latest Lazarus pings. Threat levels spiking. Syndicate cells turning on each other. Luca mobilizing independent assets.

And one note blinking red:

“Protocol EXODUS moving toward active status.”

Eva frowned. That wasn’t supposed to happen yet.

She typed a new command into her keyboard, rerouting data trails. The Protocol needed more time. The pieces weren’t ready. If Exodus launched now, everyone would burn.

But Victor was unraveling faster than expected.

She needed Isabelle to act.

And Dante to stay alive long enough to believe her.

Eva opened a secure line.

“To all ghosts in the field: Directive Echo is now in effect. Monitor Isabelle Raze and Dante Vale. Do not engage. Observe only. They are the lynchpin.”

Then she whispered, to herself more than to anyone else:

“Please, Isabelle… prove us right.”

---

Beneath the city, in an undisclosed holding facility, a man strapped to a chair struggled against steel cuffs. His name was Donovan Creed, a former Lazarus handler turned ghost. He was meant to be dead. But instead, he had been dragged into a nightmare revival.

And standing before him was someone he never expected.

Elijah Raze.

“You lied,” Elijah said.

Donovan chuckled bitterly. “Lies are what you people built Lazarus on.”

“You told me Isabelle would never betray us.”

“She didn’t. Not the way you think.”

Elijah’s hands trembled.

“I watched her kill for us. I watched her disappear for us. And now she’s with him.”

Donovan leaned forward. “She was never yours. None of you ever deserved her.”

Elijah stepped back. “Victor will erase everything she is.”

Donovan nodded. “And when he does, he’ll erase you too. You just don’t see it yet.”

Elijah stood in silence.

Then, for the first time in a long time, he questioned everything.

---

The city teetered on the edge of collapse, its shadows darker than ever.

Dante and Isabelle had finally found each other, but the world they once knew was gone. Every move they made would be tracked. Every ally they thought they had could betray them. Every secret they uncovered risked pulling them deeper into the fire.

And as they lay low, preparing for the next step, forces larger than both of them were preparing to strike.

Because the Lazarus Protocol wasn’t just a file.

It was a revolution.

And revolutions… always cost blood.