The blinding afternoon sun filtered through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Apex penthouse, casting long, sharp shadows across the polished slate floors. The sprawling city of steel and glass below us looked deceptively peaceful, completely oblivious to the massive, invisible war currently raging for its absolute soul. The Russian Bratva had been violently eradicated from the streets, their ashes swept away by the wind, but the encroaching shadow of the federal government was a far more insidious threat.
I stood in the center of the subterranean command center, the cool, sterile air conditioning doing absolutely nothing to calm the erratic, hammering rhythm of my pulse. The massive, glowing monitors projected a highly detailed, real-time satellite feed of the federal municipal buildin
