A year.
I spent it moving from one rented room to another while the Cartel hunted me. Isabella’s bullet to my knee left me with a limp that worsened in cold weather.
My family stopped answering my calls, former soldiers sold my locations, and Serena’s name woke me most nights.
Marco had dragged me out of Chicago. We crossed Europe on cash, favors, and scraps of a fortune Serena had locked away.
Everywhere we went, people spoke about a broker called The Architect. Nobody had a name or a face.
The information arrived on clean devices and vanished after each job. It was always accurate, and the price was always loyalty.
Without that network, I had no route back into Chicago.
We found a black glass and steel compound in the Swiss Alps. I waited outside for four hours in wind that cut th
