Carlino’s POV
The lights didn’t come back for an hour. Backup generators should’ve kicked in within ten seconds after the blackout. It had been an hour.
Smoke drifted past the shattered upper windows, thinner now, but the air still carried that burnt-metal bite of explosives. Radios were dead. Cameras blind. Half my security grid had just been turned into decoration.
And somewhere out there in the dark—
Kailen was still inside my world. “Manual relays,” I ordered, already moving down the corridor. “Old system. Hard lines only.”
“On it,” Luca said, jogging beside me.
Boots pounded behind us. Alpha team. Delta splitting toward the south wing. No one spoke unless it mattered. The estate felt too big without power — hallways stretching into black, every doorway a possible threat.
A doo
