Page 4 of Ruthless Scar
“Nonna’s making breakfast tomorrow. She worries when you don’t eat.”
“I’ll be there.”
Maybe. If this takes longer than expected, I’ll find an excuse. I always do.
Giada leaves. Her footsteps fade up the stairs, and I’m alone with the guns and the silence.
The French Quarter at midnight. I move through it the way I move through everything. Precise. Measured. Invisible when I need to be.
Three exits on this block, two alleys, a rooftop access point through the bar on the corner. Jazz bleeds from open doorways. No one sees me unless I want them to.
Months of chasing Ghost’s digital footprints across New Orleans. The Russos. The Valentinos. Us. Every crime family’s security picked apart, and never enough left behind to track. Until now.
Our tech traced the signal three hours ago. Ghost bounced through seventeen proxies, masked every trace. Not carefully enough. The apartment is in the Marigny, third floor, corner unit.
I cut through Jackson Square. A street performer plays something mournful on a saxophone. I don’t slow down.
Dante called while I was leaving the compound. I answered with silence.
“You’re going alone.” A statement, not a question.
“Yes.”
“Take Marco. Or Nico.”
“No.”
“This hacker’s been inside our systems for months, Renzo. Inside the Russos’. The Valentinos’. That’s not some kid in a basement.”
“Then I’ll find out what it is.”
A pause. My brother knows when to push and when to let go.
“Call when it’s done.”
I ended the call without responding. Marco would want to help, and his help would slow me down. Nico would ask questions I don’t want to answer. Simpler. Cleaner.
The building is in worse shape than I expected. Four stories, brick crumbling, fire escape rusted enough that I wouldn’t trust it with my weight. Graffiti on the lower walls, tags I don’t recognize. People live here when they don’t want to be found. Ghost picked well.
I circle the block once. Front entrance, back exit, fire escape, roof access. A homeless man curled in the doorway of the building next door, newspaper pulled over his face. He doesn’t stir when I pass.
Two security cameras cover the entrance. Good equipment for a building this run-down. Someone installed them not long ago. Someone who wanted to monitor who was coming before they arrived.
Ghost is watching.
I pull out my phone. Text our tech.Kill the feeds. Building on Frenchmen. Two cameras, front entrance. Check for more inside. Now.
Thirty seconds. I wait in the shadows across the street, watching the windows. Third floor, the corner windows. Blue light flickers behind thin curtains. Multiple screens.
Ghost is home and working.
My phone buzzes.Done. Looped footage. You’re clear.
The lock on the front entrance is a joke. I’m inside in under a minute.
The hallway smells like mold and old cooking. Fluorescent light flickers overhead, buzzing like a dying insect. Water stains spread across the ceiling in patterns that look accidental but aren’t. A child’s bicycle chained to the stair railing, pink with streamers on the handlebars. Someone’s TV playing too loud behind a thin door, canned laughter from a sitcom.
People live here. Families. They’re not part of this.
