Page 109 of Beautiful Ruins
“For now,” Archie replied.
The sound of multiple vehicles pulling into the drive cut through the tension seconds later.Footsteps followed.Familiar and composed.
Atlas entered first.
Marcello just behind him.
Gianni followed last, scanning the foyer like a man cataloguing any further threats.
They stopped collectively at the threshold.
Atlas’s gaze swept the room once and saw the bodies, the blood.Then landed on Archie.
“You left a mess.”
“They arrived uninvited,” Archie returned.
Marcello’s eyes landed on Archie, then to the fallen men, then back to the structural damage.
“You’re nothing if not efficient,” he commented.
Gianni, meanwhile, stared directly at Archie.Longer than necessary.Tension immediately threaded the air between them.Archie acknowledged him with a slight nod.Gianni did not return it.Instead, he folded his arms.
“Well, it’s good to see hunting is still a social activity in this household.”
Tone scoffed.
“They kicked in the door,” she complained.“Rude, honestly.”
Atlas stepped further inside.“Debrief.”
Within minutes, we moved into the sitting room next door.Guards locked down the perimeter, and the surviving attackers were taken downstairs for questioning.The house quickly recovered from the chaos and settled into order, everyone moving with the kind of efficiency that came from experience.
Archie stayed near the edge of the room, calm and focused as he shared what he knew.He spoke plainly about how they approached the house, where they tried to enter, how the timing was coordinated, and how it all pointed back to the Chernov network.
Gianni listened, jaw tight the entire time.He didn’t interrupt or comment, but the tension between the two men was palpable.
Eventually, I stepped closer to him and angled my head toward the hall.He followed without protest.
The moment we were out of earshot, he spoke first.
“You’re trusting him too much,” Gianni warned me.
“He just helped defend this house,” I fired back.
“He was also once engaged to my wife,” he grumbled.
There it was.
Finally.
“That’s history,” I reminded him.
“That is not the point.”
I held his gaze.
“The point is that if the Russians discover he is the feeder, he dies.”
