Page 114 of Beautiful Ruins
The audacity alone warranted correction.
I put out feelers that same night.
Discreetly.Thoroughly.Across every channel that mattered.
Word spread fast when the number attached to it was half a million dollars.
Five hundred thousand.The exact amount he had stolen from the Chernov outfit.A deliberate figure.A message to incentivize those willing to play.
Anyone who could lead me to his location would walk away richer than most men saw in a lifetime.
There was, however, one non-negotiable condition.
He was to be delivered alive.
Alive.
Because some debts required a personal resolution, and Nathan Azzopardi had earned that distinction the moment he brought foreign violence to my doorstep and dared to use Izzy as collateral.
While the hunt began, I addressed the more important priority.
Security.
Izzy and Tone were no longer staying at the estate.
Not while external threats were actively probing our perimeter.Not while opportunists were listening to criminal chatter and testing response times.The house was fortified, yes—but it was also known.Recognizable.Predictable in its routines.
I needed them somewhere untouchable.
So I moved them.
The safe house was one of our most secure properties, designed with containment and discretion in mind rather than comfort or appearance.From the outside, it looked like nothing more than a reinforced concrete structure with minimal windows and no distinguishing features.
Inside, it was something else entirely.
Steel-reinforced floors.Limited access points.Independent power systems.Internal surveillance on every level.No external signage.No obvious residential indicators.
The vehicle lift in the basement was the true safeguard.
I drove directly onto the steel platform, and once the plate sealed behind us, the system carried the car upward through the hollow interior levels of the structure.Floor after floor passed in silence, empty shells of reinforced concrete designed purely as buffer zones.No entry points.No usable access.Just layers of distance between the outside world and the actual living quarters above.
By the time the lift stopped, we were already inside the secured foyer of the private apartment level.
There was no exposed parking here and no street-level access.No predictable entry routes to speak of.
Penetrating the building would require A grade explosives or internal betrayal.And I trusted my men far more than I trusted chance.
It was excessive.It was also necessary.Only the best for my girls.Because that was what they were now—my responsibility.My priority.My line in the sand.
Izzy.
Tone.
Their safety came before strategy meetings, before business disputes, before territorial dominance.
Everything else could wait.Nathan Azzopardi could not.
Somewhere in the city, he was running.Hiding.Desperate enough to bargain with Russians, gamblers, and anyone willing to entertain his delusions of survival.
