Page 21 of Born of Vengeance

But he was alive.

And he was here for a man who wasn’t.

Not officially.

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Milo Reyes lived in a two-story building that used to be a bakery. The front windows were blacked out with cardboard and duct tape. The front door was rigged with four separate locks, a biometric scanner, and a hidden motion sensor that tracked heat signatures for thirty meters.

Rafael knocked once.

The door didn’t open.

A voice came through a speaker above him.

“Say the word.”

“Curitiba.”

The locks clicked one by one.

The door opened halfway. A pale face peered out—thin, twitchy, with a mop of unwashed hair and thick, mirrored glasses.

“You look like hell,” Milo said.

“Better than your front step.”

Milo hesitated. Then opened the door wider and waved him in.

________________________________________

The inside looked like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie. Cables ran across the floor like vines. Towers of hard drives blinked from the corners. At least five monitors were active—one streaming traffic cams, another running heat-mapping software, another tracking darknet message boards in real time.

“Sit,” Milo said. “But don’t bleed on anything expensive.”

Rafael sat.

Milo shuffled to a back table, lit a cigarette, and stared at Rafael’s face.

“You got caught.”

“I got out.”

“That’s not the same as winning.”

Rafael pulled a flash drive from his boot and slid it across the table.

“Encrypted internal comm logs. Found them in a port station dropbox Valderrama’s people used. I need them clean.”

Milo stared at it like it was a live grenade.

“You sure you want to know what’s on here?”

“I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

________________________________________

It took four hours.

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