Page 17 of No Mistakes
Flynn Scoffs. “Where else would they be? Playing poker with Carter?”
Carter snaps his head towards Flynn, mouth open. “Are you saying I’m too soft to run an interrogation?”
“I’m just saying if it were up to you, we’d be offering them tea and a second chance.”
I raise a hand, stopping the argument before it gets too far. “Enough.”
Flynn walks towards me, “Yeah, they’re still in the basement. Shitting themselves, last I checked.”
“Good.” I say, “We start there. I want names, locations, everything they know. I want the entire structure of the Chicago ring laid bare by the end of the night. Who’s still operating? Who’s gone ghost? Who’s pretending they’re loyal but aren’t. Got it?”
Ant shrugs, completely unfazed, and taps twice on his phone. A map lights up, glowing red with heat signals, names tagged, and locations flagged. Of course, he’s already built a goddamn war board with the information we’ve been given.
I take it from him, scrolling through with a low whistle. “You get off on this, don’t you?”
Ant grins and nods once.
“Creepy bastard,” I mutter, but there’s no bite to it.
I shake my head and look back towards the phone. “This is why I keep you around.”
Gunnar steps closer, peering at the screen. “So what’s the play?” He asks.
I look towards them all, knowing that the next step in our lives will change everything, change who we currently are. “We play fast and hit hard,” I say. “We find out every secret, every operation, and we take Chicago back from the inside out. I want their dealers, their runners, their front-facing businesses. I want every corrupt cop on their payroll bleeding for a second chance.”
Flynn cracks his knuckles, smirking like he’s waited his whole damn life for this. “Finally. We’re back, baby!”
I pace a few steps, trying to burn off the tension coiled in my spine. “They thought taking me out would be enough. That if they broke me, they’d break all of us. But I’m still here. We’restill here. And they have no idea the hell we’re about to rain down on them.”
I head for the door near the kitchen, bending down to pull the duffel bag from the cabinet. It’s heavy, full of gear that we brought over from the safe house before Eva arrived. I throw it over my shoulder, walking back and hand it to Gunnar without a word.
He grips the strap, knuckles going white. He doesn’t ask any questions. Instead, he nods his head as if he knows what to do.
“It’s your time to shine, brother,” I say, looking him dead in the eyes. “Go get us some answers and do whatever you have to do to get them. This is the start of your initiation.”
I see a small smile appear on his face before he masks it. He nods his head once more, and I watch as he takes a deep breath, preparing himself before walking towards the door that leads to the basement. Carter follows suit, giving me a nod of approval just as the door to the basement closes behind him.
The house stays quiet for a second too long as the rest of us don’t speak. No one breathes as we wait for confirmation that they’re downstairs.
A muffled scream breaks through the door, and a smile makes its way onto my face because that’s when I know, we’ve just lit a fuse.
CHAPTER 9
EVA
The familiar Bostonskyline creeps into view as we approach the office parking lot. Mandy turns the car and rolls to a stop in our usual space.
A knot twists low in my stomach at everything that’s happened in the past month. I didn’t think coming back here would feel this strange, like I’m slipping into a version of myself that doesn’t quite fit anymore.
The second we step out of the car, the cold air hits me like a warning. Sharp and bitter, just like everything I left behind.
“This feels weird,” Mandy mutters quietly beside me. She adjusts her jacket, pulling it tighter around her as the wind picks up speed.
“Yeah,” I say, staring up at the chipped brick and crooked blinds in the window we used to call the stakeout suite, where we would plan the nights for hours. “It’s like walking into a memory you didn’t agree to relive.”
I push open the front door and step into the warmth and faint smell of burnt coffee and printer ink. The office looks exactly the same. Worn chairs, chipped desks, the busted ceiling fan that never stops squeaking. But there’s something heavier in the air that I can’t figure out.
A door opens to the side of us, and a male steps out with a stack of papers.
