Chapter 6 - The Trap and the Ambush
Cerberus pressed harder into me. Not because he understood the words. Because he understood the certainty.
I texted Enzo at 3:47 in the morning. Need to talk now. It’s about Silas. He replied in less than ten seconds. My study. Five minutes.
He was already there when I arrived, fully dressed, as if he had not slept at all. Cerberus stayed glued to my leg. The dog’s body went taut when I said Silas’s name. I told Enzo everything. The terror reaction. The bloodied paws. The laugh I remembered from seven years ago. The possibility that Silas had not merely encountered my dog in the past but stolen him. Sold him. Helped turn a family pet into a weapon before using that same weapon to climb inside Enzo’s empire.
When I finished, Enzo was very still. You understand what you’re accusing him of, he said. Yes. Do you. He turned to his desk and opened files I had never seen. Background checks. Financial histories. Entry records. Recommendations from outside families. Each document tightened something in his face. The firm that cleared Silas eight years ago, he said, has since been investigated for falsified credentials. If someone wanted a man close to me, this would be the way. Long game. Perfect access. Clean paperwork. Meaning I’m right. Meaning, he said, looking at the dog and not at me, if you’re right, this has never been about a stolen puppy. It has been about infiltration. About a coup built slowly enough to look like loyalty.
That was the moment the story stopped being about me getting my dog back. It became about the fact that Cerberus had not just survived hell. He had carried evidence of it in his body all the way into the house of a man who had no idea he was sheltering a traitor.
I thought Enzo would shut me out after that. Instead, he brought me in deeper. We built the trap together. He did not say it in those words. Men like him preferred language like contingency and verification and controlled exposure. But it was a trap. We reviewed warehouse maps. We studied Silas’s routes. We tested Cerberus’s response from a distance using photographs, scent traces, even voice clips. Every time the dog reacted, the pattern sharpened. Not random. Not theatrical. Specific.
On the fourth night of planning, I found Enzo at the bar staring into a drink he had not touched. He looked tired in a way expensive tailoring could not hide. You already suspected him, I said. I suspected something, he answered. The dog was the first honest witness I’ve had in years.
I leaned against the opposite side of the bar. That should have sounded absurd. It didn’t. Why me, I asked quietly. Why not have your men handle it. Why trust a waitress from Queens with any of this. He looked up then. Because my men know how to obey me. You know how to oppose me. And because Cerberus would die for you before he’d take a command from anyone else in this city, including me.
That should have been frightening. Instead it landed somewhere lower and warmer than fear. He took a breath. Then another. And said, Also because when you told me the truth that first night, you didn’t care what it cost you. I don’t meet many people who speak that way in my world.
The room went quiet after that. Not empty quiet. Charged quiet. The kind that makes your skin aware of every inch of distance between two people. Then Cerberus wandered in and shoved his head under my hand, ruining the moment with perfect timing. Enzo watched me smile at the dog and said, He likes interrupting me when I’m trying to look dangerous. Maybe he knows you’re bad at it around me. I am never bad at anything, Emily.
That was the first time he said my name like it belonged somewhere soft.
The meet with Silas was set for a warehouse in Red Hook. Supposed cash transfer. Routine enough to sound dull. Important enough that refusal would have been suspicious. I wore body armor under borrowed black clothes. Cerberus rode beside me in the SUV, alert and silent, every muscle tuned for impact. Marco and Giuseppe managed teams on comms. Enzo went in as bait.
You stay in the vehicle until I say otherwise, Marco told me over the earpiece. No, I said. I’m not an accessory. I’m the alarm system. He muttered something in Italian that was probably not flattering. No one argued after that. Not because they agreed. Because time had run out.
May you like
From the east entrance I watched Enzo walk into the warehouse under brutal overhead lights. Three million dollars sat stacked behind him in pallets of neat temptation. Silas approached with his usual polished ease and a smile that looked too pleased with itself. Cerberus went rigid at my side. Not yet, I whispered, fingers in his collar.
Then the room changed. Silas checked his watch and smiled wider. He pressed a remote. The warehouse doors slammed shut. The lights cut to emergency red.
