The warehouse stank of oil, gunpowder, and sweat. He stood in the middle of it all, a silent storm in a black coat, watching the line of men kneel before him.
Street dogs, mercenaries, ex-cons ,broken men drawn to the promise of power, money, and the kind of violence only he could unleash.
"You want a place at my table?" Dominic's voice carried across the space like a blade's edge. "Then you bleed for me. You kill for me. You die for me."
One by one, they swore loyalty. Blood oaths signed with their own knives, dripping red onto the concrete. The room buzzed with restless hunger. An army was forming.
But Trevor's gang wasn't letting him breathe.
Two nights earlier, one of Dominic's weapon convoys was hit outside the city. Burned out trucks, corpses hanging from telephone poles with their mouths stuffed full of bullets. A message. Another post had been painted over with Trevor's mark—red, dripping, like laughter in blood.
Dominic didn't flinch. He tightened his grip. He didn't rant. He didn't break. He simply doubled the recruitment, stockpiled heavier guns, pushed his men harder until they collapsed and rose again, molded into soldiers.
Yet even steel has cracks.
When he returned to the safehouse that night, there was something different in his eyes—something Elena caught. The fury was there, yes, but beneath it was a glint of fear. He hadn't shown that in years. And that scared her more than the bodies piling up.
Because Dominic wasn't afraid of death.
If he was afraid, it meant Trevor's gang was worse than she imagined.
From the shadows, Valerie watched.
Perched on a half-ruined balcony across from the safehouse, the moon catching the hard line of her eyepatch, she tracked every movement. She saw the way Dominic commanded men, saw the growing war machine he was building piece by bloody piece.
Her fist clenched around the hilt of her knife.
He didn't deserve their loyalty.
He didn't deserve their respect.
Everything—their parents, their home, her eye—was ash because of him.
Her hatred burned cold, not hot anymore. Years had sharpened it into something steady, deliberate.
And yet… she couldn't walk away.
He was her brother. She'd sworn once never to forgive him, and she meant it. But she wasn't going to let Trevor's wolves tear him apart before her eyes. Not like their parents. Not like that night.
So she followed the trail he left. She kept to the rooftops, the alleys, the back of the crowd during deals. No one noticed the shadow with a scar over her eye. No one knew she was there.
And when Trevor's men struck, she was the blade in the dark that Dominic never saw.
A sniper's scope glinting from the roof? Valerie's knife found the gunman's throat before the shot fired.
A bomb wired under one of Dominic's trucks? Valerie's boot crushed the trigger man's hand before he could press it.
A masked figure creeping toward Dominic's flank in a street brawl? Valerie slit him ear to ear and disappeared into smoke before anyone turned.
She saved his life more than once, and he never knew.
Because she didn't want gratitude.
She didn't want to stand in his light again.
She wanted him alive. Alive long enough to suffer. Alive long enough to carry the weight of every scream, every funeral, every scar.
From the shadows, Valerie whispered, low and bitter:
"Not yet, brother. Not until you've paid in full."
The peace didn't last long ,Trevor's gang didn't come to play , they came for reason .
Finish what they started.
They came like phantoms.
The first strike was fast—gunfire tearing through the night, grenades shaking the walls, Dominic's men scrambling for cover. Dominic himself stormed into the yard, guns blazing, shouting orders with a rage that shook the men awake.
"Hold the line!"
His voice cut through the chaos, and his men pushed back hard. The fight was brutal, short, bloody—and just when they thought they were winning… Trevor's gang melted into the shadows. Retreating before they could crush them.
"Cowards," one of his lieutenants spat, chest heaving.
But Dominic's jaw tightened. This wasn't cowardice.
It was strategy.
The second strike came two nights later. Sharper. Louder. Explosives at the gates, Molotovs through the windows, Dominic's men bleeding in the courtyard. Dominic rallied them again—every muscle in his body burning with fury. He charged into the fray, cutting down men with savage precision. And again—just as his fury reached its peak—Trevor's gang vanished.
No bodies left behind. No trail to follow.
Only mocking silence.
By the fourth attack, Command K was drowning in paranoia.
Men barely slept. Fingers twitched on triggers. Shadows made them jump. The smell of smoke never left. Dominic's men began whispering that Trevor's gang were ghosts—that you couldn't fight what you couldn't catch.
And Dominic?
He was being played.
Every retreat gnawed at him. Every unanswered fight hollowed his chest deeper. Rage ate at him, but so did helplessness. He wanted blood. He wanted Trevor's head on a spike. But all he got was silence, retreat, the echo of laughter in his head.
"They're not trying to kill us," Dominic muttered one night, pacing the command room with veins bulging in his neck. Elena stood nearby, watching the storm build in him.
"They're trying to break us."
His eyes burned, feral and bloodshot. His fists slammed the table, splintering wood.
"They're trying to break me."
And in the shadows beyond the walls, unseen by Dominic's rage, Valerie crouched on a rooftop—watching. She could see what Trevor's gang was doing to him. She could see the cracks forming in her brother's armor.