Chapter 22: Priorities
The usual place was a twenty-four hour diner called The Golden Griddle, a wedge of fluorescent light and grease-stained optimism wedged between a shuttered bookstore and a pawn shop that never closed. Logan got there early, his leg a dull, insistent throb beneath the table. He’d texted Roman a simple update: Meeting the barometer. Golden Griddle. Intel soon. He didn’t expect a reply. Roman was across town, in a secured conference room above a funeral home, re-negotiating territories with the Falcone family. A necessary dance after the docks.
The reply came not as text, but as a blunt, vibrating ring thirty seconds later. Roman never called during meetings.
Logan’s thumb hovered over the answer icon, a cold knot forming in his gut. He hit accept and brought the phone to his ear. He didn’t speak.
The sound that came through wasn’t Roman’s measured baritone. It was a razor-sharp exhale, punctuated by the distant, unmistakable pap-pap-pap of suppressed gunfire. “Logan.”
“Roman. Talk to me.”
“The meeting was a fucking ambush.” Each word was bitten off, layered with a fury so cold it burned. More gunfire, closer. A man’s guttural shout, cut short. “Salvatore’s grandson. Little Marco. He brought shooters instead of accountants. My two men upstairs are dead. I’m in the office. Barricaded. They have the staircase and the hall. Twenty guns, maybe more.”
The numbers clicked in Logan’s head like a bolt sliding home. Twenty against one, even if that one was Roman, was a math problem with only one answer. The cold knot dissolved into a spreading liquid panic, but his voice stayed flat, a tool. “Exits?”
“Window. Fifth story. Concrete alley. Not an exit, a finale.” A crash sounded, something heavy hitting the door. Roman’s breath hitched, just once. “They’re impatient.”
“I’m sending the team. Now. ETA seven minutes. Keep your phone on. Don’t do anything fucking poetic.”
He hung up before Roman could argue. His fingers flew across a different screen, pulling up an encrypted app, hitting the crimson alert icon, typing coordinates. Extract Roman Sionis. Hostile environment. Maximum force authorized. He sent it.
Then he was moving, throwing a crumpled twenty on the table and lurching out of the booth. The leg screamed, a white-hot protest. He ignored it. He hailed the first idling town car he saw, flashing a black credit card with the Sionis Holdings logo before the driver could speak. “Sixteen hundred Charter Street. Don’t stop for lights. Don’t stop for anything.”
As the car peeled away from the curb, he called the team lead, a grim-faced ex-Mossad agent named Kato. “Status?”
“Wheels up in ninety seconds,” Kato’s voice was all gravel and static. “You are not on this op, Logan. You are a civvie with a bum leg. Stand down.”
“I’m a civvie who knows the blueprints of that building because I sourced the fucking drywall,” Logan snapped, his eyes tracking the blurring streetlights. “The office he’s in has a secondary HVAC conduit behind the west wall. It’s narrow, but it leads to the fourth-floor janitorial closet. It’s not on any schematic. You’ll waste time breaching the main door. I’m coming. You need me to find him faster.”
A pause. More static, the sound of an engine roaring to life. “If you slow us down, I leave you in the street.”
“Noted.”
The warehouse district was a tomb of brick and shadow. The team arrived in two unmarked black vans, disgorging six men in tactical gear, faces obscured by black balaclavas. They moved like a single dark organism. Logan climbed out of the town car, his own black clothes feeling like a pathetic costume. The pain in his leg was a bright, focused star. He swallowed it.
Kato thrust a heavy Kevlar vest at him, then a pistol. “Safety’s off. Don’t shoot my people. Stay behind the shield.”
The shield was a mountain of a man carrying a ballistic plate. Logan fell in behind him, the group flowing toward the funeral home’s rear delivery entrance. The sounds from inside were clearer now—sporadic gunfire, shouts in Italian, the splintering of wood.
They hit the door with a silenced charge. The bang was a muffled thump. Then they were inside, into a back hallway reeking of formaldehyde and dust.
Chaos unfolded in stop-motion flashes. Muzzle flashes lit the dark main floor like strobe lights. Figures crouched behind overturned mortuary tables. The team moved with brutal efficiency. Three sharp, wet cracks from their weapons. A Falcone gunman slumped. Another turned, his eyes wide in the dark, and was dropped before his shout fully formed.
Logan’s world narrowed to the back of the shield-man’s vest, the hammering of his own heart, the acid taste of adrenaline. He dragged his leg, each step a minor agony. They reached the central staircase. Gunfire roared from the upper landing.
“Covering!” Kato barked.
The team laid down a suppressing barrage, rounds chewing the plaster wall to dust. Up they went, Logan half-climbing, half-pulled by the momentum of the men around him. The second-floor hallway was a shooting gallery. A bullet whined off the shield-man’s plate with a sound like a cracked bell. Logan flinched, his finger curling on the trigger guard of his unused gun.
“Left, forty feet, green door!” Logan yelled over the din, his voice raw.
They pushed toward it, a grinding, violent advance. The green office door was scarred with fresh impact marks, the lock shattered. Kato kicked it in.
The office was dark, lit only by the cold neon from the pawn sign across the street. Roman stood behind the overturned steel desk, a semi-automatic pistol held steady in a two-handed grip, aimed at the door. His white dress shirt was dark and slick across his left side, a sprawling stain of ink-black in the blue light. His eyes, above the gripped pistol, found Logan’s first. They weren’t scared. They were incandescent with rage.
Then they flickered with something else—a shock of recognition, swiftly buried.
“Took your time,” Roman said, his voice a dry scrape.
“Traffic was a bitch,” Logan breathed, the joke falling dead from his lips.
Kato was already at the west wall, running his hands over the panels. “Conduit?”
“Third panel from the corner,” Logan said, moving forward. His eyes were locked on the stain on Roman’s shirt. It was growing. “Pressure on that,” he said, pointing, his voice stripping down to bare command.
Roman didn’t move. One of the team, a medic, pushed past Logan and pressed a bundled pad against Roman’s side. Roman hissed, his knuckles whitening on the pistol, but he allowed it.
Kato pried the wall panel open, revealing a black, gaping hole just big enough for a man to crawl through. “Clear. Go. Now.”
Roman moved toward it, his stride only slightly hampered. The medic went first. Then Roman, ducking into the darkness without a backward glance. Kato and two others followed.
The shield-man and the last operative, a kid with watchful eyes, stayed with Logan. “We hold this door until they’re clear below,” the operative said. “Then we fall back.”
From the hallway, a shout. “They’re in the office! Finish it!”
The doorframe exploded inward. Wood splinters rained down. Logan crouched behind the steel desk, next to the shield-man. He raised his pistol, his hands steady in a way that surprised him. He peered around the edge.
A man charged in, wild-eyed, firing a sawed-off shotgun.
The boom was deafening in the enclosed space. The shield-man grunted, taking the spray in his plate. Logan fired. The kick was jarring. He missed. The operative beside him didn’t. Two tight shots to the center mass. The gunman folded.
Another appeared in the doorway. Logan fired again. This time, he saw the man jerk. Not a clean hit, but it made him stagger back.
“Fall back!” the operative yelled. “Now!”
They backpedaled toward the open conduit, firing as they went. The shield-man went last, his massive body blocking the doorway for a precious few seconds. Logan scrambled into the dark hole. It was tight, metallic, smelling of stale air and grease. He crawled, his bad leg dragging uselessly behind him, a blunt instrument of pain.
Gunfire echoed in the office they’d just left. A choked cry. The shield-man didn’t follow them in.
Logan kept crawling. The conduit seemed to stretch for miles. He could hear Roman ahead, the rasp of his breath, the scuff of shoes on metal. His own breath was so loud in his ears.
Then light. They spilled out into a janitor’s closet, onto a floor littered with broken mop handles and spilled detergent. The team was there, forming a perimeter. The medic was wrapping a bandage tightly around Roman’s torso, over the shirt. Roman’s face was pale, carved marble under the closet’s single bulb.
“Move,” Kato said.
They exited into an alley, into the waiting vans. Roman was shoved into the back of the first one. Logan practically fell into the seat beside him. The doors slammed. The van rocketed forward, throwing them both against the hard interior wall.
In the sudden, bouncing semi-darkness, the only sounds were the roaring engine and ragged breathing. The medic worked silently, cutting away Roman’s shirt. The wound was a deep, angry graze along his ribs, a trench carved by a bullet. Not a kill shot. A message. Blood welled up, thick and slow.
Logan stared at it. The all-encompassing loyalty was there, a fundamental wire in his wiring. But beneath it, rising like floodwater, was something else. A raw, terrified clench in his chest that had nothing to do with strategy or debt. The sight of Roman’s blood on the medic’s gloves, the pallor of his skin, ignited a panic so profound it stripped Logan bare.
He realized, with the clarity of a sniper’s scope, that he would have thrown himself in front of that shotgun blast. Without thought. Without hesitation. He would have died in that filthy office just to prevent that graze from being a killing shot.
Roman’s head lolled back against the van wall. His eyes, heavy-lidded, found Logan’s. The fury was gone, banked to embers. Something assessing, deeply curious, took its place. He saw Logan looking at the wound. He saw whatever was naked on Logan’s face.
“Messy,” Roman murmured, his voice thin.
“You’re fucking welcome,” Logan said, but the usual snark had no edge. It sounded like a plea.
Roman’s hand, resting on the bench between them, moved. Just an inch. His pinky finger brushed against Logan’s where his own hand was clenched into a fist on the cold metal seat.
The touch was electric. A point of contact in the roaring dark.
Logan didn’t pull away. He turned his hand over, just slightly, letting their fingers align. A silent admission in the jolting dark.
The van raced toward the penthouse, toward safety and sterile lights. Logan held on, to the van, to the touch, to the terrifying truth now beating in time with his heart. He’d gone in to protect an asset. He’d come out knowing he’d almost lost something he couldn’t name, and the cost of that would have been everything.
The van’s rear doors opened to the penthouse’s underground garage, a cavern of concrete and cold air. The transition from violent motion to sterile stillness was jarring. Roman allowed himself to be helped out, moving with stiff, careful precision, but he shrugged off the supporting hands as soon as his shoes hit the smooth floor. He walked to the private elevator alone, a slow, deliberate procession, leaving a trail of muted crimson droplets on polished concrete.
Logan followed, his own leg now a distant, secondary complaint. The penthouse was too quiet, too bright. The medic, a severe woman named Anya, had Roman sit on a stainless-steel kitchen stool. She cut away the ruined shirt with shears, her movements efficient and impersonal.
The wound was a ugly, seeping thing. A furrow of torn flesh along his lower ribs, deep enough to glisten. It wasn’t fatal, but it was a violation etched into skin.
“Clean. No bullet fragments. Stitches, antibiotics, rest,” Anya dictated, not looking up from her work. “No alcohol. No strenuous activity. Change the dressing every twelve hours. If it reddens, heats, or weeps yellow, call me. Do not be a hero.”
Roman stared at a point on the far wall, his jaw tight as the needle went in. He didn’t flinch. Logan watched the thread pull the skin closed, a meticulous, brutal embroidery. His own hands felt useless. He filled a glass with water, set it on the counter beside Roman. A small, stupid gesture.
Anya finished, taping a pristine white bandage over her work. She packed her kit, gave Logan a look that said you’re in charge of this now, and left. The silence she left behind was thick and humming.
“Well,” Roman said, his voice rough. “That was suboptimal.”
“Marco Falcone is a dead man,” Logan stated. It wasn’t a question or a threat. It was a future fact, simple and cold as geometry.
“Eventually.” Roman pushed himself upright, a slight hitch in his breath the only concession to pain. “First, we let them think they’ve drawn blood. Let them get confident. Arrogant men make elegant mistakes.” He walked slowly toward the living room, each step measured. “I need the file on Marco’s new girlfriend. The one he thinks is a secret.”
Logan didn’t move. “You need to sit down.”
“I need to plan.”
“You need to not pop your stitches and bleed on a five-thousand-dollar rug.” Logan’s tone was flat. “The file can wait until morning. Your empire will last the night without you micromanaging it from a sofa.”
Roman stopped, turning his head slowly. The assessment in his eyes was back. “Since when do you give the orders?”
“Since the guy who usually gives them got shot and is currently ignoring medical advice.” Logan ran a hand through his hair, the adrenaline crash making his fingers tremble. “Just… sit. For me.”
Roman held his gaze for a long moment, the silence stretching thin between them. The city’s light through the floor-to-ceiling windows painted his face in stark planes of white and shadow. He exhaled, a slow concession. “Fine.”
He didn’t go to the sofa. He walked to the bedroom, a king-sized expanse of charcoal linen and cold modernity. Logan followed, a silent shadow. Roman sat on the edge of the mattress, the movement stiff, and began to unlace his shoes. Watching him struggle with the simple task, his shoulders tight with suppressed pain, sparked something restless in Logan’s chest.
“Let me,” Logan said, the words out before he could filter them.
He knelt, ignoring the protest in his own leg, and batted Roman’s hands away. The leather of the Oxfords was smooth and cool. He worked the laces loose, pulled them off. His fingers brushed against the fine wool of Roman’s socks. The intimacy of the act, this simple service, felt more exposing than anything that had happened in the alley.
“You’re hovering,” Roman said, his voice a low rumble above him.
“I’m ensuring asset preservation.” Logan placed the shoes neatly side-by-side. “It’s in my job description. Under ‘miscellaneous bullshit.’”
A faint, pained sound escaped Roman. It might have been a laugh. He leaned back on his elbows, watching as Logan stood and went to the ensuite. He returned with a glass of water and the bottle of pills Anya had left. He shook two into his palm.
Roman looked at them, then at Logan’s face. “I don’t like being foggy.”
“You’ve been shot. You get to be foggy for one night.” Logan pushed his hand closer. “Unless you’d prefer to lie here wide awake, thinking about Marco Falcone’s face. Which, for the record, I’m also thinking about. But I’d rather do it on a decent night’s sleep.”
Roman took the pills, swallowed them dry. His throat worked. He laid back against the pillows, staring at the ceiling. The rigid control was leaching from his body, leaving behind the raw fact of the injury. Logan stood there, suddenly unsure of his role now that the immediate tasks were done. The silence felt different here, in the bedroom. It was a space they didn’t share.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. Maya.
He pulled it out, the screen glowing in the dark room. A text: You here? I’m at the counter. Waitress is giving me the ‘lonely loser’ look.
A pang of guilt, sharp and surprising, cut through him. He’d completely forgotten. The Golden Griddle, the wilted herbs, her quiet intensity waiting for answers he couldn’t fully give. He typed quickly, his back slightly turned to Roman. Something came up. Can’t make it. Really sorry. Rain check?
He hit send before he could overthink it. No explanation. Just absence. The reply was almost immediate. …Okay. Hope you’re alright. The simplicity of it, the lack of demand, felt worse than anger.
“Your barometer?” Roman’s voice was a quiet intrusion.
“Yeah.” Logan shoved the phone back in his pocket. “She’s… fine.”
“You should go. Keep the appointment.”
“And leave you here to try and hack into Falcone’s bank accounts while high on painkillers? Not a chance.” Logan walked to the window, looking out at the indifferent glitter of the city. “The barometer can wait. The storm’s already here.”
He heard the rustle of linen behind him. When he turned, Roman had shifted onto his side, facing the empty space beside him. His eyes were closed, but the line of his shoulders was still tense. “Sit down. Your looming is exhausting.”
Logan hesitated. He walked over and sat on the very edge of the mattress, near Roman’s hip, a careful foot of space between them. The room was cool, quiet.
“You were right,” Roman said, the words slightly slurred by the medication. “About the conduit. It wasn’t on the schematics.”
“Told you I was good for something.”
“You were good for several things tonight.” Roman’s hand moved, a slow, deliberate arc through the dark. His fingers found Logan’s wrist, his grip warm and solid. “The team was seven minutes out. You made it four.”
Logan’s breath caught. The touch was an anchor. “I had a vested interest.”
“I know.”
The pills were pulling Roman under. His grip loosened, but his hand remained, a heavy, warm weight. His breathing deepened, grew more even. Logan watched the rise and fall of his bandaged side, a hypnotic rhythm in the semi-darkness.
He should leave. Go to the guest room, the sofa, anywhere. This was a line, transparent and electric, and he was toeing it.
Roman’s hand tightened, just briefly. “Stay.”
It wasn’t a request. It was a quiet command, frayed at the edges by weariness and drugs. Logan looked at their hands, at the man who never showed vulnerability slowly succumbing to it inches away. The fear he usually wore like armor was gone, burned away in the back of that van.
He didn’t analyze it. He just moved.
He toed off his own shoes, shrugged out of his jacket, and lay down on top of the covers, still in his clothes. He kept to his side, the space between them a charged canyon. The bed was immense. He stared at the ceiling, listening to Roman breathe.
Then Roman moved. Not much. Just a shift, a turn onto his back that brought his shoulder against Logan’s arm. His hand, which had fallen away, came back, not to his wrist, but to find Logan’s hand where it rested on the bed between them. His fingers laced through Logan’s, holding on with a simple, unthinking certainty.
Logan froze. Every nerve ending was focused on that point of contact—the rough calluses, the steady pressure, the utter lack of pretense. This was worse than the van. This was deliberate stillness. This was a choice.
He didn’t pull away. He turned his head on the pillow. In the faint light, he could see the sharp line of Roman’s profile, the dark fan of his lashes against his cheek. The furious, invincible man was asleep, his defenses dissolved by chemicals and blood loss, holding onto Logan like he was the only solid thing in the room.
Logan’s heart hammered against his ribs, a trapped, frantic thing. He closed his eyes, focusing on the anchor of that grip. The city’s endless murmur was a distant hum. The only real things were the warmth of the hand in his, the slow sound of Roman’s breathing, and the terrifying, quiet truth settling in his bones: he was exactly where he wanted to be.