Page 88 of Fate and Family

“What the fuck? Are you driving?” Hadeon snaps. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him angry.

“The Black Hawk is down,” the same voice says. “Nearest operational base is over an hour away.”

Fuck. Even the Olympians—arguably the most commanding family in the world—can’t save them.

I feel sick. My reflection stares back at me from the glass table, hollow-eyed and broken. What have I become? Weak. Lost. Protected my whole life by my father, my brother, even the women who pitied me. My one job is to protect my son, and I’ve failed.

I glance at Katya, but look away. I don’t deserve her, or her support. I’m disgusting. A failure.

Penny’s voice slices through my self-loathing. “The Olympians do not negotiate with terrorists.”

Donny bolts upright, yanking his wallet from his pocket. “I do!” He slams it on the table, spilling a cascade of credit cards. “Max them all out. Hell, he can have my Costco card and buy all the potato salad he wants. I need my nephew back. My sister willkill me.” He groans, flopping back into his chair, which rolls and dumps him unceremoniously onto the floor. “My mom’ll revive me just to kill me again, and don’t even get me started on what Nonna would do.”

The older man scoffs. “You’re worried about your mama?”

Donny’s panic turning his voice high-pitched and ragged, he shouts, “You don’t get it. There’s only one thing more terrifying than the women in my family?—”

Before he can finish, the screen flashes white as the building explodes.

Chapter

Thirty-Nine

Katya

When I woke up this morning, I knew it was going to be a shitty day.

Stubbed my toe getting out of the shower and messed up my toenail. Stabbed myself in the eye with mascara. Sneezed while drinking coffee behind the wheel, so now my windshield looks like a Jackson Pollock of espresso. And to top it off, I got stuck in the elevator with someone who left behind a fart cloud that could violate the Geneva Convention.

I should’ve gone back to bed. Should’ve taken PTO.

But no, The Spider has been on my radar for weeks. With or without a visual on him, I know he’s working for The Deviant. His underlings have been easier to track. We’ve had their phones tapped for a month. At 12:13 p.m., we intercepted a message:

Kidnapping in progress.

By 12:45, my team identified the targets.

By 12:47, we were rounding up the guardians and deploying a task force.

The timeline pieced together quickly enough:

12:15: The targets were acquired in an armored limo.

12:25: Neutralized, likely through gas pumped into the ventilation system.

12:30: The limo deviated from its planned route.

After that, everything fell apart.

Glitches in the network. Programs forcing updates. Elevators moving slower than molasses. Missed calls. Each one a tiny, stupid hiccup, but together they bled time—time we couldn’t afford to lose.

By one p.m., we had the guardians in the building. Agents were liaising with specialized units for retrieval, but the delays kept stacking. We lost GPS signal five times. Ten full minutes passed where we thought we’d lost the target completely. When we deployed SWAT to intercept, they set the nets five blocks south of where they should’ve been.

Every single step, we fucked up.

And it doesn’t make sense.

One or two mistakes, sure. But this many? It reeks of inside interference.

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