Chapter 9 The Trap

Sofia sat in the back of the FBI extraction vehicle, watching Brooklyn blur past the tinted windows while Agent Torres debriefed her on the secure radio. The operation had been blown, but her intelligence haul was unprecedented-enough evidence to dismantle the Romano family and half the political establishment of New York.

"Outstanding work, Martinez," Torres said through her earpiece. "The evidence you transmitted from Vincent Romano's safe is worth ten years of traditional investigation. Justice will want you in protective custody immediately, but first we need a complete debrief on-"

The driver's side window exploded in a shower of safety glass as a sniper's bullet took out Agent Williams behind the wheel. The extraction vehicle swerved wildly across three lanes of traffic before slamming into a concrete barrier at sixty miles per hour.

Sofia's world became noise, pain, and the metallic taste of blood as the reinforced SUV rolled twice before coming to rest on its roof. Through her ringing ears, she could hear Torres's voice crackling through the damaged radio: "Martinez, report! Martinez, do you copy?"

She tried to respond, but her mouth was full of blood and her left arm hung at an angle that suggested multiple fractures. Agent Rodriguez, who'd been sitting beside her, wasn't moving at all, and she could smell gasoline from the ruptured fuel tank.

Outside the overturned vehicle, Sofia heard car doors slamming and voices speaking rapid Italian. The Romano family hadn't waited for the FBI to relocate her-they'd decided to handle their betrayer problem immediately and permanently.

"Check the wreckage," a voice commanded in accented English. "Make sure the federal bitch is dead. If she's still breathing, fix that problem."

Sofia forced herself to remain motionless as boots approached the crashed SUV, fighting every instinct to run or fight. Her service weapon was pinned beneath Agent Rodriguez's body, and her emergency radio had been destroyed in the crash. She was trapped, wounded, and completely at the mercy of men who'd come to kill her.

A face appeared at the shattered window-one of Marco Romano's lieutenants, a scarred man named Tony Benedetto who specialized in making people disappear permanently. He studied Sofia's apparently lifeless body with professional interest, then reached through the broken glass to check for a pulse.

Sofia waited until his fingers touched her throat, then drove her good hand's fingers into his eyes with all the strength she had left. Tony screamed and jerked backward, clutching his face as blood streamed between his fingers.

"She's alive! The federal cunt is still alive!"

More voices, more footsteps, the distinctive sound of automatic weapons being readied for use. Sofia used the confusion to crawl through the rear window of the overturned SUV, leaving a trail of blood on the shattered glass. The gasoline smell was stronger now, and she could see fluid spreading across the asphalt beneath the wreckage.

A burst of machine gun fire shredded the spot where she'd been lying seconds earlier. Sofia rolled behind a concrete barrier just as the SUV's fuel tank ignited, sending a pillar of flame and smoke into the Brooklyn sky.

"Find her!" Marco Romano's voice carried clearly over the sound of the burning vehicle. "She's wounded, on foot, and has nowhere to run. Bring me her head, and there's fifty thousand cash for whoever delivers it."

Sofia pressed herself against the concrete barrier and tried to assess her situation. Broken arm, probable concussion, multiple lacerations, no weapons, no backup, surrounded by professional killers who knew every inch of Brooklyn. The FBI extraction had been a complete disaster, and she was now a wounded fugitive in enemy territory.

But she was alive, which meant she still had options.

Sofia Martinez had spent three years hunting the most dangerous criminals in America. Now it was time to use everything she'd learned about thinking like a predator to survive being hunted by them.

She crawled along the concrete barrier until she reached a storm drain that emptied into the Gowanus Canal. The opening was barely large enough for a person, but Sofia had been small enough to fit through tight spaces since her academy training. Behind her, she could hear Marco's men spreading out to search the area systematically.

The storm drain was a nightmare of industrial runoff, dead fish, and chemical smell that made her eyes water. But it was also a hidden route through Brooklyn that most people-including most criminals-had forgotten existed. Sofia dragged herself through the tunnel system, following the sound of flowing water toward the canal.

Twenty minutes later, she emerged from a drainage outflow into the murky waters of the Gowanus, gasping and shivering but alive. Her phone had been destroyed in the crash, her FBI credentials were scattered across a burning highway, and every law enforcement contact she'd ever known would assume she was dead.

Which meant she was completely on her own.

Sofia hauled herself onto a rotting pier and took inventory of her resources. Twelve dollars in cash, a hotel key card, and the knowledge that Vincent Romano would have every police scanner in the city monitored for reports of her survival. She couldn't go to a hospital-too easy to trace. She couldn't contact the FBI directly-too many opportunities for interception. And she couldn't hide indefinitely-not with a broken arm and internal injuries that needed medical attention.

But she could do one thing the Romano family wouldn't expect: she could go on the offensive.

Sofia Martinez knew more about Romano family operations than anyone outside the organization itself. She'd spent three weeks documenting their finances, their security procedures, their personal relationships, and their operational weaknesses. If she was going to die anyway, she might as well take Vincent Romano with her.

The first step was medical attention she could trust. Sofia remembered Isabella Romano mentioning a free clinic in Red Hook that treated people with no questions asked-the kind of place where undocumented immigrants and fugitives could get help without involving law enforcement. It was a twenty-minute walk through industrial Brooklyn, assuming she could stay conscious that long.

As Sofia limped through the darkening streets, she replayed her final conversation with Dante and wondered if he'd known about the hit team when he walked away from the café. Had his goodbye been genuine grief, or was he already planning her execution while pretending to be heartbroken?

The question hurt worse than her broken arm.

Dr. Maria Santos at the Red Hook clinic took one look at Sofia's injuries and asked no questions beyond "How do you want to pay for this?" Fifty minutes later, Sofia walked out with her arm in a professional cast, her cuts stitched and bandaged, and enough pain medication to keep her functional for the next few days.

She also walked out with a plan.

Sofia found an internet café in Sunset Park and used an untraceable connection to access the encrypted drives where she'd stored backup copies of all the evidence she'd gathered during her undercover operation. Vincent Romano's murder logs, bank records, political bribes, weapon purchases-everything the FBI needed to destroy his criminal empire.

But instead of transmitting the files to federal law enforcement, Sofia began uploading them to every major news organization in New York. The New York Times, the Post, NY1 News, the Daily News-within hours, investigative reporters would have access to the most comprehensive documentation of organized crime activity ever leaked to the media.

Vincent Romano had made a fatal mistake when he'd chosen to hunt her instead of letting the FBI relocate her quietly. Now, instead of being a protected witness in federal custody, Sofia Martinez was a wounded enemy with nothing left to lose and all the ammunition she needed to destroy him.

As she uploaded the final batch of files, Sofia's phone-a cheap burner she'd bought with cash-buzzed with an incoming text from an unknown number:

"I know you're alive. Meet me at Pier 19, Red Hook, midnight. Come alone, or the next FBI agent who gets close to my family won't be given the chance to confess first. - D"

Dante Romeo wanted to meet. Either to kill her personally, or to tell her something he couldn't risk saying over monitored communications.

Sofia looked at her watch: 11:17 PM. She had forty-three minutes to decide whether to trust the man she'd fallen in love with and betrayed, or whether walking into his trap was simply a quicker way to die than bleeding out in a Brooklyn internet café.

Either way, she was done running.

Sofia Martinez deleted her browsing history, pocketed the burner phone, and walked out into the Brooklyn night to meet whatever fate was waiting for her at Pier 19.

Behind her, the evidence that would destroy Vincent Romano's criminal empire continued uploading to news servers across the city, ensuring that even if she died in the next hour, her mission would be completed.

Sometimes the best revenge was simply making sure the truth survived long enough to do its work.