Chapter 2 - The Russo Protocol
Damian hit the keyboard and snapped:
“Open it.”
Garrett enlarged the memory-card directory while Damian held Hazel’s broken cardigan button between two fingers.
A tiny inscription had been etched inside the plastic.
R-17.
Damian had seen that code before.
It belonged to his dead father.
The Russo Protocol file contained no video.
Only audio.
Garrett clicked PLAY.
Static filled the room.
Then a man spoke.
Damian stopped breathing.
His father, Antonio Russo, had been dead for twelve years.
Yet his voice came through the speakers with unmistakable clarity.
“If Damian is hearing this, then the protection layer has failed.”
Damian gripped the desk.
Garrett looked at him but said nothing.
Antonio continued.
“My son believes strength is the same as security. It is not. Strength makes a man visible. Visibility makes him a target.”
A pause.
“Therefore he must never know who protects him.”
Damian stared at Hazel’s frozen image.
The recording continued.
“Asset R-17 will remain outside the family structure. No formal connection. No public loyalty. No acknowledgment.”
R-17.
Hazel.
Damian felt anger rise through the shock.
His father had assigned someone to protect him.
Someone who had continued doing it long after Antonio died.
“Why?” Damian whispered.
The recording answered almost as though Antonio had heard him.
“Because the greatest threat to Damian will not come from an enemy.”
The audio abruptly stopped.
Garrett frowned.
“That’s it?”
“No.”
Damian pointed.
“There’s another file.”
The second recording was corrupted.
Garrett ran recovery software while Damian paced.
For years, Damian had believed his father had taught him everything about survival.
Antonio Russo had been brutal, patient, and almost impossible to deceive.
His death from a heart attack had transferred the empire to Damian at twenty-eight.
At least that was the official story.
Now Damian wondered what else had been official only because someone wanted it to be.
Garrett recovered six seconds.
Antonio’s voice returned.
“R-17 was chosen because her loyalty is not to the organization.”
Static.
“Her loyalty is to—”
The file died.
Damian slammed his palm against the desk.
“Recover it.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder.”
Garrett looked at him.
“Damian, we need to consider something else.”
“What?”
“If Hazel has been protecting you since before your father died, why become your secretary only three years ago?”
Damian had already wondered.
The answer was probably inside the years between.
They reconstructed Hazel’s history.
Almost all of it was false.
Her university records existed, but the photographs did not match.
Her tax history began three years before her employment.
Her parents’ death certificates were legitimate, yet there was no evidence Hazel Brooks had ever lived with them.
The woman was a manufactured identity.
At 2:13 a.m., Garrett found the first real trace.
A private security training facility in Virginia.
A photograph from eleven years earlier showed twenty recruits standing outside a concrete building.
Hazel stood in the back row.
Her hair was shorter.
Her expression was the same.
Beside her stood a man Damian recognized.
“Victor Hale.”
Garrett nodded.
Victor had served Antonio Russo as personal security chief.
He had died in a warehouse fire six months before Antonio.
Or supposedly died.
Damian enlarged the photograph.
On Victor’s wrist was the same R-17 symbol.
“Find everything on Hale.”
Garrett began searching.
Damian’s phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
He answered.
Silence.
Then a woman spoke.
“You should have left the footage buried.”
Damian stood motionless.
Hazel.
“Where are you?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“You saved my life.”
Silence.
“More than once,” Damian added.
“You weren’t supposed to know.”
“Why?”
“You fired me.”
Despite everything, Damian almost smiled.
“So this is about professional boundaries?”
“No. It means I no longer have access to the building.”
“You could have told me what happened.”
“That would have compromised my position.”
“You were my secretary.”
“I was never your secretary.”
The words landed harder than Damian expected.
“What were you?”
Hazel breathed quietly.
“Your last line of defense.”
Damian looked toward Garrett.
“Who sent Voss?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“That’s your problem.”
“Hazel.”
She went silent.
Damian softened his voice.
“My father called you R-17.”
For the first time, Hazel’s breathing changed.
“You opened the card.”
“Yes.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“Antonio is dead.”
“That doesn’t make the protocol dead.”
“Who are you protecting me from?”
Hazel answered immediately.
“Everyone.”
The call ended.
Garrett traced it.
Nothing.
Damian stared at the phone.
“She’s watching.”
Garrett nodded.
“Probably.”
“Good.”
Damian faced the dark window.
“Then let’s give her something to watch.”
By morning, Damian announced an emergency meeting with Bastion Lock.
He deliberately leaked the location.
Warehouse 19.
One of his least secure properties.
Garrett hated the plan.
“You’re using yourself as bait.”
“I’m using whoever wants me dead as bait.”
“And Hazel?”
“She’ll come.”
“You sound certain.”
Damian buttoned his jacket.
“She spent years protecting me without recognition, money, or orders from me. People don’t stop habits like that in a week.”
At Warehouse 19, Bastion arrived furious.
“You summon me twice in eight days?”
Damian ignored him.
“Who knew about our meeting last Tuesday?”
“My people.”
“Names.”
Bastion laughed.
Damian stepped closer.
“Someone entered my building armed during your meeting.”
Bastion’s smile vanished.
“That wasn’t me.”
“Convince me.”
Before Bastion could answer, the warehouse lights died.
Garrett shouted.
Gunfire cracked from the catwalk.
Damian dropped behind a steel container.
More shots.
His men returned fire.
Then a suppressed shot sounded from somewhere above.
One attacker fell.
Another turned.
A second suppressed shot.
He dropped.
Damian looked toward the upper walkway.
A figure moved through darkness.
Small.
Fast.
Brown hair.
“Hazel!”
She disappeared.
Damian ran toward the stairs.
Garrett shouted for him to stop.
Damian ignored him.
He reached the upper level.
A door swung closed ahead.
Damian pushed through it.
Empty corridor.
At the far end, an emergency exit stood open.
On the floor lay a phone.
Damian picked it up.
The screen illuminated automatically.
One message.
DO NOT TRUST GARRETT.
Damian froze.
Footsteps approached behind him.
Garrett entered the corridor.
He looked at the phone in Damian’s hand.
“What does it say?”
Damian slowly locked the screen.
“Nothing.”
Garrett studied him.
Then Damian noticed something beneath Garrett’s sleeve.
A mark on his wrist.
Small.
Almost hidden by an old scar.
May you like
R-17.
Except the final digit had been cut away.
