Chapter 5 Luke’s Younger Sister

"The Romano family sure has a lot of dogs."

Leo smiled.

That smile had no warmth at all—cold as the currents at the bottom of Lake Michigan.

Leo put the cigar back in his mouth and leisurely straightened his rain-soaked cuffs with one hand. His voice cut clearly through the sound of the rain, "But... you seem to have gotten something wrong. Tonight, I was never alone."

As soon as he finished speaking.

From the darkness behind Leo, a cold female voice suddenly rang out.

"Boss..."

Olivia's figure seemed to materialize from the rain itself, appearing silently three steps behind Leo.

She had changed out of her military uniform into a black tactical suit that hugged her tall frame. Her short blonde hair was wet from the rain, plastered against her cheeks.

Two silenced pistols hung at her waist.

Behind her, three more figures in identical black tactical suits emerged soundlessly from different hiding spots in the darkness.

One man, two women.

Each wore an armband embroidered with the same insignia—a dagger shrouded in shadow.

Shadow Squad.

This special operations team reporting directly to Leo had only four members, yet it was the only squad in the Pentagon's top-secret files with an "S+" combat effectiveness rating.

Even the "weakest" member had solo combat abilities matching an entire regular military special forces unit.

And as squad leader, Olivia had once single-handedly taken out an entire mercenary company's command structure on an Eastern European battlefield.

Leo exhaled a puff of smoke without looking back.

"Three minutes. Leave one alive."

"Copy that."

Four black shadows vanished simultaneously into the rain.

Then, a muffled thud.

The gunman in the front row's head snapped backward violently. His body still maintained its running posture as it fell straight back.

Then came the second sound, the third, the fourth...

The muffled thuds fell like raindrops, yet with bone-chilling precision.

After each sound, someone fell.

No wasted bullets.

One shot, one kill.

"We're under attack! Under attack! They're on all sides!"

Chaos erupted instantly.

The gunmen began firing wildly. Orange muzzle flashes lit up the rainy night as bullets struck walls, car bodies, and the ground, sending sparks flying.

But not a single one of their bullets hit its target.

Because Shadow Squad's movement speed far exceeded these street thugs' reaction time.

They couldn't see the enemy.

They could only watch their companions fall, one after another.

Olivia's figure wove between the vehicles like a panther in the night.

She wielded both pistols, each trigger pull accompanied by a falling body.

Three shots from her left gun, two kills with her right, feet never stopping. She spun, guns already aimed at the next targets.

The other three squad members were equally unstoppable.

One male member barehanded seized a thug's shotgun, reversed it to crush the man's skull with the stock, then swept horizontally—three shotgun blasts harvesting six lives at close range.

The two female members were even more ghostly, darting left and right.

The thugs couldn't even determine their positions, only feeling the sudden cold touch at their throats—the instant a tactical knife sliced through.

The entire street became hell on earth within one hundred eighty seconds.

SUV windows shattered, riddled with bullet holes.

Bodies lay scattered across the ground. Blood mixed with rainwater, forming dark red streams that flowed slowly through cracks in the pavement.

Gunfire gradually thinned.

Moans grew weaker and weaker.

Three minutes.

Seventy or eighty fully armed gang elites were slaughtered to the last by four people.

None escaped.

Throughout it all, Leo never looked back once.

He just kept walking forward, the cigar's glow flickering in the rain.

His shoes stepped through warm pools of blood, staining the leather dark red.

As if everything happening behind him was nothing more than a trivial interlude.

Olivia dragged the bald man out from the pile of corpses.

The South Side gang boss had lost all his earlier arrogance.

Both his legs had been shot, his right wrist severed by a blade. He lay limp like a dead fish dragged ashore.

Olivia threw him at Leo's feet.

"Boss, as you ordered, we left one alive. This man is the head of the South Side Irish gang, middle management in the Romano family system. He should know plenty of inside information."

Leo stopped and looked down at the moaning bald man on the ground. "Tell me something I don't know, and I won't kill you!"

The bald man nodded frantically, his eyes filled with desperate hope for survival.

Those three minutes of hell had completely shattered all his psychological defenses.

He'd seen ruthless people before.

But never anyone like this.

No, this wasn't a person.

This was the Grim Reaper!

"Yes!"

The bald man screamed out, fear completely overcoming all other concerns.

"Luke... Luke has a sister! Named Lily! When the family was destroyed, everyone thought she died too... but she didn't!"

Leo's pupils contracted sharply.

Lily Jennings.

Luke's own sister.

Luke's father had a daughter with another woman in his youth. Due to family dignity concerns, he never dared acknowledge her publicly.

But Luke later found out and secretly looked after his half-sister, privately paving her way and arranging a decent job for her.

When Luke's family was destroyed, Leo's first thought was to preserve his bloodline.

So he had Olivia track down Lily's whereabouts, but Lily had long since left her original company.

Sure enough, she'd been framed as mentally ill...

"Where is she?"

Leo's voice remained calm, but Olivia keenly noticed the veins bulging on his clenched fists.

The bald man swallowed bloody saliva, his voice trembling. "Alice... it was Alice who locked her up! After Luke died, Lily was going to the police, going to make public the evidence that Alice and the Romano family conspired to destroy Luke's family..."

"Alice struck first. She bribed two psychiatrists to forge diagnostic reports saying Lily had gone insane from the family tragedy, suffering from severe delusions and a persecution complex..."

"After that, Lily was forcibly committed to a private sanatorium controlled by the Romano family."

"But that's not a sanatorium at all... It's the Romano family's underground prison in the South Side... specially for holding people who know too many secrets. Nobody who goes in... ever comes out alive."

Hearing this, Leo slowly stood up, removed the cigar from his mouth, and dropped it on the ground where the rain extinguished it.

"Luke... don't worry. Your sister—I'll bring her out."

With that, Leo turned, his gaze sharp as a blade, looking at Olivia.

"Lock down the prison's location within ten minutes."

"Yes!"

Olivia snapped her feet together, standing at attention, right fist striking her chest in a standard military salute.

Five minutes later.

"Boss, as you ordered, we've found her."

A tall figure strode quickly into the vehicle, handing over a file with a grave expression. "Luke's sister Lily is indeed alive. But she's currently being held under the pretense of mental illness at St. Andrew's Private Psychiatric Hospital in Chicago's South Side. That hospital... is a prison controlled by the Romano family."

"Get a car ready."

Hearing this, killing intent erupted in Leo's eyes like a volcano.

"No."

He suddenly changed his mind, his gaze falling on the rearview mirror.

On the flatbed trailer behind them sat a pitch-black M113 armored personnel carrier.

It was his personal vehicle requisitioned from the Pentagon weapons depot.

"No need to get a car ready."

Leo started the engine, the sound like a beast's roar.

"I'll drive myself."