"Tuvimos el auto rastreado por un rato, pero finalmente lo perdimos, jefa." (We had the car tracked but we eventually lost it boss)

  The words hit like a dull bde.

  I stood in the center of the operations room, maps and surveilnce feeds glowing across the walls. Red markers. Moving units. Dead zones.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, forcing myself not to explode.

  Five more bad seconds.

  That's all it would take.

  "Mierda..." I hissed, jaw tightening until it ached.

  Thousands of them dead.

  Thousands.

  And not a single lead that brought me to Miguel.

  Every report of a firefight felt hollow. Every victory empty.

  Because none of it mattered if he wasn't found.

  "?Jefa!" one of my commanders called, rushing toward me, slightly out of breath. "Acabo de descubrir que usaron gas porque los superaban en número." (I've just found out that they used gas cause they were severely outnumbered)

  I turned sharply toward her.

  Gas because they were outnumbered.

  Of course.

  It clicked instantly.

  They couldn't win a direct engagement inside my compound. Too many guards. Too much firepower.

  So they didn't fight fair.

  They studied the yout.

  The airflow systems.

  The ventition shafts.

  All the weak points were there.

  The pces I'd stopped worrying about because no one had ever been bold enough to try.

  I closed my eyes for half a second.

  "I let myself get too comfortable..." I muttered.

  Too confident.

  Too certain my walls were untouchable.

  "Fuck!" I shouted, smming my palm against the edge of the command table. The sound cracked through the room, making a few of the younger soldiers stiffen.

  The guilt burned hotter than the anger.

  I should have anticipated it.

  I should have reinforced every possible breach point.

  Because Lina would know.

  She knew the systems. The schedules. The blind spots.

  She knew me.

  And she knew exactly where to strike to hurt the most.

  I straightened slowly, forcing my breathing to steady.

  "Patch every ventition vulnerability across all properties," I ordered sharply. "I want engineers on-site within the hour. Rotate patrol routes randomly. No patterns."

  My eyes moved to the rgest map on the wall.

  "They didn't take him far," I said quietly, more to myself than anyone else. "They'll want him close enough to control. Close enough to negotiate."

  Close enough to send a message.

  My jaw tightened again.

  They thought this was leverage.

  They thought this would break me.

  They were wrong.

  "Find him, find leads," I said, voice low but lethal. "I don't care how many doors we have to kick down."

  Because I wasn't stopping.

  Not until Miguel was back in my arms.

  "I think I'm done... after all this shit... I'm done."

  I decred it ftly as I shoved through the heavy metal door and stepped out of the stifling room.

  The cool, clean air smmed into my face like a sp of reality—sharp with the scent of pine and distant smoke.

  Above me stretched an endless, mocking blue sky, cloudless and brilliant, the exact shade Miguel always used to point out on clear days, saying it reminded him of the ocean back home before the blood turned everything red.

  "Those CJNG scum don't deserve to live," I hissed through clenched teeth, the words tasting like bile.

  My fingers tightened around the radio's scarred grip until the pstic creaked. I thumbed the transmit button hard enough to feel it bite into my thumb.

  "Escuchen todos," (listen up everyone) I barked into the mic, voice low and steady despite the tremor in my chest.

  "Quiero que todos los escondites conocidos del CJNG sean bombardeados. Sin piedad. Quiero que Jalisco entero quede en cuarentena también—cierre total de carreteras, aeropuertos, puertos. Nadie entra, nadie sale hasta que hayamos arrancado cada raíz." (I want every known CJNG hideout bombed. Mercilessly. I want the entire state of Jalisco quarantined as well—a complete shutdown of highways, airports, and ports. No one in, no one out until we've uprooted every st bit..)

  The order hung in the air for a split second before I released the button. Static crackled back at me like distant gunfire.

  The sun hung high and indifferent above the compound walls, light spilling across the courtyard like nothing in the world was wrong.

  I stood there beneath it, jaw tight, chest rising and falling slowly as I tried to steady the storm inside me.

  "Just hold on, Miguel... please," I murmured, my voice low but unwavering.

  I raised a fist toward the sky —not in spectacle, not for anyone watchin —but as a promise.

  The warmth of the sunlight hit my knuckles, almost cruel in its softness compared to the fire in my chest.

  "I'll have you back soon."

  This wasn't blind rage anymore.

  It wasn't reckless destruction.

  It was focus.

  Every breath I took now had direction. Every order I gave would have purpose. Every move would close the distance between us.

  Somewhere out there, he was waiting.

  Scared.

  Alone.

  But alive.

  And as long as he was alive, this wasn't over.

  I lowered my hand slowly, eyes still fixed on the horizon.

  They thought they had leverage.

  They thought they had broken something.

  They had no idea they had just given me a single, unstoppable objective.

  And I was coming.

  For every single one of them.

  ——