CHAPTER 49: WAR.

The steady beeping of the heart monitor was the first thing she heard as she opened her eye in the hospital.

"Olivia... why are you and the doc acting like you got shot 30 times?" A woman’s voice came as she laughed. "You look like shit and it’s only your shoulder that was shot, how dramatic are you?" She laughed more while Olivia herself looked like a zombie.

"They knocked me out..." she said as she tried to sit up. "They fucked me up with all those painkillers and drugs..." She whispered as she shook her head, but her vision was still blurry and her head just spun all over the place.

When they found her at the warehouse, she was completely out, knocked the fuck out. She was focused on Vincente so much that she didn’t really care about her own bleeding, which suddenly sped up. She lost so much blood that she was on the verge of a critical condition, so they rushed her straight to the hospital, where she got so many injections she didn’t even remember what happened after that.

She wasn’t even questioned by the other agents... well, she was, but she was talking about anything but the shootout and what exactly had happened, though she said one name and that name many times.

"They call you the ’Terminator’ at the department."

"Terminator?" She asked as she looked at her.

"Yeah." She laughed once again. "Even their stupid asses believe that you were the one that killed Vincente and gunned down Jelena and Gabbana."

Olivia couldn’t believe it, because, well, she saw the news too, that they lied on the whole thing, that a special agent was the one that killed Vincente, but to actually believe it at the department was more than stupid.

"Of course, it is also bad... very bad, because now all of the DSA is kinda mad at you." She sipped her coffee as she crossed her legs. "You fucked up all of their years of investigation."

"Fucked up?" Olivia looked at her. "I was kidnapped and I didn’t even pull the trigger." She said as she eyed Fian, though she just sipped her coffee completely unbothered. "And now I need to fucking hide my family again because Jelena and Gabbana know my face, know who I am..." She leaned back, staring at the ceiling while the heart monitor beeped even more.

"Ohh, they will not give a fuck about you, trust me, partner."

"Why wouldn’t they?" She looked back at her and knew something was up judging Fian’s reaction.

She said nothing back to her, just stood up and turned on the television for her... and, well, what she saw made the heart monitor just spike up even more.

"Fuck..."

"Yeah... the Hibeer and the whole upper leadership was killed with two police officers." She turned off the television. "I can’t even explain the level of chaos inside the DSA, not just Vincente, but now three elders have died too." She sat back down. "Years of evidence, years of hard work went down the drain... but the worst part is the chain reaction it could cause." Her demeanor now changed into a more serious one.

Olivia, on the other hand, was just sitting up, confused and mind blown by all of it... her normal days, office work suddenly changed all into a fucking movie with all of this... a chaos that the city last saw decades ago.

"W-what about the Lisonda family? Thiago... did he move or something?" She looked at Fian with her eyes just so lost and panicking... but something changed again. Fian leaned back in her chair and seemed like she was holding something back, but then she looked into Olivia’s eyes and said it straight.

"Thiago died 5 hours ago, he was shot 23 times in the Starlight Club, as well as Riviera was just straight up executed with one shot to his head at his home."

She couldn’t move, couldn’t blink, couldn’t even figure out what the fuck to think... even though this was all a hallucination, the drugs and medicine were still just fucking her up, because there was no fucking way the two most prominent, most influential underbosses of the Lisonda family had just died.

The two who were in the family before Vincente was even born, the two who held the family together, they died after him.

"It isn’t an internal affair anymore, but the Lisonda family has just declared total war for power. Jes and Gabriel formed an alliance, while the board split in different directions, but three of them have already been killed by Jes and Gabriel. Another three formed an alliance led by Furkil, and the last one is on his own." Fian explained. "There’s a total war now, and it’s only the beginning. Jelena and Gabbana still haven’t moved, but if they do, other families and gangs will want a piece too. If that happens, it won’t just be a war between a few families, it’ll be a total war in the entire criminal underworld. And the worst part is—"

"C-Cassian... where is he...?" Olivia asked in a voice that was lost and scared, even just thinking about what was about to go down in this city, that once again. Blood would have to be pressure washed off the streets, bombs would explode, mass murder would begin... and if he joined in, then it wouldn’t be a war anymore... it would be a fucking massacre.

"We don’t know yet, and we probably won’t." she said as she stood up. "But he was the one who executed Hibeer and the elders, he just walked in and killed them. Not even mentioning what he did to Ivanka... it was just brutal."

Olivia once again was just blown away... he really did it, he really came back from nothing... but more importantly she was the one that put the final signature on the documents... and let him out. She actually believed in him, a broken boy, someone not dangerous but lost, and now he was on a fucking killing spree.

"Not just that but... they put him on the list." Fian continued and it now all made sense to Olivia.

Why did they start manipulating the story... saying she was the one who killed Vincente? Why didn’t they mention Gabbana or Jelena? Why did they claim the Hibeer massacre was just some gang related assassination, without a single name listed? Why did they say Joseph Cassian isn’t dangerous?

They put him on the blacklist... the list that forbids any mention of him. A list that blocks every law enforcement, every agency, from doing anything about him.

No investigations. No surveillance. No files.

He became a ghost, officially invisible. Protected not by secrecy, but by enforced silence.

And when someone ends up on that list, it means they’re untouchable.

Though in Joseph’s case he landed on the list not because he is too dangerous but because he is actually doing good work for them.