Copyright © 2025 Bleeding Heart Press

Edited by Kelly Allenby at Readers Together

Cover design by C. Hallman

Photograther: Wander Aguiar

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

BLURB

Once he was her everything; now he is nothing but a lost memory.

NICK

I’ve spent years mourning the woman I love… until I found her alive, pointing a gun at my chest. She doesn’t remember me, us, or the time we spent together making promises we thought we’d keep. That was before they stole her from me.

Now she’s a lethal stranger with scars on her body and ice in her veins, working for the very people who destroyed our lives. Every time I look at her, I see my Laura, but the woman fighting me and making me lose control is someone entirely new.

No matter what, I’ll burn the world down to bring her home and remind her exactly who she belongs to.

IVY

They told me I had no one. They gave me a new name, a new life, and a gun.

Then he found me. Nick. The man who claims I used to love him. The man who won’t stop hunting me even after I put a bullet in his leg. He says I’m Laura, the girl from a family that supposedly mourned me. But I’m Ivy—an assassin who answers to no one.

I should kill him. Instead, I’m letting him drag me across continents, cuff me to his bed, and unravel everything I thought I knew. His touch feels dangerously familiar. His eyes see straight through my armor. And the worst part? I’m starting to want the life he’s promising… even as the family that raised me puts a target on both our backs.

I don’t know who I am anymore. But I know one thing: I’m done being anyone’s pawn.

This is a standalone ending with a happily ever after!

Tropes and Triggers: Organized Crime, Amnesia, Second Chance, Trained Assassin, Dub-Con, Enemies to Lovers, Forced Proximity, Found Family, Captivity, and Revenge.

NICK

I’ve been chasing a ghost for four months.

The cobblestones are slick under my heavy-soled boots as I make my way back to the hotel. I have to turn my collar up against the persistent drizzle. The cold kind that seeps into everything. Into my bones by now, with my breath fogging in front of my face with every step I take. Prague in October is about as welcoming as a knife in the back. Fitting, considering the mission I’m on.

Not to mention how goddamn frustrated I am.

Another day, another dead end. Another conversation with someone who either knows nothing, or knows everything but won’t say a damn word because that’s how it works in this world. You don’t talk about the Russos. You don’t talk about the people who work for them. You definitely don’t talk about a woman with black hair and green eyes who, depending on who you ask, may or may not exist.

But she does exist. I know she does, because Gabriel Russo told Liam she was still alive. Gabriel doesn’t hand out information like that unless it serves him. And it wouldn’t serve him for us to find out he was jerking us around—if he knows nothing else, I would hope he’d know that by now. You don’t take down a guy like Donovan Blackwell unless you know what you’re doing. Unless you’re dangerous.

But we did, because we are. Message sent.

Even still, I’m at the point where I have to wonder if there’s something else at play here. No, I didn’t think I would fly to Europe and find her within a few days, or even a week, or a month. But she’s like sand slipping through my fingers faster the tighter I clench my fist. Opening my hands and letting it slip out the rest of the way would be so damn easy. I could go home. I could go back to what used to be my life, not all that long ago.

But that would mean closing the door on Laura, and that’s something I can’t do. Won’t do.

Just thinking her name does something to me. I don’t have time to think about her right now. Not out here, not while I scan every shadow and every doorway out of habit. The habit didn’t develop during this mission—no, I was still a kid when I first understood the world is full of people who want to hurt you.

The hotel’s nothing special. Mid-range, far enough from tourist traps that nobody asks questions of a guy with little luggage and a fake passport. They don’t care that the stay is indefinite, so long as I don’t make trouble. The woman at the front desk barely looks up when I pass, not that I’m complaining. I’m not in the mood for small talk. I’m not in the mood for anything but a hot shower, a drink, and as much sleep as I can grab before I start again in the morning.

Instead of taking the elevator, I jog up the stairs. An old habit. Elevators are boxes. You can’t fight in a box. You sure as hell can’t run. The stairwell reeks of cigarettes and floor cleaner, but I’ve smelled worse.

My room is at the end of the hall. I pull out the key card, slide it through, and push the door open with my shoulder. I reach for the light switch with my free hand.

The ugly overhead light flips on.

And everything in my head goes dead silent. My heart stops and so does everything else in the world. At least that’s what it feels like.

Because I’m not alone.

She’s standing at the window. Black hair, cut to her shoulders. A sharp jaw. The kind of posture that means she’s been trained to move fast, hit hard. Dark, fitted jacket. Black pants. Boots made for running… or kicking someone’s teeth in.

Her green eyes are locked on mine, and there’s nothing behind them. No warmth. No recognition. Nothing.

All she has for me is a Beretta, and it’s aimed straight at my chest.

My heart starts beating again, slamming against my ribcage once. Twice. Then it settles into something cold and steady, because that’s what years of working with Liam will do to a person. Panic is a luxury I can’t afford. Not even now, standing in the same room as someone I spent twelve years believing was dead.

For months, I’ve been caught between wanting to believe and wondering if this has all been a waste of time. I can admit that now, if only to myself. Part of me was afraid to believe, genuinely afraid, because of what it meant—opening myself up to hope. And hope can be more deadly than a gun.

Which she has now, and I can’t pretend otherwise.

Slowly, I raise my hands, palms out. The door swings shut behind me with a soft click. In the silence, it might as well be a gunshot.

She assesses me with a quick look. “Give me one reason not to kill you.”

The sound of her voice damn near takes my legs out from under me. Jesus Christ, her voice. Lower than I remember. Husky. No hint of the softness that used to make me ache in a completely different way.

But it’s her voice. Twelve years later, standing in a cheap hotel in Prague with a gun pointed at my chest, and I would know that voice anywhere.

I have to be careful. More careful than I’ve been in these past four months, maybe in my entire life. The woman in front of me might sound like the girl I lost, but she isn’t. She’s holding that gun like it’s part of her. Her finger rests on the trigger with an easy confidence that tells me she’s pulled it before. Many times, even. There isn’t so much as a tremor in her hand or hesitation in her gaze.

She came here ready to put a bullet in me, and if I give her a reason to, she will.

So I won’t give her a reason. “I know you, Laura.”

Something shifts in her expression. I’m not lucky enough for it to be recognition. More like confusion that quickly turns to suspicion. “My name is Ivy.”

Ivy. It’s like a punch to the chest, hearing that name. Of course they gave her a new one. Why wouldn’t they? They took everything else.

“That isn’t your name.” Something inside me is breaking apart in ways I can’t deal with, but I keep my voice steady. “Your name is Laura Knight. You have a brother named Liam. You grew up in⁠—”

“Stop,” she barks, but softly. “I don’t know who Laura is. I don’t know who you are.”

Her grip tightens on the gun. “What I do know is you’ve been asking about me for weeks, and I want to know why.”

Weeks. She’s known about me for weeks. That means she’s been watching me, tracking my movements, gathering information. I had no idea. It stings. I can’t pretend otherwise. I was following her, never knowing she was following me.

“I’ve been looking for you,” I confirm while slowly lowering my hands a fraction of an inch at a time. Of course she notices—her gaze is following my movement—but she doesn’t react. “I’ve been looking for months. Ever since I found out you were alive. My search led me here. I came to bring you home.”

Her smooth forehead wrinkles, and her eyes narrow. “Home.” Like it’s a foreign language she doesn’t speak. “Where exactly is home?”

“Back in the States. With your brother. With the people who love you.” With me. I don’t dare say that. It would be the ideal way to get shot.

Gears turn behind her narrowed eyes. I watch as she analyzes me the way she would analyze a target. Running calculations. Measuring the threat. Any warmth that existed in those green eyes when we were kids, when she used to look at me like I was the only person in the world worth looking at, is gone.

And it’s been replaced by something cold and clinical.

“Nice story,” she murmurs. “But I don’t have a brother. I don’t have a home in the States. I was rescued from a bad situation when I was a kid. The people who took me in gave me a life. They gave me a purpose.”

She tilts her head like she’s studying me. Or like she’s trying to decide which organ she should aim for. “If you knew me back then, that would make you part of the bad situation.”

Of course. That’s what they told her. It wasn’t enough for them to take her. They rewrote her. They fed her a version of events where they were the heroes, and everyone she loved was the villain.

And she believed them, because what choice did she have? She was a fifteen-year-old kid with no memory. They were the only ones with her; the only people she could depend on.

And they used that against her. They turned her into something they could use. She’s not going to believe me. I wouldn’t want to believe either.

“That isn’t what happened,” I insist, because apparently, I’m a fucking idiot who knows better but can’t help himself. “You were in an explosion on a boat. Your family thought you were dead. We all thought you were dead for twelve years, Laura. Your brother grieved for you. I—” I stop myself before I go too far. “I grieved for you,” I conclude.

There’s nothing on her face. No flicker of recognition. Not even a twitch to tell me something landed. I might as well be a stranger on the street telling her I’m her long-lost best friend. The look on her face is polite disbelief at best, active suspicion at worst.

“My name,” she murmurs slowly, like she’s explaining it to a toddler, “is Ivy. I don’t know any Liam. I don’t know any Laura. And I sure as hell don’t know you.”

When she takes a step forward, it means closing the distance between us by a foot. The barrel of the Beretta is close enough now that I could reach out and touch it. “I will ask you one more time. Why are you looking for me?”

“Because I made a promise.” The words leave my mouth before I can help it, but they’re true. Every single one. “I promised someone a long time ago that I would protect you. I failed once. I’m not going to fail again.”

Something happens. It’s so fast, I almost miss it. The slightest hesitation. The smallest softening around her eyes. It disappears as quickly as it came, but it was there. Like a door cracked open and slammed shut in the same heartbeat. She felt something. I don’t care what she says or how well she hides it. For half a second, something I said got through.

Which is probably why she overcorrects by pressing the barrel of the gun against my sternum. Even through my shirt, the metal is cold. “You’re lying, or you’re delusional. Either way, you’re a problem I don’t need.”

“I’m not leaving without you.”

“Yes, you are,” she informs me in a flat, final sort of tone. “You’re leaving Prague tonight. You will stop asking questions about me. You will go back to wherever you came from, and you will forget I exist.”

“I will never do that.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

I know it’s stupid even as I’m doing it, but I can’t help myself. I’ve spent four months searching for her and twelve years thinking she was lost forever. My time in Europe has been nothing but sleepless nights spent staring at the only photo I have of her. The one from before, when she was fifteen and smiling. Back when she had no idea what was going to happen.

I have spent four months wondering whether I’d ever see those green eyes of hers in person ever again.

And now, here she is. In front of me. Close enough to touch.

So I reach for her.

My hand moves slowly, the way you’d reach for a wild animal that might bite. I only want to touch her. Just once. Just to prove to myself this is real.

Her eyes widen. For one endless moment, I think she might let me.

Until the gun cracks and fire rips through my left thigh.

One knee hits the carpet when I go down. Then the other. I’m gripping my leg with both hands while blood seeps through my fingers. I’ve been shot before—it sort of comes with the territory—but it never gets easier. The pain is white-hot, wrapping itself around me, consuming me.

“Son of a bitch!” My jaw aches as I grit my teeth against the pain. When I look up, she’s already moving toward the door, tucking the gun into the back of her waistband. She’s so quick and easy about it. Practiced. My stomach turns, not because it scares me, but because that simple gesture tells me exactly what they turned her into.

She pauses in the doorway but doesn’t look back. “Leave the city. Tonight. Next time, I’ll aim higher than your leg.”

The door closes behind her. She’s gone.

I don’t know how long I sit on the floor, bleeding onto carpet that was already questionable in the first place. It’s long enough for the initial shock to fade. It turns into a deep, throbbing ache, pulsing in time with my heartbeat. I’m here long enough to confirm the bullet went clean through, in and out of my outer thigh. It missed the bone and, if I’m lucky, the femoral artery. If I’m unlucky, I’ll bleed to death on this floor, and no one will find me for days.

Wouldn’t that be ironic? After years of surviving everything I’ve survived, dying in a hotel room because the love of my life shot me in the leg.

I press my forehead against my fist and breathe through it. In and out. Slow and controlled. The way Liam taught me back when we were barely more than kids ourselves, learning how to take a hit and keep moving. Pain is temporary. Stop the bleeding. Assess the damage, then move forward.

I drag myself to the bathroom, which means leaving a trail of red on the beige carpet. I’m going to have to pay for that, I know it. The mini bar along the way has a couple of those tiny bottles of vodka that taste like paint thinner. I crack one open and down half of it in a gulp. The other I open and pour over the wound, then nearly black out from the searing agony. But that’s a good thing. It means the nerves are still intact.

There’s a first-aid kit on the sink. Nothing fancy. Just gauze and tape and a suture kit I brought along because, after all, this isn’t exactly a vacation. I’ve stitched myself up before. You learn to do a lot of things when you can’t risk strolling into an emergency room and explaining how you came to have a bullet hole in your body.

With my pants cut open, I sit on the edge of the bathtub and thread a needle with hands that are steadier than they have any right to be. My mind, though? That’s a different story. My mind is a war zone.

She’s alive. Actually alive. I’ve seen her with my own eyes before she pointed a gun at me and pulled the trigger without a second thought.

I knew, going in, she wouldn’t remember me. Gabriel was clear about that. Amnesia after the explosion. Raised by Vincenzo Russo’s people. Trained, reshaped into someone new. I told myself I was prepared for it. I told myself it wouldn’t matter, that I would find her and bring her back. That everything would work itself out eventually.

What a fucking idiot I am.

Nothing could’ve prepared me for how it would feel when she looked at me like I was a stranger. Worse than a stranger. A threat. Something to be neutralized. I’ve seen that look before on people who kill for a living. The look of someone who’s been taught to turn off their humanity like they’re flipping a light switch. Flip it, do the job, walk away.

They did that to her. They took a fifteen-year-old girl and turned her into this. A weapon with a name that isn’t hers.

I have to bite down on a washcloth as I pull the first stitch through. The pain is a distraction, anyway. It keeps me in my body when my mind wants to spiral into places I can’t afford to go. Not yet. Later, there will be time for rage, the kind that burns slow and steady and doesn’t stop until someone pays.

Not now. Now, I need to think.

She said she was rescued. Rescued from a bad situation. They made themselves the good guys. She had to accept it as the truth because she had no memories to contradict them. For twelve years, it’s been her only truth.

I pull another stitch. It’s tighter than it should be, but the conditions aren’t exactly ideal here. The vodka I swallowed is already wearing off, and every nerve in my thigh is screaming.

That’s nothing compared to the pain I’ve been carrying with me for twelve years. I didn’t fall apart where anyone could see. I just stopped being the person I was before. I kept moving and functioning because I had to, because it was all I knew how to do, but I’ve been empty inside for years.

Liam never talked about it, really. That’s how he is. He lost his sister, I lost the girl I loved, and we both shoved it down deep and kept going because the alternative was to stop, and stopping meant death.

It doesn’t mean I ever stopped thinking about her.

After tying off the last stitch and cutting the thread, I press a thick square of gauze over the wound and tape it down. Not my best work, but it’ll hold. I chase two painkillers with what’s left of the second bottle of vodka and sit on the floor, my back against the wall, my eyes closed.

Behind my eyelids, I see her. Sitting on the hood of my shitty car in the parking lot behind the diner with her legs swinging, laughing at something I said. She always laughed like she meant it. She threw her whole body into it, head tipped back, eyes squeezed shut.

I was absolutely fucking gone for her. I didn’t stand a chance.

Not even when Liam found out about us. All it took was seeing us sitting together watching TV. Something completely innocent. A single look, and he saw what was really happening between us.

He didn’t say a word. He just walked in, sized up the situation, and took a swing at me.

We worked it out eventually. Fists, then words, then grudging acceptance. “You hurt her, and they’ll never find your body.”

I believed him then. I still do.

I also believe Laura—or Ivy, or whatever the fuck her name is now—will be back. Because under all her trained composure, she wanted to know if what I was saying could be true.

She’ll be back because there was a split second where my words hit home. She’ll be back because I have no intention of leaving now that I know where to find her.

And when she comes, I’ll be ready for her.

IVY

The man in the chair doesn’t know he’s going to die tonight.

He’s too busy laughing at something his friend said while he swirls expensive whiskey in a crystal glass. Enjoying the kind of evening people like him take for granted. A private dining room in the sort of restaurant most people would never be able to afford.

Here I am, across the street, perched behind a rooftop ledge. My rifle is assembled, ready to do its job. I’m early, because I’m always early. Vincenzo taught me to be early. Arrive before anyone expects you. Study your environment. Learn the exits, blind spots, patterns. And by the time the moment comes, everything should feel as natural as an exhale.

Normally, it would. I’ve done this enough times that the entire process is, indeed, as natural as breathing.

Today, though, my mind isn’t where it should be.

It’s in a hotel room where a man with dark hair and pale blue eyes told me my name wasn’t my name.

Two days later, I still haven’t managed to shake it. His voice follows me like a song I can’t get out of my head. Not the words themselves, because words mean nothing. People lie. It’s what they do. They tell you what they think you need to hear if it means getting what they want. I’ve built my entire career on that principle.

It wasn’t his words, but the way he said them.

I grieved for you.

I shift on the ledge, rolling my neck to work the tension out of my shoulders. I have to focus. My target is still down there, laughing and drinking because he’s still alive. His friend excuses herself, probably to go to the restroom. A waiter refills his glass. Every night, he steps outside for a cigarette at exactly the same time, and that time will come around in roughly ten minutes. Creatures of habit make the easiest targets.

While I wait, I check my phone, flipping through the feeds from the cameras positioned at different angles around the hotel. There’s one in the lobby, pointed at the front entrance. One covering the side exit. One in the hallway outside his room. Hacking the hotel’s security was child’s play. Why bother having security in the first place if you’re going to make it that easy?

I hacked it within hours of our little encounter, because I knew he wouldn’t listen. Men like him never do, especially when they feel like they have the moral high ground.

Sure enough, he’s still there. The hallway camera shows his closed door, along with a thin strip of light visible underneath. I watched him go out and come back earlier. I told the son of a bitch to get out of Prague, and he’s sitting in his room now like I handed him an invitation instead of a threat.

It should piss me off. Actually, it does. But there’s something else mixed in with the anger. Something that feels uncomfortably like curiosity.

Who is he?

I know his name now. I know both of them.

When I pressed the barrel of the Beretta to his chest, my other hand was busy. It’s reflex at this point—if you get that close to someone, you take whatever you can. My fingers found the inside pocket of his jacket and lifted his wallet before he ever knew it was gone. He was too focused on my face. Reaching for me, trying to touch me. Trying to find someone who isn’t there.

The wallet held two IDs. The first matched the name on his hotel registration: James Ward. It’s a decent fake, good enough to pass a casual check, not good enough to survive real scrutiny. I’ve seen enough forgeries to know the difference.

The second ID was tucked behind it. Real. Worn at the edges, like it had lived in the wallet for a while. Nick Brooks.

I’ve carried enough fake IDs to wallpaper a room, but there’s something about the fact that he keeps his real name close—hidden, but close. It tells me more about him than he probably realizes. He hasn’t let go of who he is. Some people in this life do. They become the cover so completely, the original person disappears. He hasn’t done that.

I ran the name as soon as I got back to my apartment. I plugged Nick Brooks into every database I have access to, every search engine.

I found almost nothing.

No social media. No public records leading anywhere useful. There are a few hits on the name, but none that matched. They were the wrong age or location, the wrong everything.

Digitally speaking, the guy’s a ghost. Someone has gone out of their way to keep him off the grid and done a good job of it. That takes resources. Connections. Regular people don’t scrub themselves from the internet. Regular people want to be found.

The fact that he doesn’t, means he’s anything but regular.

I’m pulled back to the present by the buzz of my phone. A text from a blocked number, which means it’s from the handler Vincenzo assigned me years ago. I’ve never met him in person. I only know him as a voice on the phone and words on a screen.

Status?

I type back without looking away from the restaurant. On schedule.

Confirm when complete.

I don’t bother responding. He knows I’ll confirm because I always do. That’s the arrangement. I do the job, I report in, and I collect payment before disappearing until the next one. That’s the deal I made with myself a long time ago. No complications, no attachments. It’s served me well.

Until now, anyway.

The target stands up from the table right on time. He buttons his jacket and says something to the waiter before heading toward the back of the restaurant. A service corridor leads to a small courtyard with high walls and a security camera I disabled this morning. There is no line of sight from the street.

Time for his nightly cigarette. It will be his last.

I take my place behind the rifle’s scope, peering down into the courtyard. He probably doesn’t deserve the mercy of a quick death, based on what his file told me, but I don’t get a say in how these things are done. I can’t afford to act like an undisciplined vigilante. It doesn’t matter how many people he’s hurt or destroyed or how he did it. He’s going to get what’s coming to him, either way.

He looks so damn self-satisfied as he lights a cigarette, the tip glowing in the darkness. He might as well wear a target.

I squeeze the trigger. He goes down, cigarette still burning on the ground next to his hand. I’ll be long gone by the time anyone goes to look for him—I’m already disassembling the rifle, placing it back in its case and swinging it over my shoulder. I drop onto the fire escape and take it quickly, silently on soft soles.

I should feel something, right?

In the beginning, each job left a film on me that I couldn’t wash off no matter how I tried. Not like guilt. More like the awareness that I’d just done something I could never take back. A person who existed no longer existed, because of what I did.

But over time, that feeling faded, the way everything fades after long enough. Now it’s muscle memory. The same as tying my shoes.

So why couldn’t I do it to him?

That’s the question that’s been gnawing at me for two days. I had him at point-blank range. Gun to his chest, my finger on the trigger. I had every reason in the world to put him down like a sick dog and walk away. He’s been asking around about me. He knows things about me, or thinks he does. He’s a loose end, and loose ends get people killed. I know that better than anyone.

So what did I do? I shot him in the leg. In the goddamn leg, like some amateur who can’t finish a job. I could’ve put a bullet between his eyes without blinking, but I gave him a flesh wound and a warning. Like warnings ever work on men like him. They don’t. They only make them more determined.

I knew that when I pulled the trigger, and I chose the leg anyway.

I’m three blocks from the restaurant before I slow my pace and blend into the foot traffic. Tourists staring at their phones. Couples walking arm in arm. A group of kids, probably living the college experience I never had, spills out of a bar. I adjust my jacket to cover the case strap, becoming another woman walking home.

But my mind won’t stop moving. It insists on going back to that room. To his face when I told him my name is Ivy. It hurt him; something crumbled inside, but he pulled himself together. I recognized it because I do it, too. We’re both people who’ve learned to keep the inside from showing on the outside.

The difference is, he slipped in front of me, and more than once. He talked about grieving for me, and his voice cracked. He reached for my face, and his hand was shaking.

The worst part? The part that still makes me feel cold inside? My chest went tight when I noticed that shaking hand. I didn’t understand it in the moment, and I sure as hell immediately resented it.

Because I don’t do feelings. Feelings are liabilities. Vincenzo made sure I understood that much from an early point. You feel nothing, fear nothing, and nothing can be used against you.

So why does part of me want to know what it would’ve felt like if I’d let him touch my face?

That’s dangerous thinking. It gets people killed. I need to get my head straight.

I need to go back to the facts.

Nick Brooks has been searching for me for months.

He has almost no digital footprint.

He claims to know me from a life I don’t remember. He says I have a brother who’s been looking for me.

I shot him in the thigh, and he didn’t scream. He didn’t call the police. He didn’t fucking leave.

I wish I could stop thinking about it. I wish it more than just about anything as my feet slap against the pavement.

No matter how I try, Vincenzo’s story runs on in my head. I was rescued. My biological family was dangerous. There was an accident. I was hurt badly, scarred. I still carry those scars to this day. The Russos found me and took me in. They gave me a home and an education. A purpose.

Vincenzo told me I should be grateful. For a long time, I was. I was so grateful, I didn’t ask too many questions. I was so grateful, I accepted the blanks in my memory as a mercy instead of a wound.

But there are cracks in the story. Tiny ones, the kind you don’t notice unless you’re looking. For years, I wasn’t looking… or I refused to, because not looking was so much easier than the alternative.

The way Vincenzo’s face would go tight whenever I brought up the past. He would change the subject with a joke or a distraction, smooth as silk, making me forget I’d ever asked.

The way no one offered me a single detail about the family I supposedly came from. Not once in twelve years. Not a name, a location, a picture.

Nothing but the scars on my arm and down my leg to prove any of it happened at all.

Nick Brooks is specific. He has names and details. He has emotion in his voice. He’s the first person in twelve years who’s offered me something concrete about a life I can’t remember, which makes him either the most valuable person I’ve ever met or the most dangerous.

I need to find out which.

The walk takes fifteen minutes. My apartment is small, two rooms above a bakery in a neighborhood where people mind their own business. It’s functional, not comfortable. I don’t do comfortable. My space is clean, organized. A bed, a chair, a desk. A rack of equipment I keep behind a false wall in the closet, the same rack I keep in all of my safe houses.

Once inside, I set down my case and released a long breath. The job is done. I’m back safe.

And I’m still thinking of Nick. The hotel. I should let it go. Letting it go would be easier and safer. I should text my contact, confirm the job is finished, and move on.

Instead, I change into fresh clothes. Black, as always. The only way to get answers about Nick Brooks is to get them from Nick Brooks.

Which means I’m going back to the hotel.

I won’t be sloppy about it this time. Last time, I stood there in the light with my gun drawn like some dramatic character in a movie. It was stupid. Effective, maybe, but not for extraction. If I want information out of him, I need the upper hand in a way that doesn’t give him room to appeal to emotions I’m not supposed to have.

I’ll go in quietly. I’ll find out what he knows and get my answers. If those answers aren’t satisfactory, I’ll finish what I should’ve finished two days ago.

No more warnings. No more leg shots.

I check my weapons before leaving. I have the Beretta, plus a backup strapped to my ankle and a blade in my boot. Force of habit. I pull my hair back before checking the hotel feed one more time.

The door is closed, the light off this time. He’s either asleep, or he’s out.

I take the long way to the hotel. The east side has no camera coverage in the alley, and the entrance lock is a joke. Thirty seconds with a tension wrench and a pick, and the door is open. The stairwell is empty. I move up four flights without making a sound, stepping on the inner edges of the stairs, where they’re less likely to creak.

It takes nothing to bypass the deadbolt on the door, sidestepping the key card system. Ten seconds, tops, barely worth calling it a lock. I ease the door open, leading with the Beretta.

The room is dark. The bed is empty. I guess he’s refused maid service, for obvious reasons—there’s a rust-colored stain on the carpet between where he dropped to the floor and the bathroom. His bag is on the floor by the closet.

The bathroom door is open. The light is on, but the room is empty.

He’s not here.

Something prickles at the back of my neck. It’s the instinct that’s kept me alive through situations that should’ve killed me. That instinct is screaming now, telling me something is very wrong, that I need to get out.

Maybe I would, if it wasn’t for the hand that clamps over my mouth from behind.

Instantly, I react. Driving an elbow backward, aiming for the solar plexus. He’s already turned, absorbing the blow against his side while his other arm wraps around me, pinning my weapon arm against my body. Damn, he’s strong, stronger than I expected. He moves like someone who’s done this before.

The needle slides into my neck before I can get free.

Cold. It spreads from the injection site, radiating outward, turning my muscles into liquid as it pumps through my system with every quick heartbeat. My fingers loosen around the gun. My legs stop cooperating, going loose, useless. The room begins to blur. Somewhere in the fading distance, I hear his voice, low and steady against my ear.

“I’m sorry, Laura. I really am.”

My name is Ivy, I want to say, but the words dissolve as the darkness takes me.

NICK

She weighs almost nothing.

That’s the first thought that hits me as I catch her once she goes limp. My arm is still around her waist when her body goes slack as the sedative takes over. The gun slips out of her hand and thuds softly on the carpet. Her head drops back against my shoulder, and for a few seconds, I stand there in the dark, holding her, breathing hard, trying to process the fact that this is actually happening.

I spent two days planning this exact scenario, and now that it’s here, the only thing I can think about is how small she is. Compact, all muscle and sharp edges… but there’s a fragility underneath it she would kill me for noticing. She’ll probably try once she wakes up.

Carefully, I lower her to the bed with one hand behind her head, so it doesn’t hit the mattress too hard. Considering I just stuck a needle into her neck, it seems kind of ridiculous to worry about her head now, but I can’t help it. Some old instincts never die, no matter how much the world tries to beat them out of you.

She looks different now that she’s unconscious. No more tension in her jaw. The hard line of her full mouth has softened into something that’s almost peaceful. Without the cold light in her eyes, without her gun, she looks younger. Almost like the girl I remember.

I need to stop doing this. Comparing her to who she was. It’s not fair to either version of her, and if I’m not careful, it’s going to get me killed. I’ll end up forgetting who I’m up against at the worst possible time, and then I’ll be fucked.

So when my hand drifts to where dark hair hangs across her forehead after our struggle, I close my eyes and pull it back before I can make contact.

The handcuffs are in my bag, along with more of the sedative, and I grab them now to secure her left wrist to the metal frame of the headboard. I test the cuff twice, making sure it’s tight enough to hold but not so tight it’ll cut off her circulation. She’s going to be pissed as hell when she wakes up. The least I can do is make sure she’s not in pain.

Next, I collect her weapons. The Beretta from the floor. A Glock strapped to her ankle. A blade in her right boot, thin and sharp enough to fillet a man. Laying them out on the desk, I stare at them for a while. She came here carrying three weapons, and each one was meant for me.

I run a hand over my face before dropping into the chair by the window. I’m too damn tired to think about what it all means, and thinking about it won’t help a damn thing, anyway.

Now there’s nothing to do but wait for her to wake up.

The sedative will keep her under for a couple of hours, which gives me time to think about strategy instead of feelings while listening to her slow, steady breathing. I need to plan. To figure out what the hell I’m going to say when she opens her eyes and realizes she’s cuffed to a bed in the same room where she shot me.

My thigh aches at the reminder. Two days of healing isn’t much. The stitches pull every time I move wrong. I’ve been managing it with ibuprofen and stubbornness, which is about as effective as it sounds. My limp is noticeable. I caught the front desk woman eyeing it yesterday when I went out for supplies, but something tells me she’s seen worse. She only sighed and went back to what she was doing.

Two days. Waiting. Knowing Laura would come back. I cleaned up the blood as best I could, though there won’t be any lifting that stain from the carpet without some kind of shampooer. I did my best. And then I waited. Sitting in this chair, watching from the window in the dark where she couldn’t see me. I caught her rounding the corner tonight, and I took my place behind the door, syringe in hand.

Even then, having the upper hand, I almost fumbled the ball when she reacted like lightning. She almost got free. That elbow to my ribs will leave a bruise for a week. She’s fast, trained, and if I’d been half a second slower with the needle, she would’ve put me on the ground.

This is the worst time for respect and pride to take hold, but I can’t help it. This is the girl who used to scream her head off when she saw a spider—and God forbid a mouse show up somewhere. But here she is now, and she’s incredible.

I lean forward in the chair with my elbows on my knees and watch her sleep. The slow rise and fall of her chest. The way her free hand curls loosely at her side, fingers twitching every so often like she’s reaching for a weapon even in her dreams.

She must have scars from the explosion. There’s no way she could’ve escaped that without at least some evidence of it. So many of the people on the boat were killed, including her parents. The fact that she survived at all is a miracle. There’s no way she escaped unscathed.

I can’t help remembering that day. The day I realized she was gone. The feeling of someone reaching into my chest, ripping out everything that mattered. The explosion on the boat during the reception Laura didn’t want to attend in the first place. I would rather be with you. I’ll never forget her saying that. She was hoping we could take that day for ourselves, with Liam and their parents on the boat and the two of us doing what we usually did when we managed to sneak off together for a little while.

A lot of the details have blurred over time, but not the sense of there being a hole in my chest where my heart used to be. Not the question of how the world kept turning when Laura wasn’t in it anymore. I didn’t know grief could feel like that. Like a wound that never closes. For months afterward, I would forget. I would see something funny and think, Laura would laugh at that. And then it would all come crashing back. The forgetting made it worse because it meant starting over every time.

Liam turned his grief into fuel. It made him harder, sharper. He built an empire out of rage and loss, and I stood beside him through it all. I didn’t know what else to do. Standing still meant feeling it, and feeling it meant drowning.

And now she’s here. Alive and breathing. Cuffed to a bed because she would’ve slit my throat if I’d given her the chance.

What a fucking world.

She’s been out ninety minutes by the time I check the clock. The sedative is reliable—I’ve used it before, though never on someone I’m in love with. She should start coming around within the next thirty to forty-five minutes or so. I need to be ready.

I pick up the room phone and call down to the front desk. The kitchen isn’t exactly gourmet, but that’s fine. I’m not looking for gourmet food. “Can I have two cheeseburgers, please? Yes, French fries with both. And a side of mayonnaise, please.”

French fries dipped in mayo. Laura’s favorite. I never did understand why she loved it, which of course meant she would go overboard sometimes just to make me gag. One of the reasons I loved her. That playful sense of humor. Liam used to tell me I was too serious—which was almost funny, coming from him—but Laura knew how to draw me out. And nobody laughed at a dirty joke harder than she did.

It’s another twenty minutes before the food arrives. I make sure to step out into the hall rather than leave the door open too wide. All I can do is hope any questions the clerk has are covered by the generous tip I give him. I take the food inside and set everything on the small table by the window, leaving it covered so it’ll stay warm. Then I sit back down in the chair and wait.

It doesn’t take long after that. It could be the fact that the sedative is losing its grip on her. It could be the aroma of food now filling the room.

Either way, she comes back to consciousness the way a predator wakes up. Her breathing changes. Her fingers flex. Then her eyes open—for a second, she looks confused. Lost. It makes something twist behind my ribs.

Her confusion lasts all of two seconds before she registers the cuff on her wrist, and her vulnerability vanishes like it was never there in the first place.

She pulls at the restraint once. Twice. She tests the headboard with a sharp, controlled yank. It tells me she’s assessing the strength of the frame rather than panicking. Her eyes sweep the room—the desk, where I laid out her weapons, the covered plates, the window, the door. Cataloguing exits and options.

Then her eyes land on me. If looks could kill, I would be nothing but a stain on the carpet.

“Hi there,” I murmur.

“You drugged me.” Her voice is hoarse, rough at the edges. She sounds more offended than scared.

“You shot me.”

“And handcuffed me to a bed.”

“I did, because you’ve already shot me once.”

“You’re a dead man.”

“Eventually,” I accept. “But not tonight.”

She pulls at the cuff again, harder this time. The headboard groans, but it holds. “Let me go.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Let me go now, or when I get free—which I will—I’ll make what I did to your leg feel like a paper cut.”

“I don’t know. I’ve had some pretty nasty paper cuts in my time, but I survived them.” Her gaze grows harder. Colder. “I believe you. But I’m still not letting you go. Not until you hear me out.”

Something flickers across her face. Frustration, maybe. The anger of someone who isn’t used to being at a disadvantage. “I heard you out two days ago. You talked, I listened, and none of it was true.”

“You didn’t listen,” I counter in a low, smooth voice. “You decided it wasn’t true before I opened my mouth. Nothing I said was going to change that. And I get it. You’ve spent twelve years believing one version of your life. Some stranger showing up, telling you it was all a lie? I understand why you wouldn’t want to hear it.”

“I don’t want to hear it because it’s not true.”

“Your name is Laura Knight. Your brother’s name is Liam. You were born in⁠—”

“Stop.” The word comes out sharp enough to cut glass. “Stop saying that. I don’t have a brother. I don’t know anyone named Liam. My name is Ivy, and the people who raised me⁠—”

“Kidnapped you.”

“Saved me.”

“That’s what they told you.” It isn’t easy to keep myself from snapping. “They told you a lot of things, and you had no reason not to believe them. So you did. But I’m telling you, Laura⁠—”

“My name is Ivy.”

“I’m telling you, the story they gave you was a lie. You weren’t rescued. You were taken from a family who loved you. You were in an explosion on a boat, and they pulled you out of the water. Instead of bringing you home, they kept you. They gave you a new name, and they turned you into something they could use.”

Her jaw is clenched tight enough that I can see muscles jumping under her skin. Her free hand grips the sheet, her knuckles white. She isn’t looking at me anymore. She’s staring at the ceiling, breathing through her nose. From across the room, I can see the war happening behind her eyes. The part of her that wants to dismiss everything I’ve said fights with the part of her that can’t, because somewhere deep down inside, she knows something doesn’t add up.

“You’re lying,” she decides. But the conviction isn’t there. Not the way it was two nights ago. Back then, she was sure of herself. Now, she’s holding on to that certainty like it’s a fraying rope.

I could push harder. Lay out every detail I know. Every piece of evidence, every gap in the story they fed her. But I’ve been around enough people who’ve had the rug pulled out from under them to know pushing too hard, too fast, doesn’t break through walls. It only makes them thicker.

So I let it go for now. “Okay,” I murmur.

She blinks, turning her head to look at me. Her eyes are bright with suspicion. “Okay?”

“Okay. You don’t want to hear it, so I’ll stop. For now.” When I stand, the movement pulls at my stitches. I don’t let it show. “You’ve been unconscious for a couple of hours. You need to eat.”

Immediately, as I’m uncovering the plates, the smell of beef and fried potatoes hits the room. She watches me with narrowed eyes. “I’m not eating anything you give me.”

“It’s from room service. I didn’t fuck with it, if that’s what you’re worried about.” I set one of the plates on the bedside table, within reach of her free hand, along with a glass of water. I add the little cup of mayonnaise, pretending it’s an afterthought, before sitting down with my own plate.

At first, she doesn’t touch it, settling for staring at it. “Eat,” I urge.

“You first.”

I look at her. She raises an eyebrow.

Fair enough. If I was in her position, I would do the same thing. That’s why I reach out, grab her burger, and take a bite. I snag one of her fries, too. It’s crisp, salty.

“Good enough?” I don’t wait for an answer, returning to my chair so I can eat my own food.

She still waits at least a solid minute, expecting me to keel over. When I don’t, she picks up the burger and takes a small bite. Then another. Then another, faster now, because her body needs fuel whether or not her pride likes it.

But it’s when she picks up a fry and drags it through the mayonnaise that I see something move across her face. There it is. What I was looking for. Something deep in her brain just fired. A connection she can’t name. Familiarity that doesn’t belong to the life she thinks she’s lived.

“You always loved mayo with your fries,” I tell her.

She freezes, except for her eyes, which snap to mine. For the first time since I met this version of her, I see something that looks like genuine surprise. She didn’t expect that. For me to know something so specific and real.

“Lucky guess.” But her voice is thin.

“If that’s what you need to tell yourself.” I eat one of my own fries, talking as I chew. “I always thought it was disgusting, which used to crack you up.”

She covers her surprise quickly, but she’s not fast enough. I saw it, and she knows I did. “It doesn’t prove anything,” she mutters.

“I know.”

She doesn’t respond, choosing to eat instead. I let the silence between us do the work. Her story is starting to crack. That’s enough.

When the plates are empty, she looks at me with something that’s not quite hostility anymore. Still guarded, still wary, but the sharpness has dulled a little.

Or maybe I’m only imagining it, because that’s what I want to be true.

“I need to use the bathroom,” she announces.

I study her for a second. It’s a calculated risk, and I’m sure we both know it. But I can’t keep her cuffed to the bed indefinitely without letting her use the bathroom. “I’ll uncuff you. The bathroom door stays open.”

“Absolutely not,” she fires back.

“It stays cracked, then.”

Her jaw tightens, but she nods once. I take the key from my pocket and unlock the cuff. There’s a red line where the metal sat against her skin, and she rubs it now. The sight makes my stomach clench.

When she stands, it’s in one fluid motion. No lingering effects from the sedative. It’s not lost on me that she’s already back to full capacity.

She doesn’t look at me on her way to the bathroom. She does, however, leave the door open just enough to technically satisfy our agreement. I hear water running. The toilet flushing. More water.

Then the door swings open all at once, and she comes out fast, her arm extended, her finger jammed on the nozzle of a can of deodorant I left on the bathroom counter.

The spray hits me straight in the eyes.

My eyes slam shut on reflex, but it’s too late. The pain is instant and blinding. Tears stream down my cheeks as I reach for her on pure instinct. Her boot connects with my left thigh—right where the bullet went through, right against the stitches—and the world goes white.

I buckle. My knee hits the floor, and I hear myself make a sound somewhere between a grunt and a roar. She’s already moving, going for the desk, for her weapons. If she reaches them, this is over.

I force my eyes open. Everything is a blurred, watery mess, but I can see enough. The shape of her lunging for the gun gets me off my good leg so I can hit her at the waist. We go down together, hard, knocking the desk chair sideways when we crash against it. She fights me like a cornered animal, all elbows and knees, the heel of her palm aimed at my throat.

She’s vicious. She’s efficient. She’s been trained to kill, and she’s trying like hell now.

But I’m bigger, and size matters. In pain or not, blind or not, I’ve been fighting since I could walk, and I outweigh her by eighty pounds. I pin her wrist to the floor, throw my weight across her hips to stop her legs, and use my forearm across her collarbone to hold her down. Her teeth are bared as she bucks and twists underneath me. For a second, I think she’s actually going to bite me.

“Stop,” I urge through gritted teeth. My thigh is on fire, and I can feel wetness soaking through the bandage, meaning she’s popped at least a couple of stitches. “Stop fighting, goddammit.”

“Get off me,” she snarls, bucking her hips.

“Not until you stop.”

She thrashes one more time, hard enough to almost throw me off, then goes still. She isn’t calm—every muscle in her body is coiled and ready to strike the moment I let her up—but she’s still. Waiting like a snake, ready to strike.

“I will let you up,” I agree, “if you stop trying to kill me.”

“No promises.”

In spite of the burning eyes and the bleeding leg, and the fact that I’m pinning down a trained assassin who would very much like to end my life, I almost laugh. The response is so Laura. Defiant to the bone, even when she’s obviously outmatched.

I walk her back to the bed, where the handcuff dangles nearby. It takes a few seconds of calculation, but I figure it out, letting my weight do the work of pinning her to the floor while I use both hands to cuff her wrist again. Only then do I let her up. She sits on the bed with her back to the wall, her cuffed wrist resting in her lap, watching me limp to the bathroom to rinse my eyes and check the damage to my leg.

Two of the stitches tore. It’s not ideal, but it’s not a catastrophe either. I clean the wound, retape it, and rinse my eyes roughly a hundred times before they finally feel somewhat normal again. One look in the mirror shows how bloodshot and swollen they are. I’m going to feel that for a while.

When I come back out, she’s where I left her, still watching me. Her expression has changed. There’s less fury to it now, more of something I can’t quite read. Maybe it’s respect. Maybe it’s the grudging acknowledgment that I can take a hit and keep swinging.

“You fight dirty,” I tell her.

“I fight to win.”

“Fair enough.” I bite back a wince as I lower myself into the chair, and I look at her. She looks back. The silence between us is thick and electric. It feels like we’re back in our first encounter, waiting for the other to make a move.

“So,” she finally says. “What now?”

I hold her gaze. My eyes are still burning. My leg is throbbing. I’m tired as hell, I’m bleeding again, and I’m sitting across from a woman who’s tried to kill me twice in the space of three days. She’s a woman I’ve loved for almost half my life. A woman who doesn’t remember what we were to each other.

There’s only one answer to her question.

“I’m taking you home.”

IVY

I hear the water running in the bathroom. He went back in there a while ago, after letting me think over the whole “going home” thing, as if there’s anything to think about, like he’s giving me any say in this.

So that’s the next step in his plan. Abducting me.

At least I have a minute to think now. Maybe the first real minute I’ve had since waking up cuffed to this damn bed like his prisoner. How did I let this happen?

I flex my fingers around the metal of the cuff to test it for maybe the twentieth time since I woke up. Solid. The headboard is strong, too. It doesn’t give when I pull on it. He planned for this. He planned for me, which means he’s been thinking about this from the beginning. He wouldn’t have handcuffed me to the headboard if he didn’t know it was strong enough to hold.

That should worry me more than it does. What worries me instead is the thing I can’t stop going over in my head. It’s been nagging at me since he caught me from behind and put me down with a needle instead of a bullet.

He could’ve killed me. He didn’t.

I replay it in my head the way I replay every encounter, breaking it down into components. The grab from behind. The arm around my waist. The needle in my neck.

At every step, he had the option to use lethal force. At every step, he chose not to.

It wasn’t because he couldn’t do it, either. The way he moved, the way he controlled me while administering the sedative? That wasn’t amateur work. That was training, and years of it. He fights the way I do, with economy and precision. It means he’s been in this world as long as I have. Maybe longer.

This man is dangerous. There’s no question about it. When I sprayed him in the eyes and kicked his wounded leg—a move that would’ve put most men on the ground for good—he got back up. He fought blind, in pain, bleeding through his bandage. Still, he overpowered me.

I don’t lose fights. I’ve been trained by some of the most brutal men in the world. I’ve been put through scenarios that would break most people, but I came out on the other side sharper every time. He put me on the floor and cuffed me again like it was routine.

He’s skilled. He’s a professional. He’s someone who knows exactly how much force to use and when to use it.

And he has chosen, more than once now, not to use it on me.

That’s what I keep coming back to. Every single thing I’ve done to him would justify retaliation, including when I lunged for a gun with every intention of putting a bullet in his skull. In my world, you respond to violence with greater violence. That’s the rule. That’s how I’ve survived.

But he didn’t do that. He settled for restraining me. He ordered me a goddamn cheeseburger.

Who the hell does that?

The water shuts off in the bathroom. I hear him moving around in there, shuffling a little in a way he won’t when he’s in front of me. He wants to be sure he doesn’t show weakness. I hope every step reminds him I am not the woman he thinks I am. I am not someone who can be drugged and cuffed and fed into compliance.

Except those fries tasted exactly right with the mayonnaise, and he knew they would. I have no explanation for that.

The bathroom door opens, and he limps out, moving carefully but not dramatically. He would probably rather chew his tongue off than admit he’s in pain. How do I know? I’m exactly the same way.

He looks at me, then at the window, where the first hints of a gray sky are starting to show behind the curtains. It’s late or early, depending on how you look at it. Either way, it’s been a long night for both of us.

“We need to sleep,” he tells me. “We’re flying back home in the morning.”

At first, I can only stare at him. “I am not flying anywhere with you.”

“We’ll talk about it in the morning. Right now, we need to sleep.”

“I’m not sharing a bed with you, either.”

Something shifts across his face. It’s something between a smile and a pained grimace. It makes my chest do that tight thing again that I don’t understand and don’t want. “You used to love sleeping next to me.”

Hatred isn’t something I can afford to bring into a job with me. I used to be better at compartmentalizing, back when I faced countless men brought in to train me. Brutal men who never bothered pretending they didn’t love inflicting pain. They taught me to fight and endure as much as they taught me to control my emotions, since letting the hatred through made me weak—easy to beat. “I don’t know you,” I grit out, smothering the flash of hatred that wants to burn me to a crisp.

His blank-faced certainty makes me hate him more. “You did. Used to curl up against my side with your head on my chest. That’s how you were sitting when your brother first caught us. Right next to me, tight against my side, with your head on my chest after you fell asleep while we were watching a movie.”

He runs a hand over the back of his neck, grinning. “It drove your brother crazy. He walked in, saw us together, and punched me in the jaw without saying a word.”

The way he says it, it’s a fond memory. Like getting punched in the face by someone’s brother is something to smile about. The casualness of it, the warmth underneath it… none of it fits.

“I don’t have a brother,” I remind him. I’m starting to get sick of repeating myself. “I just don’t. Please, stop this.”

“You do have a brother.” He comes to the foot of the bed, arms folded. Maybe he doesn’t want me to notice how he won’t put much weight on his injured leg, but I do. I make a note of it the way I make note of everything else about him I might be able to use. “His name is Liam. He’s been tearing himself apart for twelve years because he thought you were dead. As soon as we found out you weren’t, I got on a plane. That’s how much you matter to him—to both of us,” he adds.

“If I mattered so much, where the hell is he now and where was he for the last twelve years?”

The question comes out harder than I meant it to. It’s the one thing I can’t get past. The one piece of his story that doesn’t hold together no matter how many times I think it over. If I have a brother who loves me, who claims to have searched for me, where is he?

Nick doesn’t flinch. “He was grieving. We all were. There was an explosion on a boat. It was a wedding reception. Dozens of people died, including your parents. They were pulling bodies out of the water for days. One of those bodies was identified as yours.”

He pauses, and something dark crosses his face. “We buried you. Your brother thought he lost his entire family in one night. That’s what we all thought. We believed it because we had no reason not to.”

“And now?”

“Now we found out the truth. The Russos pulled you out of the water after the explosion. They took you. They could’ve brought you home, but they kept you instead. They gave you a new name. And about Liam not being here, trust me, he wanted to, but things are complicated at home.”

His voice is steady, but I hear the strain underneath. “I’m not kidding when I tell you, as soon as we found out you were alive, I came after you. Your brother is the one funding this whole trip. He wants to bring you home just as much as I do. That’s the truth. You can believe it or not, but it won’t change anything.”

He goes silent. It’s the kind of silence that spreads through a space and fills it up until the air feels heavy. I hear the traffic outside, faint. Somewhere, a siren wails. Someone crosses the floor overhead.

“Nice story,” I finally decide.

He doesn’t move. He stares at me, waiting for more.

So I give it to him. “The Russos took me in. They took care of me. They protected me; they trained me. They gave me a purpose. Why in the hell would they lie about who I am? What would be the point?”

“You’re a smart girl.” The worst part? He says it without a single drop of condescension. “What do you think?”

I don’t answer him because I don’t have an answer, and that’s the problem. The question isn’t why would they lie. The question is why wouldn’t they. I know Vincenzo. I know how he operates. Everything is leverage. Everything is a transaction. People aren’t people to him. They’re assets. Tools. Things to be used and discarded once they’ve outlived their usefulness.

I’ve always known that. I just never applied it to myself.

Nick doesn’t push. He doesn’t say another word, in fact. He only moves to the other side of the bed, as far from me as possible without falling off the mattress, and lies down on top of the covers, fully clothed, with his hands folded on his chest. In no time, his breathing slows and evens out like someone who’s trained himself to fall asleep quickly… or someone too exhausted to stay awake another minute.

I watch him for a while. His face, relaxed in sleep, losing its tight control. He looks younger this way. Less guarded. I didn’t notice the dark circles under his eyes before, and now they make me wonder how much sleep he’s gotten in the last four months, if his story about searching for me is true.

I could smother him right now with a pillow. The thought arrives cold, clinical, the way all of my operational thinking does. My right hand is free. The pillow is wedged between me and the headboard. I would only have to press it over his face, hold it down, and wait for him to stop moving. It would take a few minutes, maybe less if I use my body weight to pin him.

Except, he would wake up. He’d be awake the second I moved, because he sleeps the way I sleep, with one eye open and every nerve tuned to the slightest shift in the room. People like us don’t sleep deeply. We can’t afford to. I could try, but he would catch my wrist before the pillow touched his face, and then we’d be right back where we were before I wound up cuffed again. With him on top of me, pinning me down, and those pale blue eyes looking down at me with something that isn’t anger.

So that’s out.

I need a different approach. Brute force isn’t working. I’ve shot him, I’ve sprayed him, I’ve kicked his wounded leg. He’s still here, still breathing. Still looking at me like I’m the only thing in the world that matters. Violence doesn’t work on him. Not when it comes to me. He absorbs it the way the ground absorbs rain. It hits him, soaks in, and he keeps going.

That means I need to use the one weapon he can’t defend against.

Himself.

He has feelings for me. Real ones, deep ones. They’re the kind of feelings that make a man fly across the ocean and spend four months chasing someone he hasn’t seen in twelve years. The kind of feelings that let you take a bullet in the leg and stay in the city instead of running away.

Those feelings are his liability. And if there’s one thing Vincenzo taught me, one thing I know is true regardless of whatever else might be a lie, it’s that liabilities exist to be exploited. You find the sore spot, then you press on it until something breaks.

Nick’s sore spot is me. Whatever I was to him before, whatever he still thinks I am, that’s his weakness. If I stop fighting and start adapting, I can use it. I can earn a measure of trust and create an opening.

Then, when my chance comes, I’ll take it.

It’s manipulative. It’s cold. And it’s exactly what I’ve been trained to do. I’ve done it dozens of times. It never fails.

So why does the thought of doing it to him make something twist in my stomach?

I push the feeling aside, because feelings are liabilities, too. Whatever strange, unasked-for reactions my body keeps having around this man, they aren’t real. They’re the echoes of a life someone else lived. They belong to a girl named Laura, who died on a boat twelve years ago.

I am not her, if I ever was. I’m Ivy. And Ivy never lets feelings get in the way. I can’t afford to feel.

When I close my eyes, I let the exhaustion take me. It pulls me into a sleep that’s shallow and fitful, the way it always is. My cuffed wrist aches. The bed smells like him.

Before I go under completely, one last thought drifts through my mind. Nick’s question, the one I couldn’t answer and still can’t.

Why do you think?

I’m not sure I want to know the answer.

NICK

She slept maybe four hours. I know because I slept around three.

The rest of the time, I laid on my side of the bed with my eyes closed and listened to her breathe, paying attention to every shift and sound she made. She’s a restless sleeper, twitches a lot. Twice, she made a sound in her throat—not quite a word, not quite a cry. It made me want to pull her against me the way I used to.

Obviously, I didn’t. But I don’t think I fought harder on the floor than I fought myself to keep my hands off her in bed.

Morning light is pushing through the curtains now. It doesn’t seem like Prague believes in sunshine, but that’s fine. I’m not in the mood for it, anyway. I have her with me, but I don’t have her back. Not yet.

Will I ever?

I have to sit up. Lying here, thinking about that question isn’t helping anything. When I look over at her, I find her watching me. She was awake, but then I knew that. How? Because she quieted down, went still. She doesn’t know what a restless sleeper she is, I guess.

It means there’s no trace of sleepiness as she tracks me with those sharp eyes of hers. She’s watching me the way a cat watches a bird. Patient. Ready to move the second an opportunity shows itself.

“Morning,” I murmur, running a hand through my hair.

No response. She settles for watching.

“We need to get moving. The jet will be ready for us soon.” I stand and test my weight on my left leg. The bleeding stopped overnight, though it’s stiff and sore. “First things first. We need to shower.” I’ll have to tape over the stitches to keep them dry, but this isn’t my first rodeo.

It’s unnerving, the way she stares at me almost without blinking when I pull the handcuff key from my pocket and round the bed. Her only reaction comes when I reach for her wrist, and she tenses. Like a spring being compressed. She doesn’t fight me when I unlock the cuff, because why would she stop me? The red mark on her wrist is darker now, a thin band of irritated skin. I’ll have to find some kind of cream or balm for it. Granted, she’d probably hurl it at my head, but the thought is there.

She watches me with those clear green eyes as she rubs her wrist. Once again, she says nothing, sitting up smoothly, fluidly. I can’t shake the feeling of being studied. What’s going on in that head of hers? I’m sure I’ll find out before long.

“Come on,” I urge, nodding toward the bathroom. “We both need to wash up.”

“I’ll take a shower by myself,” she murmurs from the edge of the bed.

“You forfeited your privacy last night.” My vision is still slightly blurry, though I wouldn’t admit it for anything. She doesn’t need to know she’s got an advantage.

“Then wait for me to get in and stand in the bathroom for all I care.”

“This isn’t a negotiation.” When she only stares at me, I decide to hit below the belt. “It’s not like I’ve never seen you naked before.”

Her jaw tightens. Something brief and brutal flickers behind her eyes before she can smother it. She wasn’t expecting to hear that, which means part of her is still adjusting to the idea that I might actually know her. That this isn’t a con. Some stubborn part of me is determined to make her understand, which is why I add, “You have a birthmark on your hip. Shaped like a crescent moon. You used to hate it, but I always thought it was—” I stop, because this isn’t the time. “The point is, I’ve seen it.”

The surprise sharpens now. She covers it fast, the way she covers everything, but she isn’t fast enough. A birthmark isn’t something available in a file. It’s not something the Russos would’ve told me about. It’s the kind of detail that only comes from intimacy, and she understands that.

She never confirms or denies the birthmark. She stands from the bed without another word, rolls her head from one side to the other, and walks to the bathroom without looking at me.

I follow.

There’s barely enough room for one person in this bathroom, let alone two. She stands by the sink and looks at me in the mirror, wearing an unreadable expression. Then, without a word, she pulls her black sweater over her head.

She’s not shy or hesitant. She strips the way someone strips when they don’t attach any meaning to nudity: efficiently, like removing a layer of equipment. Sweater first, then the tank top underneath. She reaches for the button on her pants.

And I see the scars.

They start on her upper arm, just below her shoulder. Mottled, textured skin. It stretches down to her elbow—an old scar, healed but permanent. The explosion. I wondered about that without letting myself push too close to the question, because it would mean having to consider just how badly she was injured. How close she came to truly being killed. Landing in the water was probably the best thing that could have happened to her, but the damage was done.

Damage that’s further revealed when she pushes her black pants down to her ankles. Scarring down her hip, along her outer thigh, almost reaching her knee. Not disfiguring, but there. The skin is tighter, slightly discolored. Like a map of trauma, her body has carried for more than a decade.

She catches me looking, and something flickers across her face. The closest thing to self-consciousness I’ve seen from her yet. She angles her body slightly, turning the scarred side away from me. A subtle move, almost unconscious. The kind that comes from years of doing it without thinking.

She doesn’t want me to see.

My chest aches at that. Not because the scars bother me. They don’t. They’re evidence that she survived something that should’ve killed her. If anything, they make me want to put my hands on every inch of damaged skin to show her none of it changes a single goddamn thing.

What aches is knowing they bother her. Because this is a woman who stares down the barrel of a gun without flinching, and kills with the same ease most people use to order coffee, and she has a wound that isn’t physical. Somewhere underneath the training and the cold professionalism, the scars make her feel something she doesn’t want to feel.

I don’t comment or stare. I pull my own shirt off and step out of my pants, then turn on the water for her to step into the tub while I apply more tape over the gauze covering my stitches.

When I look up, I notice something has changed.

I feel it before I see it. A shift in her energy, in the way she holds herself once she’s stepped into the small tub.

The tension doesn’t leave. It only transforms into something else as I join her under the hot, steamy spray.

She reaches past me for the soap and brushes my chest. It wasn’t an accident. There’s nothing accidental about her.

“You’re staring,” she murmurs.

“I’m not.”

“You are.” She turns to face me under the spray. Water runs down her shoulders, her collarbone, tracking paths I’m trying very hard not to follow. She tilts her head back to let the water soak her hair, and a half-smile plays at the corners of her mouth. It’s the first time I’ve seen anything close to a smile on her face, and it hits me like a fist.

“Like what you see?” she asks. Low. Almost playful.

I do. God, help me, I do. She’s leaner than she used to be. Harder, defined in ways that speak to years of physical training.

Underneath it, though, she’s still Laura. The same lines. The same grace. The curve of her neck, the slope of her shoulders. Even the shape of her breasts, the rosy pink of her nipples. My body remembers her even if her mind doesn’t remember me. Twelve years of grief, and my hands still know exactly where they’d go if I let them.

But I won’t. Not like this.

Because I see what she’s doing.

She’s good. I’ll give her that. If I didn’t know her—what she is, what she’s been trained to do—I might fall for it. The way her posture softens. The way she angles toward me instead of away. The brush of her fingers against my arm when she reaches for the shampoo. The way she holds eye contact a beat too long.

She’s running a play. The oldest one in the book. Lower his guard with proximity and the promise of something he wants. Make him think she’s warming up to him. And when he’s distracted, when his brain is fogged with desire and his defenses are down? Time to strike.

I know this because I’ve seen it before, if not from her. People in this world understand sex is a weapon, and the body is a tool. It’s textbook, and it’s effective.

And it tells me something else about what the Russos turned her into. Something that makes my blood run cold in a way it hasn’t yet when I think of her as an assassin.

But I play along. Not because I’m stupid enough to drop my guard, but because two can play this game. I need her to believe she has the upper hand. If she thinks her little plan is working, she’ll keep me close. If she keeps me close, I can get her on that plane.

I let myself look. I let my gaze travel where it wants to go, and I won’t pretend it doesn’t matter, because she would see through that in a heartbeat. What I do is keep my hands to myself and my weight balanced. Always balanced. Ready to move.

“You’re different than I expected.” The water runs between us now, a shared stream. She’s close enough that I can feel the heat of her skin through the steam enveloping us. “Most men I’ve met in this life take what they want. They don’t wait.”

“I’m not most men.”

“No.” Water clings to her lashes when she looks up at me. Her hand comes up, fingers light against my chest, tracing a line along my collarbone. “You’re not.”

My pulse spikes, but it isn’t the hand touching me I’m concerned with. It’s her other hand. The one by her side. The one curling into a fist.

She moves fast. Her knee drives upward, aimed precisely where it would end this conversation fast. It’s vicious, and it’s well-timed, and if I hadn’t been waiting for it, it would’ve landed. And I would be in a world of pain.

But I was waiting. My hand catches her knee before it connects with my balls, redirecting the force sideways. She’s already pivoting, throwing an elbow, but the wet tub works against her. I use her momentum, spin her, and pin her back against the tile wall.

The water beats down on both of us. Her back is against the cold tile, my forearm across her collarbone, my hand still gripping her knee. She’s breathing hard, but I’m breathing harder. Her eyes are wild with fury, but underneath it, there’s something else. Something she doesn’t want me to see.

We’re pressed together with nothing between us. No clothes, no weapons. Just skin and water and the kind of tension that could go one of two directions.

“Nice try,” I murmur roughly. My heart’s racing and my cock is doing what my cock does when it’s this close to a wet, naked woman.

Her chest heaves against mine, but she doesn’t look away. Her cheeks flush pink with what could be anger or what could be our nearness. Deep down inside, I think her body remembers me.

“Let go,” she grunts, shoving her hands against my stomach.

“Why would I do that? When you can’t play nice. You really must think I’m an amateur.” I’m not sure if I’m hurt or insulted. I’ll go with insulted, because the pain—and the pain is there, pulsing under the surface—would be too much to live with if I gave it any space to exist. The thought of how many times she must have run this play. My Laura.

Despite knowing it’s not her fault, part of me wants to be angry at her. Angry for leaving, angry for living this life, and furious for everything she did while we were apart.

Anger, jealousy, and grief about all this lost time mingle in my chest, threatening to explode out of me. A deep-seated need to touch her body and her mind overcomes me. I want to make her remember me… remember the way I used to make her feel. Maybe the memories will come back if I show her.

That thought has me moving quickly. Dropping my arm from her body and letting go of her knee, I bring both of my hands to her hips. Holding her in place, I lower my head and press my lips to hers.

She freezes in shock, her body stiffens, and her lips are unmoving for less than two seconds before she slaps her palms onto my chest and tries to shove me away.

Her fight has me pressing her against the wall harder, my cock rubs onto her wet skin, and my balls ache to be inside of her. Not now, though. This isn’t about me; this is about her, and making her feel good.

Letting my fingers trail over her skin, I bring them between her legs. She gasps, and I use the small parting of her lips to deepen the kiss and push my tongue inside her hot mouth.

She tastes just like I remembered; sweet and sinful.

Her fingernails dig into my chest as a sound of displeasure comes from her throat. I press my thumb against her clit and let my fingers slide between her slick folds. This time her groan takes on a different tone. One of enjoyment.

I take this as a win and rub circles over the small bundle of nerves while burying my middle finger into her tight hole. I’m quickly rewarded by her teeth sinking into my lip until blood drips into my mouth, and I hiss out in pain.

As soon as she stops biting, I pull my face away and bring it to the crook of her neck, where I press my busted lip against her warm skin.

She has the audacity to chuckle, but I make her shut up quickly as I force two digits into her small cunt and grab one of her tits roughly. I know she likes a little bit of pain during sex, so I pinch her nipple and press my thumb down hard.

As I expected, she moans, her pussy clamps around my fingers, and the hands that were pushing me away a moment ago seem to want to draw me closer now.

I continue teasing her, kneading her breasts, pinching her nipples, while finger-fucking her pussy and playing with her clit until her back arches. Her already tight channel clamps down, a guttural moan fills the space, and her thighs quiver with her release.

Feeling her legs giving out, I quickly grab her waist to hold her upright. Lifting my head, my eyes find hers. I was hoping to find recognition, an awakened memory, or at least a sense of something familiar. I find neither.

All I see is confusion.

IVY

My back is against the tile, and I can’t feel my legs.

The water is still running, beating down on both of us, and I’m trying to remember how to breathe. My chest is heaving. My fingers are gripping his shoulders—when did I grab his shoulders?—and every nerve in my body is lit up like a circuit board that’s been hit with a surge. The aftershocks roll through me in slow, involuntary waves, and I hate that I can’t stop them. I hate that he can see them. I hate that the sound I just made is still hanging in the steam between us. Low, broken. Completely involuntary.

I don’t do involuntary. At least, I didn’t until this morning.

He’s watching me. Those pale blue eyes, close enough that I can see the flecks of gray in them, are steady and calm. Patient, as if he has all the time in the world. Like he didn’t just take me apart with nothing but his hand, and now he’s watching me put myself back together.

The worst part isn’t that he did it. The worst part is how. When he had me pinned against the wall, when my knee failed and my strategy crumbled, and I was caught with nothing left to throw at him, I expected retaliation. I expected him to take what he wanted, because that’s what men do in my world. That’s what I was prepared for. The thing I’ve been trained to endure when a seduction goes wrong and the target takes control.

Yes. They even trained me for that. They trained me to take it. How to take it and lock it away in a part of me that can never be unlocked.

Only he didn’t retaliate the way I was expecting. He could have. Easily. I was pinned, wet, naked, and he was stronger. I can admit that, if only in my own head. He’s stronger. There wasn’t a damn thing stopping him.

Instead of splitting me in half with the redwood he’s packing, he watched my face like he was reading a language only he understood. When his hand moved, it wasn’t rough. It wasn’t punishing. It was deliberate and precise, focused entirely on me and what I was feeling. Like that was the only thing that mattered, no matter what he muttered about punishing me.

I don’t know what to do with that. I literally do not have a framework for processing it. In my experience, intimacy is a tool. You use your body to gain access, to lower defenses, to extract information. What just happened wasn’t any of those things. It wasn’t transactional. He didn’t take anything for himself. He just…

My brain stalls out every time I try to finish that thought.

He steps back, giving me space. The water runs between us, and without his body heat against mine, the shower feels cold despite the steam. I press my palms flat against the tile behind me because my hands are shaking, and I refuse to let him see it. I’ve let him see enough already.

“You okay?” he asks. Quietly. Like he actually cares about the answer.

“Fine.” My voice doesn’t sound fine. It sounds like someone scraped it raw.

He doesn’t push it. He just reaches past me and turns off the water. The sudden silence is deafening. Then he steps out of the shower, grabs a towel from the rack, and comes back to me.

I expect him to hand it to me. He doesn’t.

He wraps it around me himself, and then—slowly, carefully, the way he does everything when it comes to me—he starts drying me off. My shoulders first. Then my arms, his hands gentle over the scarred skin without lingering or looking away. Down my back. My hips, where his thumb traces the edge of the birthmark he mentioned earlier, and I feel the touch all through me.

I stand there and let him do it because I don’t know how to stop him. I could pull the towel away, shove him back, reassert some kind of control over a situation that I’ve lost control of completely.

But something keeps me still. Something I don’t want to name.

No one has ever done this for me. No one has ever dried me off like I was something worth taking care of. Vincenzo trained me to be self-sufficient. Independent. Hard. Tenderness was not part of the curriculum. You shower alone, you dress alone, you handle your own body and your own needs because relying on anyone else is weakness.

This doesn’t feel like weakness. I don’t know what it feels like. That’s the problem.

He wraps a second towel around my hair and steps back, giving me room. Then he grabs a towel for himself and dries off quickly, the way a man does when he wants to get something over with. I watch the muscles in his back move while he works, and I study the scars there, too. He has his own collection. A long, thin line across his left shoulder blade that looks like a knife wound. A puckered circle on his lower back that could be an old bullet graze. The fresh bandage on his thigh, spotted with pink where the wound seeped during the night, covered in a layer of extra medical tape.

We’re both maps of damage. At least we have that in common.

He pulls on pants and a shirt without looking at me, then disappears into the room. I hear him moving around out there. The clink of dishes. A knock on the door. Room service, maybe. Low voices in the hallway. The door closing again.

When I finally come out of the bathroom with the towel wrapped around me, breakfast is laid out on the small table by the window. Coffee, toast, eggs, fruit. And next to the food, folded neatly on the bed, is a set of clothes.

I pick them up and unfold them. A soft cotton blouse in a floral print. Pale green and cream. Light fabric, the kind that moves when you walk. A pair of fitted jeans. Simple white sneakers. Even underwear, still in the packaging. All of it in my size, which I’m not going to think too hard about right now.

“This is not my style,” I say flatly, holding up the blouse between two fingers like it’s evidence at a crime scene. It is a crime, as far as I’m concerned. The man has piss-poor taste in clothes.

Nick glances over from the table, where he’s pouring coffee. “It used to be.”

Oh, wonderful. This again. Rather than insult his ex-girlfriend’s hideous taste, I settle for, “It isn’t now.”

“Your other option is the clothes you came in last night, which are on the bathroom floor.” He takes a sip of coffee. “Your call.”

I look at the blouse again. The kind of thing a normal woman would wear to brunch or a farmer’s market or whatever the hell normal women do with their weekends. Not the kind of thing a woman who just killed a man on a rooftop last night would put on.

But he’s right. My clothes from last night are wrinkled, stale, and smell like a combination of sedative sweat and hotel carpet. I didn’t exactly pack an overnight bag before breaking into his room.

I drop the towel without a word, since modesty seems pointless at this juncture, and pull on the clothes. The fabric is softer than anything I’ve worn in years. Everything I own is black, tactical, and chosen for function. This blouse feels like a different language against my skin. It fits annoyingly well.

When I look at myself in the mirror hanging on the back of the closet door, I barely recognize the woman staring back. She looks... normal. Young. Like someone who has never held a rifle or a blade or the life of another human being in her hands.

She looks like a stranger.

I don’t like it. I don’t like what it implies about who he thinks I am. Who he wants me to be.

But I sit down at the table and eat breakfast anyway, because I’m starving, and my body needs fuel, and refusing food out of spite would be childish at best, stupid at worst. The coffee is mediocre; the eggs are passable, and the toast is toast. I eat without looking at him, focusing on the mechanics of chewing and swallowing. I most definitely do not think about the shower.

We eat in silence for a while. It’s almost domestic. The thought makes me want to throw my coffee cup at the wall.

He sips his own coffee before setting the cup down. “We’ll need to leave here by noon for the airstrip.”

And my blood runs cold, right on schedule. I grip my cup tight, but that’s nothing compared to my clenched jaw. “I told you. I’m not getting on a plane with you.”

Something about flying—the thought of being sealed inside a metal tube, thirty thousand feet above the ground, with no exits and no options—tightens my chest in a way I refuse to acknowledge. It’s not fear. I don’t do fear. It’s a rational aversion to a confined space from which there is no escape. That’s completely different.

Nick looks at me over the rim of his cup. “You’ll either walk onto that jet on your own two feet, or I’ll sedate you and carry you on. Either way, you’re coming with me.”

“That’s kidnapping.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because it keeps being true.”

He sets down his cup. “Call it what you want. I made a promise, and I’m keeping it. Your brother is waiting for you. I’m bringing you home.”

Before I can respond, something buzzes on the desk. My phone. I left it in my jacket pocket last night, and he must have set it aside with the rest of my things. The screen lights up with a notification. A text from an unknown number.

My handler.

I look at Nick. He looks at the phone. Neither of us moves for a long moment.

“That’s work,” I offer.

“I know what it is.”

“I have a job. A new one, apparently.” I don’t reach for the phone, but I nod toward it. “I can’t just leave. I work for the Russos. I owe them my life.”

Something dark moves through his expression. Not anger. It’s something colder. “You don’t owe them a goddamn thing.”

“They raised me. They trained me. They gave me⁠—”

“A purpose. Yeah, you keep saying that, too.” He leans forward, forearms on his knees. “What kind of purpose, exactly? Killing people for money? Being sent to seduce targets? Is that the life you’re grateful for?”

The words land hard. Much harder than I want him to know. I keep my face neutral, because that’s what I do, but something aches in my gut. An uncomfortable pressure, like a door being forced open. “It’s the only life I know.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“You don’t get to decide that for me.” I hold his gaze, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel. “You don’t understand how this works. You don’t just walk away from the Russos. That’s not how it’s done. People who try to leave end up dead. People who help them leave end up worse.” Not that it matters either way. I’m not trying to spare his life. Even if he’s spared mine.

He’s quiet for a beat, studying me. Then he says, “How do you think I knew you were alive?”

I blink. “What?”

“How do you think I found out you were still alive in the first place? That you were out here, working for them?”

I don’t answer, because I don’t know. I assumed Liam, if he exists, had sources. Connections. People in the right places asking the right questions. That’s how intelligence works.

“Gabriel told me,” Nick says. “Gabriel Russo. He’s the one who confirmed you were alive and pointed me in this direction. He knew I was coming to look for you.”

I process that. Gabriel. Not Vincenzo. Gabriel, with the easy smile and the charm that makes you forget he’s every bit as dangerous as his father. Gabriel, who runs operations in the States because his father can’t show his face there.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” I insist, but my voice has lost some of its edge. “Gabriel does what Gabriel does. It’s Vincenzo who holds the strings. Vincenzo is the one who decides who stays and who goes, and he won’t let me go. Not willingly.”

“Let me worry about Vincenzo.”

A sound escapes me that’s almost a laugh. Almost. “You have no idea what you’re up against.”

“I have a pretty good idea, actually.”

“No. You don’t.” I lean back in my chair and fold my arms. The floral blouse bunches at my elbows, and I resist the urge to rip it off and demand my own clothes back. “Vincenzo Russo is not someone you negotiate with. You don’t threaten or outmaneuver him. He’s someone who makes problems disappear. When he finds out I’ve been taken—and he will find out—he won’t send a polite email asking for my return.”

Nick holds my gaze, unbothered in a way that’s either incredibly brave or catastrophically stupid. Maybe even insane. “I said, let me worry about it.”

“Fine.” I pick up my coffee and take a sip, settling back in my chair again. “Worry about it all you want. I’m sure Vincenzo will be very accommodating when he comes to collect me.”

I say it lightly, casually, like it’s a joke. But it isn’t. Vincenzo will come. Or he’ll send someone. And whoever Nick Brooks is, whatever training he has, whatever promises he made to a brother I don’t remember—none of it will matter when the Russos decide to take back what’s theirs.

He’ll learn. They all do.

I just hope I’m not the one who has to watch.

The thought catches me off guard. The implication that I would care if something happened to him. I shove it down, hard, and focus on my coffee. It gives me something to do with my hands that isn’t reaching across the table and doing something I’d regret.

Like touching him. Like letting him touch me again.

The phone buzzes a second time on the desk. My handler, following up, probably wondering where the hell I am since I’m normally on top of things.

And I ignore it. I ignore a direct communication from the Russos, and the fact that it doesn’t feel as wrong as it should is the most unsettling thing that’s happened to me since I woke up in handcuffs.

Which is saying something, since all it takes is a casual glance toward the bathroom to make my blood hum.

Nick watches me not answer the phone. Something moves through his expression. It’s not quite a smile, but close. Like he sees something I’m not ready to admit.

I have to look away.

NICK

She hasn’t unclenched her jaw since we boarded. No, actually. Since we left the hotel.

I have to wonder what’s cooking in that head of hers. She didn’t put up a fight when we left. When she walked alongside me out of the hotel, then got into the car waiting for us at the curb. She never said a word and didn’t drag her feet. She didn’t even argue when I refused to let her have her weapons.

Is she planning to contact Gabriel once we’re home?

If I’m lucky, she won’t want to. She’ll start remembering who she is. I’m willing to let her plot and scheme if it gets her home.

The jet is small. It’s Liam’s, chartered through a shell company that doesn’t trace back to anything useful. Two pilots, one attendant, and enough leather and polished wood to make you forget you’re up in the clouds, hurtling through the sky. It’s the kind of luxury Liam takes for granted now, reminders of the empire he built out of grief and rage, and a thirst for vengeance.

I’ve texted him twice since takeoff. The first was brief. Got her on the jet. En route.

His response came in under ten seconds. How is she?

I looked across the cabin at the woman cuffed to nothing, sitting in a cream leather seat with her hands white-knuckled on the armrests and her face the color of old paper. Alive, I typed back. We’ll talk when I land.

That was twenty minutes ago. Since then, I’ve been pretending to read something on my phone while watching her out of the corner of my eye. She’s sitting across from me, angled toward the window with the shade pulled down, which tells me the view isn’t something she wants to deal with. The floral blouse she hated putting on this morning is wrinkled at the elbows where she’s been gripping herself. I guess she got tired of trying to crack the armrests.

Her breathing is controlled. Too controlled, the kind of deliberate rhythm you use when you’re trying to keep something from boiling over.

She’s terrified.

It took me a while to piece it together. At the hotel, when I told her about the flight, I read her resistance as stubbornness. Defiance. The same refusal to cooperate she’s thrown at me since the moment we met.

And that was part of it. She’s not the type to go anywhere willingly, especially with a man who drugged her and handcuffed her to a bed.

But this is something else. This is physical. I can see it in the tension of her neck, the rigid set of her spine. The way her breath catches every time the plane shifts even slightly. A trained assassin, who doesn’t flinch when she puts a bullet in a man, is sitting five feet from me, holding herself together with sheer willpower because she’s afraid of flying.

I don’t say anything. Not yet. I give her another few minutes, because if I’ve learned anything about this woman in the last few days, it’s that pushing her before she’s ready is the fastest way to get shut down. Or shot. Or both.

My phone buzzes. Liam again. When do you land?

Estimated seven hours from now. Midafternoon your time.

His reply almost overlaps mine. I want to see her.

I expected it. Of course he wants to see her. He’s waited twelve years. The second he found out his sister was alive, the only thing keeping him from getting on a plane himself was Aurora and the fact that I convinced him I could do this without him. Liam in Europe, searching for his brainwashed assassin sister while simultaneously running an empire and keeping his pregnant wife safe? Yeah, right. It was better for me to go alone.

He agreed, but it cost him. Every day I was out there, every dead end I reported, I could hear it in his voice. The frustration. The fear he wouldn’t admit to. The part of him that wondered if Gabriel had lied, if this was all some elaborate game, if his sister was really gone and this was just another way the universe was twisting the knife.

Now she’s real. She’s here. And she doesn’t know who the hell he is.

Give her time, I type. She doesn’t remember anything. She doesn’t believe she has a brother. Showing up at the airstrip is going to overwhelm her.

The three dots appear and disappear. Appear again. I can feel his frustration through the screen. Finally: Take her to the cabin. I’ll have it stocked while you’re en route and meet you there.

Understood, I reply.

I set the phone down and look at her again. She hasn’t moved. Her eyes are fixed on a point somewhere on the cabin wall, unfocused, the way people stare when they’re concentrating all their energy on not falling apart.

“Laura.”

“Ivy,” she corrects automatically. But her voice is thin, strained. She doesn’t look at me.

“You’re afraid of flying.”

Her jaw tightens. For a second, I think she’s going to deny it—she denies everything, on principle—but something stops her. Maybe she’s too tired. Maybe the altitude and the enclosed space, and the hum of the engines have worn down her defenses just enough.

“I don’t fly,” she announces, clipped and flat. “I travel by train. Always.”

“How long has it been?”

“How long has what been?”

“Since you’ve been on a plane.”

She’s quiet for a beat. “A long time. Years.”

I stand up and move to the small galley at the front of the cabin. The attendant—a woman in her thirties, who Liam’s people vetted thoroughly—looks up from where she’s been staying pretty much invisible. “Can we get two glasses of wine? Red, if you have it.”

She nods and pulls out a bottle that’s probably worth more than my hotel room in Prague. I carry both glasses back to our seats and set one on the small table next to Laura’s armrest. She looks at it like it might bite her.

“Drink it,” I say, sitting back down across from her. “It’ll help.”

“I don’t need help.”

“You’re about to crack the armrest off your chair, if you don’t crack your teeth with all that clenching.”

She glances down at her hands, seems to realize how hard she’s gripping, and forces her fingers to relax. One by one, deliberately, like she’s manually overriding her own nervous system. Then she picks up the wine and takes a sip. Then a longer one.

I drink mine and wait.

It takes about half a glass before her shoulders drop a fraction of an inch. Her breathing eases from rigid control into something closer to natural. She’s still tense. I doubt this woman has been truly relaxed a single day in her life as Ivy. But the sharp edge of panic is going dull.

She takes another sip and stares at the wine as if it’s personally offended her by being effective. “You remember things about me,” she murmurs.

“I do.” She has no idea, and I won’t bother bombarding her with my memories now.

“Things I loved. Things I hated. How I liked my French fries. Where my birthmark is.” She pauses. “How I used to sleep.”

“All of it.”

“That’s…” She takes another drink, like she’s pulling her courage from the glass. “That’s unnerving. You understand, right? You sit there and talk about my life as if you were in it, and I have nothing. No memories or images, no feelings attached to any of it. It’s like listening to someone describe a movie I’ve never seen.”

“I know.”

“You don’t know.” There’s heat in it now, but not the sharp, weaponized kind she usually throws at me. Something rawer. “You look at me, and you see someone you loved, and all of that history informs everything you do. The way you talk to me. The way you touch me.” She swallows. “The way you look at me like I’m supposed to remember.”

“I don’t expect you to remember.”

“Yes, you do,” she insists, and she isn’t wrong. “Every time you tell me something about my past, every little detail you drop like a breadcrumb, you’re watching my face. Waiting for something to click. I’ve seen you do it. The French fries. The birthmark. You’re testing me.”

She’s right. I hate that she’s right, but she is. Every detail I’ve offered—the food, the birthmark, the way she slept—wasn’t just conversation. It was a probe. A careful attempt to trip a wire somewhere in her brain and spark a connection between who she is and who she was.

And she sees right through it, because of course she does. She reads people for a living.

“You’re right,” I admit. “I am.”

She blinks. Surprised, maybe, that I didn’t deny it.

“I’m watching for something to land,” I continue. “Because I believe your memory is still in there, somewhere. Buried, not erased. And I think the right trigger could bring it back.”

“And if it doesn’t?” She sets the wine down and looks at me directly. The fear of flying is still there, underneath, but she’s pushed it aside in favor of something harder. “If nothing comes back? If I never remember any of it? What then? You drag me to the States, you put me in front of a brother I don’t recognize, and I’m supposed to… what? Play along? Pretend to be someone I’m not?”

“You wouldn’t be pretending.”

“I would.” The wine loosened her fear and her control, from the looks of it. She’s not half as guarded now. She doesn’t bother hiding her anger or contempt as she lashes out. “Because Laura Knight doesn’t exist anymore. I’m not her. I haven’t been her in twelve years. Whatever girl you fell in love with, whatever sister Liam lost? She’s gone. Twelve years of a completely different life happened to this body, and none of it included any of you.”

The words hit like shrapnel, and she knows it. I can see her watching me for the impact, the way she’d watch a target through a scope. Measuring the damage.

I take a breath and let it out. “Maybe you’re right.”

That surprises her. Her mouth snaps shut, and her eyebrows lift a little.

“Maybe Laura is gone,” I muse, even though the words stick in my throat. “Maybe she’s never coming back, and you’ll always be Ivy. I don’t know. Neither do you. But I made a promise, and the first part of that promise was finding you. The second part is bringing you home. What happens after that, who you decide to be, that’s up to you. Not me. Not Liam. You.”

At first, she looks confused. Searching my face like she’s looking for the truth under my words. There is no hidden truth. I wonder if Vincenzo ever allowed her to think for herself.

No, I don’t have to wonder. Not really. I know the answer.

She’s quiet for a long time after that. The cabin lights are low, casting everything in a warm amber that makes her look softer than she’d ever allow herself to be in full daylight. She finishes her wine in small sips, staring at nothing, and I leave her alone with her thoughts.

After a while, her eyelids start to droop. The wine, the altitude, the exhaustion of fighting and being fought—it’s all catching up. Her head tilts toward the window, then rights itself. Tilts again. She’s losing the battle against sleep.

Within ten minutes, she’s out. Really out, not the shallow, twitchy sleep from last night. Her face goes slack, her lips part slightly, and one hand falls from the armrest to her lap. She looks like a kid. Or like someone who has been carrying something impossibly heavy for a very long time and has finally set it down, if only for now.

I watch her sleep and think about what she said.

She’s gone. Twelve years of a completely different life happened to this body.

What if she’s right? The thought has been lurking at the back of my mind since the moment she looked at me with zero recognition and told me her name was Ivy. I’ve been running on faith and stubbornness and the conviction that Laura is still in there, trapped behind walls someone else built. But what if she isn’t? What if the explosion and the amnesia and twelve years of being remade by the Russos didn’t just bury Laura Knight?

What if they erased her?

What if I bring home a stranger?

I pick up my phone and open the thread with Liam.

She doesn’t remember anything. Not me, not you, not any of it. She’s convinced Laura is gone. I’m starting to wonder if she might be right.

His response takes longer this time. A full minute, which for Liam is an eternity.

What did Dr. Feld say?

I know what he said. Liam and I sat in that office together after Gabriel’s revelation, after we’d both stopped reeling long enough to think clearly. Dr. Feld specializes in traumatic amnesia, and he was blunt about the prognosis. Memory loss from trauma isn’t always permanent. The memories aren’t necessarily destroyed. They’re dissociated, locked away by the brain’s own defense mechanisms. The right stimuli or environment, or emotional triggers, can bring them back. Not all at once, not overnight, but in fragments. Flashes. Familiar tastes, smells, sounds, faces. The brain recognizes what the conscious mind can’t access, and sometimes, with enough exposure, the door opens.

Sometimes it doesn’t. He was honest about that, too.

He said familiar things could trigger recall, I type. That we have to surround her with her old life. People she knew. Places she’s been. Things that mattered to her.

Then that’s what we do, he responds.

And if it doesn’t work?

Another pause. Then: It has to work. Bring her home, Nick. We’ll figure out the rest.

I set the phone down and lean back in my seat. Across the cabin, she sleeps on, her chest rising and falling in a slow, even rhythm. The floral blouse looks strange on her. It’s too soft, too normal for a woman who handles a gun the way she does.

But in the low light, with her guard down, I can almost see it. The girl underneath the weapon. The Laura underneath the Ivy.

Almost.

Dr. Feld said the triggers have to be emotional, not just intellectual. It’s not enough to tell her facts about her past. She has to feel something. A taste that brings back a kitchen. A song that brings back a car ride. A face that brings back a feeling she can’t explain.

My face hasn’t done it yet. Hours together, and she looks at me like a stranger.

Maybe Liam will be different. Maybe seeing her brother will shake something loose. Maybe being at the cabin, the smell of the air, will do what I couldn’t.

Or maybe she was right, and Laura Knight is gone, and I’ve just kidnapped a woman who will hate me for the rest of her life.

Either way, we’re committed now. The wheels are in motion. Vincenzo will find out she’s gone, if he hasn’t already. The handler she ignored will report it. And then we’ll have a whole new set of problems that make a fear of flying look like a minor inconvenience.

But that’s tomorrow’s problem. Today, somewhere over the Atlantic, I watch the woman I love sleep in a cream leather seat on a jet she didn’t want to board, wearing clothes she didn’t want to wear, heading toward a life she doesn’t remember.

I hope like hell we’re doing the right thing.

IVY

Nobody asked me if I wanted this.

That’s the thought that keeps looping through my head as the limo rolls through miles of nothing. Trees and more trees, broken up by the occasional gas station or rusted mailbox marking a turnoff to somewhere even more remote. We left the highway a while ago, and now the road is narrower, winding through dense forest that blocks out most of the afternoon light. It would be beautiful if I were in the mood to appreciate it.

Which is why it’s a shame I’m nowhere close to that mood.

Nick is sitting across from me, one ankle resting on the opposite knee, scrolling through his phone like we’re on a casual Sunday drive instead of whatever the hell this actually is. A kidnapping dressed up in ugly clothes and a private jet.

I stare out the window and list my resentments, because it’s better than feeling helpless.

Three days ago, I had a life. It wasn’t a warm, fuzzy life. It wasn’t the kind of life you’d put on a greeting card. But it was mine. I had an apartment in the city, one of many that were not necessarily homey but were private. I had work. I had a routine that kept me alive and sharp, and I understood the rules of the world I moved through.

Now I’m in the backseat of a limo I didn’t choose, wearing clothes I didn’t pick, heading toward a place I’ve never been, to meet a man I had no idea existed but supposedly shares my blood.

And nobody—not once—asked me if any of this was what I wanted.

Nick would say he’s doing this for me. He’d say it with that steady, patient voice of his, the one that somehow never wavers no matter how many times I shoot him or spray chemicals in his eyes. He’d tell me this is about bringing me home, reconnecting me with a family I lost, giving me back the life that was stolen from me.

What he can’t seem to understand is he can’t give back something I don’t remember having.

“How much longer?” I ask, without looking at him.

“Twenty minutes, maybe. The cabin is off the main road.”

“Of course it is.” Because why would anything about this situation be accessible or easy to escape from? I’ve been mentally mapping the route since we left the airstrip. Counting turns, estimating distances, noting landmarks. Force of habit. It’s also practical, because when the opportunity to run comes, and it will come, I’ll need to know the terrain.

“The cabin belonged to your parents,” Nick says, pocketing his phone. “Your family used to come out here when you and Liam were kids. Summers, mostly. Holidays sometimes. It’s…” He pauses, choosing his words carefully. “It’s a place with a lot of memories.”

“For you, maybe.”

He doesn’t argue. That’s one of the more frustrating things about him. He doesn’t fight me when I push back. He just absorbs it and keeps going. It’s almost impossible to stay angry at someone who refuses to give you anything to push against.

The trees thin out after another ten minutes, and the road dips toward lower ground. I catch glimpses of water through the gaps—a lake, wide and flat, reflecting the blue sky like a mirror. Then the trees open up, and the cabin comes into view.

It’s not what I expected. When he said cabin, I pictured something rough. Rustic. Log walls and a tin roof, and an outhouse around back. This is something else entirely. It’s a real home, dark wood, with a wide porch that wraps around the front and a stone chimney climbing the side wall. The porch overlooks the lake through a break in the pines, and there’s a dock stretching out over the water. Across the lake, I can see other cabins dotted along the far shore, half-hidden in the trees.

It’s idyllic. The kind of place you’d see in a magazine article about escaping from the real world. I hate that it’s beautiful, because I don’t want to feel anything about it.

The limo pulls up to the front of the cabin and stops. Nick gets out first, then holds the door for me like this is a date instead of a hostage delivery. I ignore his hand and step out on my own, my sneakers crunching on the gravel drive. The air hits me immediately—clean, cold, carrying the smell of pine and water and something earthy underneath. It’s different from European air. Different from the cities I’ve lived in, the cramped apartments and rooftops, and alleyways that make up the geography of my life.

It smells like nothing I’ve ever known.

And yet.

Something tugs at the base of my skull. Not a memory. Nothing that clear or defined. More like the ghost of a feeling. A sense that this air has been in my lungs before, a long time ago, in a life I can’t access. I push it down and follow Nick up the porch steps.

The wooden boards creak under our feet. He unlocks the front door and pushes it open, stepping aside to let me enter first. I scan the interior automatically: exits, sight lines, potential weapons. It’s a reflex.

The entryway opens into a living area with the stone fireplace I noticed outside, worn leather furniture, and big windows looking out over the lake. The kitchen is to the right, separated by a counter. A hallway leads toward what I assume are bedrooms. It’s clean, warm, lived-in. Someone has been here recently—there are fresh flowers on the kitchen counter and the fireplace has been laid with wood, ready to light.

And then I notice the photos.

They’re everywhere. On the mantel above the fireplace. On the walls. On a shelf by the hallway. The frames are mismatched—some wooden, some metal, all different sizes.

A family: parents and two children: a boy and a girl. The parents are young, smiling. They could afford to be happy. They didn’t know what was ahead of them. The boy is dark-haired, green-eyed, lanky in the way boys are before they grow into their bodies.

The girl is… me.

I know it instantly, the way you know your own face in a mirror, even though the face in these photos belongs to someone I don’t recognize. A child, maybe eight or nine in the earliest ones, grinning with a gap in her front teeth. In others, a preteen, awkward and leggy, squinting in the sunlight on the dock. Then a teenager, fifteen or so, sitting on the porch railing with her hair blowing across her face, laughing at something beyond the camera’s frame.

That’s my face. My eyes. My jawline before it sharpened into what it is now. I’m looking at myself, and I have no memory of any of it.

My chest constricts. I’ve been trained to maintain composure under circumstances far worse than old photographs, but something is happening beneath the surface I can’t fully control. A pressure behind my eyes. A tightness in my throat that has nothing to do with exhaustion.

I don’t remember this girl. I don’t remember this place. I don’t remember the parents smiling in those frames, and I don’t remember the boy standing beside me in photo after photo, his arm sometimes thrown over my shoulders, both of us mugging for the camera like nothing bad could ever touch us.

“These are fake,” I hear myself say. My voice sounds strange. Distant. “You had them photoshopped.”

Nick is standing behind me. I can feel him there without turning around. “They’re not fake, Laura.”

“Don’t call me that,” I grit out.

“They’re real. Every one of them.” His voice is infuriatingly calm and patient. “That’s you, and that’s Liam, and those are your parents. They died in the explosion on the boat.”

I stare at the photo of the teenager on the porch railing. She looks happy. Genuinely, unselfconsciously happy, the kind of happiness that comes from not knowing the world has teeth. I’ve never looked like that. Not once in the life I remember. Vincenzo didn’t raise me to be happy. He raised me to be a tool.

I have to turn away from the photos. I can’t look at them anymore.

Nick opens his mouth to say something, but before he can, the sound of tires on gravel draws both our attention to the window. A car is pulling up the driveway. A black SUV, similar to the kind I’ve seen a hundred times in my line of work. Armored, probably. The windows are tinted dark enough that I can’t see who’s inside.

“That’s your brother,” Nick offers behind me.

My pulse does something I don’t appreciate. It speeds up, hammering against my ribs with a force that has nothing to do with training or instinct and everything to do with a feeling I can’t name. I stand very still and watch through the window as the SUV comes to a stop behind the limo.

The driver’s door opens first. A man I don’t recognize steps out. Security, based on his build and the way his gaze sweeps the perimeter before he moves to open the rear passenger door.

And then the adult version of the boy in the photos steps out of the car.

He’s tall. That’s the first thing I register. Tall and broad, with the kind of build that comes from extreme discipline. Short black hair. He moves with a deliberate kind of authority, the way men move when they’re used to being in charge of every room they enter.

And his eyes are green. My shade of green, so close to what I see in the mirror every morning that it stops me cold.

He looks like me.

The thought pops up before I can stop it, and I crush it immediately. There are billions of people in the world. Resemblances happen. Two strangers can share a hair color, an eye color, a bone structure, and have absolutely nothing else in common. It doesn’t mean anything. Coincidence isn’t proof.

But my pulse won’t slow down, and that bothers me more than anything.

Nick goes to the front door and opens it. I hear them exchange a few quiet words in low voices on the porch. Then footsteps before Nick steps aside, and Liam Knight walks into the cabin.

He sees me, and he stops. A breath bursts out of him. Only one, but it sounds like it contains all the air in his lungs. He sways slightly on his feet before catching himself.

I’ve been studied by some of the most dangerous men in Europe. I’ve held eye contact with targets seconds before they died. I’ve stared down Vincenzo Russo himself without flinching. But the way this man looks at me—the raw, undisguised emotion on his face, the way his jaw works like he’s physically holding something back—it’s unlike anything I’ve prepared for.

He’s looking at me like I’m a miracle. Like he’s afraid that if he blinks, I’ll disappear.

He doesn’t come closer. He stands in the middle of the living room, hands at his sides, and takes a slow breath. When he speaks, his voice is rougher than I expected. Lower. Controlled in a way that tells me control doesn’t come naturally to him, but he’s practiced at forcing it. His discipline goes beyond his workout routine.

“It’s you. I knew Nick found you. I knew you were on your way. I trust him. But… I’m still having a hard time.” His hands clench, loosen, then clench again at his sides. Like he’s holding himself back, but only by the skin of his teeth.

I don’t look away, even when his searching gaze makes my skin crawl a little. I refuse to be the one who breaks eye contact first.

“I know you don’t remember me,” he says, sitting in the nearest chair like he needs to if he doesn’t want to hit the floor. As he speaks, his gaze crawls over my face, like he’s memorizing me. “I’m not going to pretend that doesn’t hurt, because it does. But I’m not here to push you. I’m not going to force memories on you or make you feel something you don’t feel. I had to see you, is all.”

No. There’s more to it than that, and the clue lies in the way Nick keeps looking back and forth between us. Like he’s waiting for something to click. They were hoping I’d see my supposed brother and the veil would lift and I’d fall into his open arms. Like this is a movie instead of the reality of a brutal life.

Something passes across Liam’s face—something painful, something he tucks away with visible effort. “All I want you to know is that everything we’re doing, we’re doing because we want what’s best for you. That’s it. Nick brought you here because this is where our family spent time together, and we’re hoping it’ll help. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. But we had to try.”

He holds my gaze. Steady, like Nick, but different. Where Nick is patient, this man is intense. Where Nick’s composure comes from practice, Liam’s comes from sheer force of will. I can see the effort it’s taking him not to cross the room. Not to reach for me the way Nick reached for me that first night in Prague.

“I’m asking for your trust,” he says. “I know I haven’t earned it. I know you don’t know me. But I’m asking anyway, because you’re my sister, and I’ve spent twelve years believing I’d never see you again.”

The silence that follows is heavy enough to crush bone.

I look at this man. This stranger with my eyes. I look at the photos on the wall behind him, at the girl I used to be, at the family I can’t remember.

Then there’s Nick, still standing by the door. Watching me with that impossible patience, I still can’t figure out how to break.

I can’t help but think about Vincenzo in the middle of all of this. The story he told me and the cracks in it, which I spent years refusing to examine. The scars on my body, the blanks in my mind, and the feeling I had the first time I breathed the air outside this cabin. It felt like remembering without actually remembering anything at all.

I think about Nick’s question, the one that kept me awake last night. Why do you think?

And I make a decision. Not because I trust them. I don’t.

Not because I believe them. I’m not there yet, and I may never be.

But because I’ve spent years accepting a version of my life that was handed to me by people who had every reason to lie, and I never once demanded proof.

It’s time to find out the truth. Whatever that truth turns out to be.

“I don’t trust you,” I tell Liam. My voice is flat, even, giving nothing away. “I don’t know you, and I don’t trust you. But I want to know what happened to me. The real version, not the one I was told. If you can give me that, if you can prove any of this, then I’ll stay. For now.”

Something shifts in his face. Not a smile—it’s too raw for that, too close to breaking—but something that looks like the first breath after holding it for a long time. “That’s all I’m asking,” he responds.

I nod once. Short, final. Then I turn away from both of them and walk down the hallway toward the bedrooms, because I need to be alone before the pressure behind my eyes turns into something I refuse to let either of them see.

The door closes behind me. I lean against it, press my palms flat against the wood, and breathe.

On the wall across from the bed, there’s one more photo. Two kids sitting on the dock, their feet dangling over the water, the sun setting behind them, turning their skin golden. The boy has his arm around the girl’s shoulders. She’s leaning into him, laughing.

I stare at it until my vision blurs. Then I close my eyes and wrap my arms around myself like I did on the jet, when I had to hold myself or else fall to pieces. It’s not the first time I’ve had to hold myself when there was nobody else to do it.

NICK

Liam makes it to the porch before he breaks.

I’ve seen this man take a knife to the ribs without flinching. I’ve watched him walk into rooms full of armed men with nothing but his presence and his reputation, and walk out with exactly what he came for. He built an empire from the ashes of his family’s destruction, and he did it with the kind of cold, relentless focus that made people afraid to even say his name out loud.

I would know, since I had a front seat to most of it. Especially when it came to taking down Donavan Blackwell, the man who orchestrated the explosion. It was personal. I wanted to see the bastard taken down as much as Liam did. Years of careful planning, running through every possible scenario, spending countless dollars on the best equipment and the most skilled team Liam could assemble. He’s a patient, calculating man.

And now, he’s standing on the porch of his childhood cabin with his hands on the railing, his head bowed, and his shoulders shaking.

I leave the front door ajar in case Laura or Ivy or whoever she is right now decides to come out fighting. Will she? I doubt it somehow. I’m not under any illusions here—she’s still determined to shut us down and will come up with any explanation she needs to prove she’s right, if only to herself. I mean, Photoshop? Talk about a reach.

But something in her has changed in a major way since the first night, when I opened the door and found an assassin with Laura’s face standing by my window. No, she won’t fight now, because fighting could mean robbing herself of the chance to learn the truth she’s searching for.

I don’t say anything once I’ve walked across the porch to stand next to Liam. There’s nothing to say. What words exist for watching your dead sister look at you like you’re a stranger?

“She has Mom’s jaw,” he manages after a while. His voice is raw and choked with the sort of emotion I haven’t seen from him in years. “Did you notice that? The way she holds it when she’s pissed off. Mom used to do the same thing.”

“I noticed.” She’s spent most of our time together pissed off.

“She doesn’t know me.” He says it as if he’s still trying to make the words real. Like saying them out loud might somehow change their meaning. “She looked right at me, and there was nothing. Not a goddamn thing.”

There I was, thinking he had given up on things like hope. Now, I know better. He knew in his head there was very little chance of his sister magically remembering him. Deep down inside, it was a different story. “I know.” It’s all I can say.

“Twelve years.” He straightens up, running both hands over his face, pulling himself back together the way I’ve seen him do a hundred times. It’s a physical act. He literally reshapes his expression with his hands, pushing the grief down, locking it behind the mask. “I thought she was dead, and now she’s alive and standing twenty feet away from me, and she’d rather be back in Europe killing people for the family that stole her.” His fist comes down against the porch railing hard enough to make the wood vibrate.

“She doesn’t want to believe that’s what happened. Not yet. She’s starting to crack, though,” I tell him. Maybe I’m the one who needs to stop hoping. “The photos shook her. She’s trying not to show it, but I saw it.”

He turns his head and looks at me. His green eyes—Laura’s eyes, the same ones that just stared at us from across the living room with zero recognition—are bloodshot and bright. “The doctor said familiar environments could help trigger something.”

“That’s why we’re here.”

“And if it doesn’t work?”

“Then we try something else. And if that doesn’t work, we try again. We don’t stop, Liam. That was the deal.”

He stares at me for a long time. I can see him weighing something, turning it over. Finally, he nods. One sharp dip of his chin. “Take care of her.”

“Always.” It’s the single truth I know. The one I keep closest to what’s left of my heart.

“I mean it.” He reaches out and grips my shoulder hard enough that I feel the bruise forming in real time. “Whatever she needs. Whatever it takes. I don’t care what it costs.”

I meet his gaze without blinking, staring at him as intensely as he stares at me. “I know.”

He lets go and steps back. Pulls his phone from his pocket and sends a text—probably to his driver, who’s been waiting in the SUV. Then he looks at the front door one more time, and I watch him fight the urge to go back inside and try again. To say one more thing that might unlock whatever’s sealed away behind those familiar, distant eyes.

He doesn’t. He knows better. Liam is a lot of things, but he’s not stupid. Pushing her now would undo whatever fragile ground we’ve gained.

“I’ll call you tonight,” he says. Then he walks down the porch steps and gets into the SUV without looking back. The gravel crunches under the tires as the car pulls away, and I stand there watching until it disappears into the trees.

The cabin is quiet when I go back inside. Down the hallway, the bedroom door is still closed. I give her space—she earned it—and get busy in the kitchen, opening cabinets, checking the fridge. Liam had the place stocked, as promised. The man thinks of everything, even when he’s falling apart. The refrigerator is full. The pantry is loaded. There’s enough food here for a week, maybe two.

I open a bottle of wine and pour myself a glass, then take it with me to the bathroom, where I find the first aid kit I requested during my text conversation with Liam. The wine helps dull the pain of pulling my stitches before using superglue to hold my wounds closed. Once that’s done, I return to the kitchen, where I wait at the table, staring out at the lake and remembering the way things used to be.

It’s almost an hour before I hear the bedroom door open. Soft footsteps down the hallway. She shows up in the living room like a shadow, quiet and watchful, scanning the space the way she always does before settling. Her eyes are clear. If she cried behind that closed door, which I think she did, it doesn’t show.

“He’s gone?” she asks.

“Yeah. He’ll be back, but not tonight. He wanted to give you time.”

She processes that with a slight nod. Her gaze drifts to the photos on the mantel, lingers for a second, then deliberately moves away. She’s not ready to look at them again. Fair enough.

“Are you hungry?” I ask.

“I could eat.”

“Good. Kitchen’s stocked. I thought we could make dinner.” I push off the counter and open the fridge, making a show of surveying the options. “Gives us something to do with our hands that isn’t fighting each other.”

The faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth when I look over my shoulder. Not a smile, not yet, but close enough that I’ll take it.

I pull out ingredients and start setting them on the counter. Ground beef, onions, garlic, canned tomatoes, pasta. The basics for a bolognese. Not just any bolognese, her mom’s bolognese, the recipe she made so often that the smell of garlic and simmering tomatoes is probably encoded in the DNA of anyone who ever set foot in this cabin. Myself included, and I didn’t come here nearly as much as the family did. I was only a guest a few times.

“Your mom used to make this,” I explain, keeping my voice casual. “It was one of her staples. She’d start it in the afternoon and let it simmer for hours. The whole house would smell like it by dinnertime.”

She watches me from the other side of the counter, arms folded. “And I suppose I loved it.”

“Everyone loved it. It was one of those things you couldn’t help loving. Even Liam, and he complained about everything your mom cooked because he thought it made him sound tough. He’d clean his plate twice.”

No reaction to Liam’s name this time. Progress, maybe. Or maybe she’s just too tired to fight every detail.

I move to the small speaker on the shelf by the window and connect my phone. I’ve had a playlist saved for months of songs Laura used to love, pulled together from memory and cross-referenced with Liam. Old stuff, mostly. The kind of music a teenage girl in the early 2010s would’ve had on repeat. When the first song fills the cabin, something soft and acoustic, I watch her face for a response.

Nothing obvious. But she doesn’t ask me to turn it off, either.

“No offense,” I say, returning to the counter and picking up a knife to start on the onions. “But your cooking skills were not your strong suit.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“I’m just saying. You tried. You had enthusiasm. But the results were... inconsistent.”

“I cook all the time,” she says, and there’s a sharpness to it that’s more defensive than hostile. “I learned from the Russo family cook. She was one of the best in Rome.”

“Then you’ve upgraded.” I slide a cutting board and a second knife toward her. “Show me what you’ve got.”

She looks at the knife, then at me. I can see the calculation; I just handed a trained assassin a blade, fully aware of what she can do with it. The fact that I did it without hesitation isn’t lost on her. Her expression changes, opening up a little. It’s not trust, exactly. But something close to it.

She picks up the knife and starts dicing the onion with a speed and precision that puts my work to shame. Her cuts are uniform, mechanical, perfect. Of course they are. Everything this woman does with a blade is perfect.

“Tell me about it,” I urge, though gently, while browning the beef in a pan. I angle myself to keep her in my periphery, since I’m not stupid enough to turn my back on her while she’s holding a knife. “Your life in Italy.”

She glances at me sideways. “Why?”

“Because I want to know.”

“You want to know about the life the Russos gave me? I thought you hated them.”

“I hate what they did to you. That doesn’t mean I hate everything about who you’ve become.” I stir the meat after seasoning, keeping my eyes on the pan. “You spent a long time there. I want to know what it was like.”

She’s quiet for a while, focused on the garlic now, mincing it into pieces so small they’re almost invisible. When she speaks, her voice has lost some of its edge. “Rome is beautiful. I lived there for the first few years, in a house near the Villa Borghese. Vincenzo had a place there. It was... large. Cold, mostly. Marble floors. The kind of house where sounds echo, and you can’t really get away with anything. I’m sure he liked it that way.”

I scrape the onions and garlic into the pan with the beef. The smell fills the kitchen immediately—rich, familiar, warm. I can’t help but give her a hopeful glance, but she’s as far away as ever. Lost in her memories.

“The cook was named Elena,” she continues. “She was the closest thing I had to a mother figure. She taught me how to make fresh pasta when I was seventeen. How to debone a fish. How to make a proper risotto.” A pause. “She was kind. One of the few people in that house who was.”

“What happened to her?”

Her face hardens. “Vincenzo let her go when I was twenty. He said she’d gotten too attached to me.” Her voice is flat when she says it, but I hear the loss underneath. Another person taken from her by the man who stole everything.

She talks more as we cook, and even more while we sit at the counter with our wine as the sauce simmers. About the training—not the killing, not the missions, but the physical conditioning. The hours of hand-to-hand combat, the language lessons, the tradecraft. She describes it the way a soldier might describe boot camp: brutal but formative, the thing that made her who she is.

She tells me about the safe houses she’s lived in across Europe. The cities she knows like the back of her hand. The languages she speaks. Italian, French, Czech, enough Russian to get by. I won’t bother telling her she barely passed basic Spanish in high school.

I listen to all of it, and while I’m listening, a thought takes shape that I haven’t really let myself consider until now.

What if I’m not going to help Laura get her memory back? What if, instead, I’m going to get to know Ivy?

The doctor’s words circle back. Dr. Feld was careful not to promise anything. He said long-term amnesia, especially trauma-induced, is unpredictable. There’s no guarantee. There’s no timeline.

“The doctor we consulted,” I tell her while draining the pasta, “warned us that recovering memory after this long isn’t always possible.” Because she deserves the truth. The full story. There was so much taken from her already.

She stops stirring the sauce and looks at me. “Then why are we here?”

“Because he also said it can be done. The right environment, the right triggers. Being around people and places from your past. It’s not a sure thing, but it’s the best shot we’ve got.”

“And if it doesn’t work?”

“Then we deal with that when it happens.”

She holds my gaze for a beat longer than usual. Then she turns back to the stove without a word.

We eat at the small table by the kitchen window. The sun is setting behind the trees on the far shore, turning the water into something that looks like liquid copper. The bolognese is good. Even better than good, actually, which I’m sure has to do with her knife work and whatever the Russo cook taught her. I tell her so, and she accepts the compliment with a nod that’s almost gracious.

We don’t talk much during the meal. The silence is different now, though. Less hostile. Less electric. It’s the kind of silence that happens when two people have said enough for one day and are okay to sit and eat and coexist.

After dinner, I wash while she dries. The kitchen is small enough that we’re constantly in each other’s space. Reaching past each other for the dish rack, stepping aside at the sink, shoulders brushing. The music is still playing, something low and warm, and the cabin smells like garlic and tomatoes and the wood smoke from the fire I lit in the hearth while the pasta was boiling.

She’s standing next to me, drying a pan, when I make the mistake of looking at her.

Not a glance. Not the careful, controlled observation I’ve been maintaining since Prague. An actual look, the kind where your eyes settle on someone’s face and your brain stops doing anything useful. The low light from the fire catches the angle of her jaw, the curve of her neck, the way her dark hair falls against her shoulder. She’s still wearing the blouse I picked out for her, and somehow, despite everything, she looks like she belongs here. In this kitchen. In this light.

She catches me looking. Of course she does. She catches everything.

But this time, she doesn’t call me on it. She doesn’t say you’re staring, or raise an eyebrow, or go for a weapon. She just looks back. And for a long, silent moment, neither of us moves.

I don’t know who closes the distance. It might be me. It might be her. It might be mutual, the way two people sometimes drift together when the current is stronger than either of them.

But then my mouth is on hers, and nothing else matters.

She kisses the way she does everything, with intensity and focus, a kind of fierce concentration that makes the rest of the world fall away. Her hand comes up to the back of my neck and her fingers dig in, pulling me closer, and my hands find her waist, her hips, the curve of her back. She tastes like red wine and tomato sauce, and she makes a sound against my mouth that undoes something I’ve been holding together for twelve years.

Laura. This is Laura’s mouth. Laura’s lips, which I memorized years ago and thought about day after day once she was gone. I held onto the memory, the taste and the feel of her, desperate to keep her alive at least in my mind. Now, here she is, and I’m kissing her again. This is real. I can hardly let myself believe it’s real.

It escalates fast. Her back hits the edge of the counter, and I press into her, one hand braced on the countertop behind her, the other tangled in her hair. She pulls at my shirt, her hands finding skin, and the contact sends a jolt through me that’s almost painful in its intensity. I want her. I want her so badly my hands are shaking, and for the first time since Prague, it feels like she might want me back. Not as a play. Not as a tactic. Just this—raw, real. No thinking. No plotting. Feeling.

Until she pushes me away with both hands flat against my chest, arms locked, creating distance.

She’s breathing hard, and so am I. Her lips are swollen, and her eyes are bright, and she looks at me with something that isn’t anger and isn’t fear but might be worse than both.

“Why do you keep fighting this?” I ask in a rough voice.

“Are you kissing Ivy?” she asks. Her voice is just as rough. “Or are you kissing Laura?”

The question lands like a blade between my ribs. Because that’s the question, isn’t it? The one that’s been underneath everything since the moment I found her in Prague. When I look at her, who do I see? The girl I lost, or the woman she became? The ghost, or the reality?

I don’t step back. I step forward. My hands find the counter on either side of her, boxing her in, and I lower my face until it’s inches from hers. I can feel her breath on my lips. I can see the pulse hammering in her throat.

“Can’t it be both?”

Something flickers behind her eyes. Not a memory. Something that might scare her worse than any memory could. “I don’t know yet,” she whispers.

That ends it. Not with a bang, not with a fight. With a step backward and a silence that fills the cabin like smoke. She walks to the living room once I let her go. I stay in the kitchen and grip the edge of the counter until my knuckles turn white.

We don’t talk much for the rest of the night. She sits on the couch and stares at the fire. I clean the kitchen a second time because it gives me something to do that isn’t going to her, pulling her against me, and kissing her again until she stops asking questions neither of us can answer.

When it’s late enough that the fire has burned down to embers and both of us are running on fumes, I break the silence. “We should get some sleep.”

She stands without argument, which tells me how exhausted she must be. We walk down the hall to the bedroom, and she surveys the bed after stripping down to her bra and panties without hesitating.

Then she looks at the headboard. “There’s nothing to cuff me to,” she observes.

She’s right. The headboard is a solid piece of wood, smooth, no bars, no gaps. Nothing to loop a handcuff through. The bed frame is low to the ground and equally useless.

I pull the handcuffs from my bag and hold them up. “I’ll cuff you to me this time.”

She stares at the cuffs. Then at me. “You’re joking,” she deadpans.

“I’m not.” I sit on the edge of the bed and click one cuff around my own left wrist. Then I hold out the other, open, waiting. “Just in case you get any ideas about smothering me with a pillow.”

Something moves across her face. For a second, the corner of her mouth twitches. “I would never.”

She’s a liar. “Whatever you say.”

With a smirk, she sits on the bed next to me and extends her right wrist. I close the cuff around it, careful of the irritated skin from before, leaving it as loose as I can while still being secure. The chain between us is short—maybe eight inches of slack. Enough to move, not enough to reach anything useful.

We lie down on opposite sides of the bed, facing away from each other, connected by a strand of metal that clinks softly every time either of us shifts. The room is dark except for the faint glow of moonlight through the window, reflecting off the lake.

“Goodnight, Laura,” I murmur.

A long pause. Then, so quietly I almost miss it: “Goodnight, Nick.”

It’s the first time she’s used my name.

I lie in the dark and listen to her breathe, and I hold on to that single word like it’s the first crack of light under a door that’s been locked for almost half a lifetime.

IVY

This is fun.

Maybe I can brainwash myself into thinking that if I try hard enough. Lying on my side of the bed, facing away from the man handcuffed to me, is a good time. The drifting in and out of sleep, groggy and disoriented, is what I’ve been missing in my life.

Otherwise, I just might go crazy.

This isn’t like me. There hasn’t been a situation I’ve been up against in the past decade or more that I haven’t been able to bend and twist until it looked the way I needed it to. Discipline, training. That’s what it’s all about, the only reason I’ve been able to make it as long and as far as I have.

Turns out all it took was a few pointed questions and a flight across the Atlantic to erase years of progress.

I close my eyes for maybe the hundredth time in the past several hours, refusing to give that thought any energy. Like depriving a fire of oxygen until it goes out. That’s what I need to do. That’s the only way I’ll make it through this. I’ve been able to train my mind to do a great many things. I can do this, too.

Then again, considering there’s so much I don’t remember, starting at birth and up to the age of fifteen or so, maybe my mind isn’t as trustworthy as I believed. Back in the day, early on, when I still dared ask questions, I used to worry about it to Vincenzo. Why couldn’t I remember? Was there something seriously wrong with me? What if I started to lose my current memories, too? He always reassured me there was nothing to worry about, but in an offhand, dismissive sort of way. Still, it was what I needed to hear, so I accepted it.

All those old fears have come back, along with so much else, and I feel myself losing my grip a little more all the time.

Sleep starts to take hold again, and I give in gladly because I need to be as sharp as I can. Otherwise, situations like the one in the kitchen will keep happening, and I can’t have that. It’s bad enough my body seems to want him. I need to be sharp, focused, or else risk making an even bigger mistake than kissing him.

It might be an hour, or it might be a minute before there’s a buzzing sound from the nightstand on the other side of the bed. His breathing changes, and the cuff shifts between us.

In the time it takes my heart to beat again, I’m fully awake. Vincenzo used to test me by sending people into my room at night. If I didn’t wake up before they reached the bed, there were an extra five miles to run in the morning.

I never ran those miles. Not once.

I look over my shoulder. He tilts the phone toward his face, and the light catches his expression. Whatever he sees takes the last of his sleep and drains it from his features, replacing it with something hard. Focused. I know that look. I’ve seen it all my life… at least, the life I remember.

“Laura. Wake up.”

All things considered, this isn’t the time to remind him he insists on calling me the wrong name. “I’m awake,” I confirm, sitting up, reading the situation by tracking his eyes. “What’s happening?”

“Eastern side has been breached. Multiple contacts.” He drops the phone on the bed and grabs for the key on the nightstand, unlocking the cuff. The metal falls away from my wrist—I flex my hand to restore circulation. “They’re moving in formation from the tree line. We’ve got maybe four minutes.”

Which means closer to three, probably.

I’ve been here before. Maybe not geographically, but situationally. When I get out of my own way and allow my body to do what it needs to do, it takes no time to pull my clothes on and shove my feet back into the sneakers sitting by the bed. “How many?” I ask, quickly tying the laces before rising. I’m not rushing. No trembling, no racing. I’ve been here before.

“At least three, based on the sensor pattern.” He’s dressed now, going to the closet. “Could be more. They triggered in sequence. It means a coordinated approach.”

“Standard formation,” I muse, watching him pull a large bag from the closet. “They’ll split up. Main force through the back where the trees give them more cover, one or two around the front to catch runners or create a diversion.”

He looks up at me, and there’s a flicker of something in his eyes. Not surprise. More like acknowledgment that my thoughts run in the same direction his do. Maybe it’s a grim reminder of who I really am rather than who he wishes I was.

“Stay behind me,” he fires off, unzipping the bag and unloading a small arsenal. Where did that come from? Was this part of Liam having the house stocked, the way Nick mentioned during dinner?

“No way.”

“Laura—”

“Dammit. My name is Ivy, and I’m not hiding behind you while people breach this cabin.” With frustration bordering on rage filling my veins, I keep my voice low and even. Emotion is noise. Noise gets you killed. “You know what I can do. And we both know who this probably is.” Granted, I didn’t think they’d come for me so soon, and I have no idea how they knew where to find us. But this is Vincenzo we’re dealing with. He has his ways. “If this is the Russos, they won’t send two or three men. They will send a full team. You’re good, I’ll give you that, but you’re on an injured leg and you need me.”

I watch him wrestle with it for a second or two. Weighing the risk of arming me against the risk of fighting alone. For all he knows, I could take a gun and put it to his head. I could use the chaos as cover and disappear into the woods. He’s thinking about both of those possibilities along with more I haven’t considered.

I can’t blame him. If I were in his position, I would think the same thing. I’m not sure why I want to fight in the first place—yet another question probably going through his head, as well. If these men have come to extract me, I should throw open the door and invite them in.

Why don’t I, then? Why did I immediately decide to fight? Like a reflex, something that popped up in my head before I had the chance to think.

Was it the kiss? Damn it. This isn’t the time.

“You need me,” I insist while the clock ticks, and we lose time against these assholes, whoever they are, whatever they’re here for. “If they breach, you’re fighting in close quarters with limited cover and a bad leg. I am a very good asset. Use me.”

He hesitates another beat before reaching into the bag and pulling out two handguns. One is a compact Beretta, the other a Smith & Wesson. He holds them out, grip first. “Don’t make me regret this.”

I take both weapons, check the chambers, then tuck one into my waistband. The weight of a gun in my hand settles something in me that’s been unsettled since Prague. This is what I know. This is who I am. Whatever confusion exists about my name, my identity, none of it matters when I’m holding a weapon and someone is coming to possibly kill me.

“No promises,” I mutter, and he almost smiles, which is insane considering the situation.

We move down the hallway in the dark, keeping low. He talks along the way. “There are three access points. Front door, back door, kitchen window. They’ll circle and cover front and back before breaching.”

“I’ll take the back,” I tell him. “Kitchen. You cover the front.”

He doesn’t like it. I feel it in the way he pauses, the fresh tension in his shoulders. He wants me in his sight line. He needs to know where I am at every moment.

But he knows I’m right.

“Fine,” he decides. “Back door and kitchen window.”

At the end of the hallway, we split up. I’m moving left into the kitchen before the word is fully out of his mouth. I have the Beretta in a two-handed grip. My breathing is slow and controlled. Four counts in, four counts out. The way I’ve been doing it since I learned to shoot in a basement in Rome with Vincenzo’s men watching and judging every twitch.

And punishing me at the first sign of weakness. I knew it even then that they enjoyed it.

My position behind the kitchen counter gives me cover and a clear angle to both the back door and the window above the sink. I set the Smith & Wesson on the counter within reach.

And I wait.

The silence is its own kind of sound. I hear the lake out there, the soft lap of water against the dock. My own heartbeat, steady and slow.

And underneath it, getting closer all the time, boots on the ground. Multiple sets, moving fast. They’re not bothering with stealth anymore.

They’re coming.

The front window shatters first. I hear the shot, the spray of glass, Nick returning fire in the living room. Two controlled rounds. There’s a shout outside—someone got hit. Good.

The back door explodes inward.

They come in pairs, like I knew they would. Two through the door, two through the window half a second later. Fast and aggressive, designed to overwhelm a single defender with speed and angles.

They weren’t expecting two defenders. They really should have scouted this out.

The first man through the door is dead before he registers my position. I put two rounds in his chest from behind the counter, center mass, and he drops in the doorway. The second man trips over him—a half-second stumble, barely anything—but half a second is a lifetime in a situation like this. I shift my aim and fire once, and he goes down on top of his partner.

The window pair is faster. The first one comes through feet-first, and he’s up with his rifle before I can track him. I drop behind the counter as a burst of automatic fire chews into the cabinets above my head. Splinters and broken dishes fly everywhere. With my left hand, I grab the gun from the counter, lean around the edge, and fire three times. Two of them miss. The third catches him in the throat—he drops his rifle to grab his neck with both hands.

The fourth man is already on me. I don’t have time to aim before he comes around the counter with his rifle up. I throw myself sideways, roll, and come up firing. The first round takes him in the shoulder and spins him. The second puts him down for good.

The entire thing couldn’t have taken more than fifteen seconds. My ears are ringing. There’s something hot on my cheek. Maybe from the glass or a splinter from the cabinet, but nothing serious.

From the living room, Nick continues firing. Controlled shots, spaced and deliberate.

Then, silence.

I clear the kitchen. Check corners, the bodies, the window. There’s no one else coming through. “Clear!” I call out.

There are more shots from the front. Two more, and then more silence. This time, it’s real.

Nick appears from behind the fireplace, gun still in hand. His eyes find me immediately, then scan me for damage. “How many on your side?” he asks.

“Four. Two by two.”

“Four on mine.” He looks down at one of the men, still on the floor. “One of them might still be breathing.”

“Eight total.” I lower both guns, letting them hang at my sides. “A full team.”

We’re thinking the same thing. This was a coordinated assault, not reconnaissance. Not a warning.

Thinking back, I add, “They were shouting to each other. In English.”

“American,” he confirms. “Not Italian.”

“No.” Vincenzo’s personal soldiers are Italian, trained in Italy. They speak Italian under stress because that’s what you default to when bullets are flying.

These were American. Local.

Vincenzo outsourced this.

Nick goes to the porch, where one of the bodies is slumped against the railing. I follow, watching as he crouches beside the man sprawled in the gravel next to the woodpile and searches his pockets. No IDs. Generic tactical gear. But there’s a phone in his vest pocket. Nick presses the dead man’s thumb to the sensor to unlock it.

I watch as he scrolls through whatever was open last on the phone. His face changes as I watch. There’s a coldness that settles in his eyes—I’ve never seen it before.

Then he turns the phone my way.

I read the messages. First, logistics. GPS coordinates matching this cabin. A satellite image with the security positions marked, which means someone gave them our layout.

Number of occupants: two. No names. Only descriptions.

Then the final message.

Terminate both. No recovery. Confirm when complete.

I have to read it twice. Three times. It makes no sense. In the back of my mind, I don’t want it to.

This wasn’t a rescue or retrieval. This wasn’t Vincenzo sending men to bring me home. He wasn’t interested in reclaiming his asset or punishing the man who took me.

This was a kill order. Both of us, dead.

And when I look at the number at the top of the thread, the cold stone that settled in my stomach turns to ice.

“I know this number,” I whisper. “My handler. I don’t know his name. But this is the number my orders have always come from.”

Nick doesn’t say a word, but then he doesn’t need to. The silence says it for him. I told you. Everything they gave you was a lie.

Trembling, I set the phone down on the porch railing. They weren’t coming to bring me back. They were coming to erase me. The way I’ve erased people for them. Quickly, cleanly, with no recovery.

I’m not their asset anymore. I’m a loose end.

And I know exactly what they do with loose ends.

I stare at the lake. Moonlight is turning the water silver. It’s beautiful and still. Meanwhile, dead men are going cold all around us. The people I spent years killing for just tried to kill me.

“Now we have to figure out how they found us,” Nick says. “And what we’re going to do next.”

He’s watching me the way he always does: patiently, waiting to see which version of me will surface. The woman who fights him, or the one who fights beside him.

Something has changed that can’t be changed back. I feel it in my chest, a hollow space where loyalty used to live. Vincenzo emptied it in an instant with seven words on a screen.

Terminate both. No recovery. Confirm when complete. They’re branded on my brain. I’ll see them every time I close my eyes from now until this is over.

For the first time, when I look at Nick, I don’t see a captor. He’s not a stranger or an enemy. He’s the only person who fought beside me instead of trying to kill me.

“Yes,” I decide with a nod, pushing my useless, noisy emotions aside. “We have to figure it out.”

NICK

It’s been two hours, and she hasn’t said a word.

I’ve been watching her in the passenger seat. Stealing glances between stretches of highway that all look the same in the dark. She’s sitting with her feet on the dash and her arms folded across her chest, staring through the windshield at nothing.

I don’t have it in me to point out how dangerous it is, sitting that way. If we have an accident, she’ll end up with her kneecaps wedged in her skull. Something tells me she wouldn’t take well to the reminder.

The mood she’s in, she might welcome the idea.

Her face is blank in a way that’s different from her usual composure. Something has collapsed. I see it in the set of her mouth, the way her jaw hasn’t unclenched since we left the cabin.

She isn’t angry—that would probably be easier. No, she’s crushed. Questioning everything about her past with the Russo family. Vincenzo didn’t try to rescue her. He tried to erase her.

This is a woman who built her entire identity on being useful to them. Being their weapon. Now she knows how disposable she always was. There’s always another weapon out there, the next in line, waiting for their turn. He decided it would be easier and better for everyone involved to erase her completely.

She’s been thrown completely off balance twice in four days. I’m not sure how she’s still operating.

I want to say something. To reach across the center console and put my hand on her knee, and tell her everything will be all right. But it wouldn’t be true, really. The last thing she needs now are empty words, easy to see through. She doesn’t need another man telling her things that aren’t true.

So I drive, AirPods in my ears, my phone in the cup holder. Liam is still beside himself an hour after I called him, once the distance I’d put between us and the cabin felt enough that I could loosen up a little, stop being quite so watchful, and give him the news that his childhood vacation home is now full of bullet holes. Neither of us can piece together how eight armed mercenaries found us at a cabin that’s supposed to be off the grid.

“Are you sure you were as careful as you could be, bringing her in?”

I grind my molars at the question, which he’s already asked at least twice. He only used different words. The message is the same, of course. How did you fuck this up? I trusted you with my sister, and you haven’t been on US soil for twenty-four hours but are already on the run.

“I’m positive,” I grunt. “Your guess is as good as mine. Unless someone who installed the security system talked to the wrong people.”

“You know how well-vetted the team is.”

I can’t help but remember a certain member of our small team who decided to switch sides and team up with the enemy. As far as I know, none of us has heard from her since she handed Liam over to Donovan. I never would have imagined she was capable of that. Who’s to say what a person is capable of when the right pressure point is nudged?

“One of them isn’t as vetted as you think,” I reply. “Or someone accessed the specs. Either way, they knew exactly what they were doing.”

I can hear him breathing while his fingers tap something hard. Probably his desk. No doubt he’s in his office, speaking quietly so he doesn’t wake Aurora. “I’ll find out who talked.”

“Quietly,” I warn. “If someone is feeding information to Vincenzo, we can’t afford to tip them off.”

“I know what I’m doing,” he snaps.

I force a slow breath and remind myself we’re on the same side before I have no choice but to snap back. “I know you do. I’m just saying, this changes things. If they found the cabin, they can find whatever comes next. We have to be careful about who knows where we are.”

“And where are you? Where are you headed?”

“South. I’ve got a place in mind,” I tell him. “It’s nothing connected to you or to me. A cash transaction. No paper trail.”

“How far?”

“Another couple of hours. I’ll check in with you once we’re settled.”

He pauses again, and it’s heavy. “How is she?”

She’s still staring through the windshield. If she’s aware I’m talking about her, she doesn’t show it. “Processing.”

“What does that mean?”

It means she found out the people she gave twelve years of her life to ordered her execution, and she’s dealing with it the only way she knows how. “This is a lot,” I settle for replying. It doesn’t feel right, talking about her like she’s not here. As far away as she seems, I have no doubt her training makes it possible for her to split her attention.

“Take care of her,” he urges.

“I will.”

It’s almost a relief to end the call. I can think more clearly without a voice in my ear. The highway stretches out ahead, empty and dark at one in the morning. We pass a sign for a town I’ve never heard of, then another. The miles add up, but still, she doesn’t move.

It’s roughly another hour before I pull off at a rest stop for gas and food. She gets out without saying a word, stretches, then walks to the convenience store attached to the gas station. I follow, keeping my distance, letting her go through the motions of choosing something to eat. She walks through the aisles like an aimless zombie, picking up a bag of chips, a protein bar, and a bottle of water like she’s going through the motions. I doubt she even sees what she’s choosing. I pick up more protein bars, energy drinks, and a wrap sandwich that looks fairly fresh.

It isn’t until she goes up to the register and realizes she’s not carrying money that she turns to me so I can pay in cash, just to be on the safe side.

After I’ve pumped gas, and we’re back in the car, she sets her water in the cup holder and opens her chips, then shoves one into her mouth and chews like she’s personally offended by it.

“Thank you,” I tell her.

She looks at me, and for a second, I think she’s going to say something. Her lips part, and there’s a sound in her throat, almost like the words are about to flow free before she cuts them off. It passes, and she looks away.

“For what?” she murmurs, talking to the window on her right.

“You fought with me tonight, at the cabin. You didn’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I did. Remember? They were trying to kill me, too.”

“You could’ve run,” I reason. “It would’ve been the perfect opportunity to escape in all the chaos. But you stayed.”

She’s quiet for a moment before replying, “Don’t read into it.” She goes back to her angry chewing while I return to the highway, satisfied for now. I spoke my piece.

We drive for another two hours, in which time the landscape changes from thick forest to open fields. Eventually, we reach the outskirts of a small city I selected weeks ago as a fallback option. It’s far enough from Liam’s network to be untraceable, large enough to have options. It’s also small enough that any strangers with ill intentions will be easy to pick out. The hotel I’m heading for is on the edge of town, a mid-range chain with a parking lot wrapping around the back, out of sight from the road. I checked it out online when I was in the process of finding Laura, working my way through all the options, wanting to prepare for every possible situation. It has what I need: anonymity, and a back entrance that will keep the car out of sight from the road.

The woman behind the front desk is half-asleep at nearly four in the morning. There have been plenty of times when my work has left me feeling alone. Plenty of nights spent in the middle of nowhere, in a silent hotel room, living a solitary life. I don’t think I’ve ever been as bored and listless as the woman who checks me in, then goes back to trying to stay awake.

It’s a plain, standard room. Two beds and a bathroom. A window overlooking a pretty grim parking lot where raccoons raid the dumpster. I notice them in passing, sweeping the room out of habit. Checking the closet, the bathroom, behind the curtains.

Meanwhile, Ivy—I need to start thinking of her using that name, or else I’ll wake up with a knife in my chest—waits in the doorway. If she didn’t look so damn exhausted, she might look amused. A little.

“All clear,” I announce, after checking under the beds. “No assassins.”

“We know one thing for sure. Laura didn’t fall in love with you because of your sense of humor.” The fact that she’s referring to herself in third person is a little unnerving, but it’s something I do my best to overlook while she enters the room and sits at the foot of the bed closest to the door. That’s all she does for a while. She sits with her hands on her knees and stares at the worn carpet. I understand what she’s going through—at least, the physical side of it. Now that the adrenaline rush has passed, and she’s had time to reflect, the weight of everything that happened tonight is settling on her. It’s been heavy, weighing her down. Yes, I know the feeling well. There’s not a damn thing I can do to help her with it.

Her head tips slightly, shoulders sagging. Shoulders I want so much to reach out and take hold of before I draw her close. My hands flex, ready to reach for her. That would be a big mistake.

“Are you tired?” It’s a stupid question. I already know the answer. She could be half-dead. That doesn’t mean sleep would show up anytime soon.

Still, I should encourage her to try. We’re both running on fumes, and we’ll need to hit the road as soon as possible in the morning. We’re going to both need clear heads as we figure out what the hell we’re doing next.

“Exhausted,” she admits, but she doesn’t make a move. She stays where she is, staring at the same spot on the carpet like she’s trying to burn a hole through it.

She’s been retreating deeper into herself for hours, all through the ride. If I let her go to sleep like this, she’ll be further away from me than ever when she wakes up. The distance between us will only get worse. Whatever delicate thing started to grow between us back at the cabin will evaporate.

I can’t let that happen. I won’t.

“Come with me.”

She looks up for the first time since sitting down, brows drawn together over her nose. “Where?”

“To the pool downstairs. I noticed the signs pointing to it while we were in the lobby.”

“So did I, and I noticed the sign saying it closed at ten p.m.”

Now she cares about the rules? I arch an eyebrow, folding my arms. “So? What, you think I can’t pick a lock on a pool door?” When her expression doesn’t change, mine does, and I heave a sigh while giving her a helpless shrug. “You need to get out of your head for a little while. We both do.”

That gets through to her. Appealing to her sense of logic is what brings her to her feet so she can follow me out to the hallway, then down the stairs to avoid being seen in the lobby. Granted, I doubt the woman would give two shits either way if she saw us wandering. She might not even be awake by now, for all I know.

Still, I don’t feel like taking a chance. We’re not here to be remembered later on.

The pool is on the lowest level at the far end of the long building. It sits behind a glass door with a sign listing the hours, printed in large block letters. It doesn’t officially open for another three hours or so, meaning we’ll have privacy. The lock is your usual commercial deadbolt, which takes me roughly fifteen seconds to pick. When the door swings open, the chlorine hits us immediately. Sharp, familiar. It reminds me of countless summers swimming at the public pool when I was a kid. I won’t bother asking her if she remembers anything.

The only light in the room comes from the ones underwater, which turn the surface blue-green. The only sound other than our footsteps comes from the filtration system. Against the far wall sits a line of lounge chairs. As I close the door behind us and lock it, I can’t shake the feeling of being in a space separate from the rest of the world.

She stands at the edge of the water, staring into it. “One problem.”

“Which is?”

“We don’t have bathing suits.”

For someone in her line of work, she is almost shockingly pedestrian when she feels like it. “No, we don’t.”

She looks up from the water, hitting me with a stare that feels somehow heavier when the blue-green light from the gently moving water reflects off her face. “You’re suggesting we swim naked?”

“The only thing stopping us is fabric we don’t have.” I pull my shirt over my head and toss it on one of the chairs. “We’ve already seen each other without a stitch on. At this point, I don’t think modesty is our biggest problem.”

I can’t read her expression as I untie and take off my boots. She’s not assessing me with that cold, clinical stare she gave me back in Prague. It’s not the fake warmth she tried to give me in the shower, either. It’s something in between the two. Cautious, suspicious, maybe. But not closed off. She’s intrigued.

“You’re trying to distract me,” she decides.

“Is it working?”

After waiting a beat, she reaches for the hem of her shirt. The one I bought her. It’s wrinkled now, and it carries the faint odor of gunpowder after what went down earlier. She pulls it off and tosses it aside the way I did with mine.

She doesn’t look away from me. She’s telling me this is her choice. There’s a fire in her eyes as she steps out of her jeans. The underwater light catches the scars on her arm and her leg, painting them in blue. This time, she doesn’t turn her body away to hide them.

Once she’s bare, so am I. I’m damn glad as I lower myself into the water that I thought to use the superglue on my wound, because the sensation of warm water closing over my sore muscles is something I didn’t know I needed. I sink up to my shoulders and lean against the edge, allowing myself to relax.

She looks like something out of a dream, still standing with her bare feet at the edge of the pool. The glow from the water casts shifting patterns across her body before she drops into the water without a word and goes under completely.

When she surfaces, her hair is slicked back and water streams down her face. Her long, slow exhale seems to carry something out of her. Whatever she’s been wrestling with for hours, it starts to slip away. At least, some of it.

For a while, it’s enough to float silently with the water lapping between us. Even though she’s only an arm’s length away, I don’t reach out. Not yet.

When she does break the silence, it’s to say, “He would’ve called it sentiment. Wanting to keep me alive instead of cutting his losses. Vincenzo.” His name echoes off the tiled walls and sets my teeth on edge. “He used to say sentiment is the first thing that gets someone killed.”

She’s still trying to make sense of things. Creating excuses, or at least rationalizing his decision. I can’t blame her for it. “He was wrong.”

“He was right about some things.” She looks at me, and the way her eyes gleam in the blue light is something that will live in my heart for the rest of my life. “But he was wrong about me. He thought I would die easy.”

“He should know better. You don’t do anything easy.”

She offers the ghost of a smile; there and gone almost in the same heartbeat. But I saw it. Nothing can take that away.

She drifts closer. The distance between us shrinks from an arm’s length to a hand’s width, and then even less. Now I feel the warmth of her body through the water.

“Thank you,” she murmurs. “For tonight.”

“You don’t have to thank me.”

“I know. That’s why I’m doing it.”

She’s close enough that I can feel her breath. Close enough that I could almost count the beads of water on her eyelashes, rolling from her temples down to her jaw. The silence is charged now, the energy swelling between us. It’s full of everything we’ve survived, everything we still haven’t said.

She doesn’t wait for me to make the first move. She pushes me against the tiles; the smooth surface feels cold pressed to my skin, but that’s not what shocks me slightly. It’s her aggression that takes me by surprise. She’s taking what she wants. And I like it.

“This is different,” I say, my mouth inches from hers.

Her eyebrow raises. “Different how?”

“More aggressive,” I reveal.

“Is that a problem?” Her palms land flat against my chest with another playful shove.

Water sloshes around us as she straddles me underwater, her bare pussy grinding against my growing cock.

“No.”

“Good.” Her lips slam against me suddenly. She kisses me like she wants to consume me, tasting like sin and danger. Her nails drag down my chest and abdomen until one of her hands is fully wrapped around my cock.

“Fuck,” I groan between kisses. She strokes me, her fingers tightening around my shaft.

“I need you inside me.” She’s not asking, but telling. “Now, Nick. I want to feel you split me open.”

Without any direction, she positions herself, the head of my cock at her entrance. I grip her hips to guide her, but she doesn’t take it slow. Pulling herself closer, she takes every inch of me at once.

We both cry out, our voices echoing through the space. She’s so fucking tight, and doesn’t even give herself time to adjust before she’s moving, riding me rough, water splashing over the edge with each thrust.

“I love the way you’re taking me.” My words make her grind harder, causing me to hit deeper.

“Yes. Don’t stop,” she urges me to keep doing what I’m doing. Her hand finds mine and pulls it between her legs. “Touch me, Nick. Make me come while your cock is inside me.”

I draw tight circles, feeling her walls clench in response. She’s wild, unrecognizable. This Ivy fucks with no mercy, all instinct and aggression.

“Harder,” she demands, nails digging into my shoulders, drawing blood. “Fuck me harder. I want to feel you for days.”

I grip her hips tighter, meeting her thrust for thrust, our movements erratic. I feel her getting close. “Come for me,” I growl. “Let me feel you come.” I thrust up one last time, and her orgasm takes her over the edge, bringing me along for the ride.

I let go of a loud growl as I come… hard. Maybe harder than I have ever come. Pure bliss ripples through my body, the aftershock of my release slowly fading as I still feel her pussy pulsing around me.

We stay tangled, breathing hard. She lifts her head, looking back at me with hooded eyes and a ghost of a smile that’s edged with danger.

“Still think I’m fragile?” she asks.

I tighten my arms around her. “I think whatever you are… you’re mine,” I say, meaning every damn word.

IVY

There’s a girl sitting on a dock with her feet in the water.

She’s young. Fifteen, maybe sixteen. Her hair is dark, her shoulders are bare, sunburned across the tops. The lake stretches out in front of her, flat and golden in the late afternoon light. Behind her, someone is calling from the porch of a cabin. A woman’s voice, warm and familiar. She’s saying something about dinner.

The girl doesn’t turn around. She’s waiting for someone. I feel it. Anticipation sits in her chest, like she’s holding her breath. She’s watching the tree line on the far side of the lake. When a figure appears on the path, she smiles. A real smile. The kind that starts deep inside a girl who has been looking for one person and one person only, and he’s finally shown up.

The figure gets closer. It’s a boy with dark hair and pale eyes. He has a grin on his face as he jogs down to the dock and drops into place beside her, close enough that their shoulders touch. She leans into him. He puts an arm around her.

When the woman calls from the porch again, neither of them moves.

The light changes. The lake goes from gold to silver, and the girl’s face blurs. No, not yet. I’m still watching. But it’s all starting to dissolve—the shape of the boy’s jaw, the sound of the woman’s voice, the smell of the water. It all slips through my fingers the harder I try to hold on.

When I wake up, my face is pressed against Nick’s chest.

I don’t move at first. His arm is around me, heavy and warm. My hand rests against his ribs, and I can feel his heartbeat under my palm. Slow, steady. Our legs are tangled under the sheets. My body slid across the bed at some point during the night and found his. He didn’t push me away, but then why would he?

I’m the one who should pull away. Untangle myself, put distance between us, and pretend none of this happened. That’s what I would normally do. It’s what my training demands. Never show vulnerability. Never let your guard down. Never wake up in someone’s arms, because arms can become restraints.

But I don’t move. Not yet. Because it feels nice, and I don’t know what to do about it.

No, it’s more than nice. It’s familiar. The weight of his arm. The warmth of his skin. None of it feels new. It feels like something I’ve done before, a long time ago, in a life I can’t reach. The way those French fries tasted right with mayonnaise. The way the cabin smelled like something I’d forgotten I knew. This is another one of those times when my body remembers what my mind won’t give me.

The dream is already fading, lingering at the edges of my consciousness. I can’t shake the residue from it. Was it a memory? Was it my brain stitching together details from those photos back at the cabin, or from the things Nick has told me? Building a scene from borrowed information, presenting it as something real?

Is what Nick has been saying true, or am I imagining things because I want this to be true?

I don’t know. Not knowing is its own kind of torture.

Lying here, with his arm around me and his heartbeat under my hand, something else surfaces. Something older. A feeling I haven’t thought about in years, because I trained myself not to. Back in Italy, in the early days. Everything was cloudy and fragmented as I was recovering from my injuries. The bandages, the pain. Long stretches of medicated sleep.

I used to dream about a boy. I could never see his face clearly—it was always blurred, like looking through frosted glass. Still, I knew the feeling he carried with him.

Safety. Warmth. The sense that nothing bad could happen as long as he was close.

I told Vincenzo about the dreams once, in the early days. He dismissed them, of course. Meaningless noise resulting from trauma. The brain’s way of processing pain. He told me to focus on what was real, on what was in front of me, so I did. I buried those dreams so deep, I forgot they existed.

Now I’m lying in the arms of a man with dark hair and pale blue eyes, and the dreams are clawing their way back to the surface.

His breathing changes. He’s waking up. I close my eyes and slow my own breathing, pretending to still be asleep, because I’m not ready for this conversation. Not yet.

He doesn’t move either. His arm stays where it is. His heartbeat remains steady. If he’s surprised to find us wrapped around each other, he doesn’t show it. He just lies there, holding me, and the silence—the lack of explanation, the lack of apology or anything else—might be the most complicated thing I’ve ever experienced.

At least, in this lifetime. Maybe not in the one that came before.

Eventually, I need to stop pretending. When I open my eyes, I pull back slowly, untangling my legs from his before sitting up on the edge of the bed. The hotel room is filled with pale, early morning light. According to the clock on the nightstand, it’s seven fifteen.

“Morning,” he mumbles behind me.

“Good morning.” I don’t look at him. I’m not ready for those eyes. Not yet.

We get dressed in silence and pack what little we have. He makes coffee with the sad machine on the dresser, and I drink it without complaining, even though it tastes like hot water that once heard a rumor there was such a thing as a coffee bean. Within thirty minutes, we’re on the road, heading south on a highway that looks like every other stretch of highway.

We’ve been driving for half an hour, maybe, before I say it. “I want to talk to Vincenzo.”

His hands tighten on the steering wheel. “No.”

“I want to talk to him. I want to hear what he has to say.”

“You know what he’ll say. He’ll lie.”

“Maybe, but I want to hear it from him.” I turn in my seat to face Nick’s profile. His eyes are fixed on the road, but his jaw is tight. “I spent twelve years with that man. He trained me. He looked me in the eye every day and called me family. I need to hear him tell me it was all bullshit. I need to hear it in his voice.”

“You won’t hear it,” he counters through gritted teeth. “You know him. You know how he operates. He’ll tell you whatever version of the truth keeps you close to him. He’ll say it was a mistake, something he didn’t authorize. And he’ll sound convincing, because that’s what he does. It’s the only reason he’s still alive. By the end of the call, you’ll be doubting yourself all over again.”

Dammit. He’s right. I hate that he’s right. I hate it with a ferocity that burns all the way down to my stomach, because Vincenzo is exactly that good. I’ve watched him lie to powerful men with a smile on his face and sincerity in his eyes. I’ve witnessed him shaking hands with people he intended to destroy. Deception isn’t a skill for him. It’s his native tongue.

He continues in a slightly quieter voice. Almost like he feels sorry for being so blunt now that the words are out. “You’re a liability now. You know too much. You’ve done too much. And now you’re in the hands of people he considers enemies. He is never going to stop unless he’s forced to stop. A phone call isn’t going to change that. It’s only going to give him information he can use against us.”

I turn back to the windshield and stare at the road. It rolls past, indifferent. Trees, fields. A grimy little gas station. A billboard advertising a church. Since when do churches need advertising?

He’s right, damn him. Knowing it changes nothing about the crater inside me. Like a bomb exploded and hollowed me out.

Everything I thought I knew is gone. Doesn’t he understand that? It’s not just misplaced or rearranged. It’s flat-out gone. The foundation I built my life on was never real. Vincenzo, the handlers, the network of people I trusted enough to take orders from without question… it was all constructed. Designed to use me, maintained only as long as I was useful, then dismantled the moment I became an inconvenience.

The man called me family. He sat across from me at dinner tables in Rome and asked about my training, my progress. How I was doing, how I was feeling. He remembered my birthday, which he always counted as the date he found me and brought me to the place he referred to as home.

He bought me my first real weapon, too. A custom Beretta, engraved with my initials. I.R. Ivy Russo. The man gave me his name.

And then he sent eight men to pump me full of bullets and leave me the way you leave a crumpled candy wrapper on the side of the road.

How do you survive that? How can you build anything on ground that was never solid to begin with?

The answer is, you don’t. You stand in the wreckage, and you look around until you realize there is no one you can trust. No one whose words mean anything. Not Vincenzo, who lied about everything. Not Liam, the stranger who claims to be my brother. Not Nick, either, who says he loves a girl who doesn’t exist anymore.

I’m alone. The way I’ve always been, underneath the illusion I chose to believe.

“Hey.”

It’s Nick’s voice that finally pulls me out of my spiral. I didn’t realize how far down I’d gone until his hand lands on mine, warm and solid, and the contact is enough to jolt me back to the surface.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he tells me.

“Somehow, I doubt that.”

“You’re thinking you’re alone. That there’s nobody left you can trust. You’re thinking everything you believed in was fake, so why would anything else be real.”

Slowly, I turn my head to look at him. His accuracy is unnerving. “How do you know that?”

“Because I know what betrayal feels like. And I know what it does to a person.” He squeezes my hand, then lets go, returning both hands to the wheel. “But I’m real. This is real. Whatever you decide about your past, whatever you believe or don’t believe about who you were—what’s happening right now, between us, in this car, is real. You can make new memories, starting now. Starting with the ones you choose.”

For a long time, all I can do is stare at him. “That’s easy to say,” I finally murmur.

“I know.”

“I mean, look who I trusted for twelve years.” I can’t say his name out loud. Not right now, maybe not ever again. At least, not as long as I feel the way I do. “I would’ve died for him. I killed for him. He threw me away like I was nothing.”

My voice doesn’t crack, but it’s close. “Obviously, I’m a shit judge of character,” I conclude. “I never saw it coming. How am I supposed to trust anyone now? How am I supposed to trust you? What if I’m wrong again?”

He doesn’t answer right away. The car hums along the highway, and the silence is heavy, filled with a question that has no good answer.

“You might be,” he finally concedes. “Wrong again. I can’t guarantee you won’t be. Nobody can.”

He glances at me, then turns back to the road. “There’s a difference between Vincenzo and me.”

“What’s that?”

“He gave you a purpose. I’m trying to give you a choice.”

I can’t respond to that. I can’t find the words, and I’m not sure I could form them in my mouth, anyway. I turn back to the window and watch the trees blur past, and I let those words sit in me. They hurt. Not because they’re cruel, but because they might be true.

A choice. The concept is almost foreign. Vincenzo never offered choices. He offered instructions and framed them as opportunities. Obedience disguised as loyalty. Every door he opened led exactly where he wanted me to go.

Nick is offering something different. The freedom to decide. The terrifying possibility of deciding wrong.

I close my eyes and lean my head against the window. The glass is cool against my temple. The car moves forward, carrying me toward a future I can’t see and away from a past I can’t trust.

NICK

The diner smells like burned coffee and bacon grease, and I’ve never been happier to see a plate of eggs in my life.

We’ve been on the road since before eight o’clock, and it’s now past noon. Neither of us ate much this morning beyond the gas station protein bars from last night. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could stay in that car without something to break things up. She hasn’t brought up Vincenzo since our conversation earlier, but I can see her chewing on it. Literally. She’s been grinding her teeth on and off for the last hour.

The diner is a roadside place off the highway, the kind with vinyl booths and a bell that jingles when you open the door. We took a booth near the back, where she can see the entrance and I have a clear line of sight to the kitchen. Neither of us discussed this. We just did it. Muscle memory from two people who’ve spent too much time watching doors.

She’s digging into her own eggs, bacon, and heavily buttered grits. If I wasn’t so hungry myself, I might pay closer attention to the way she eats. In a hurry, like there’s no time to savor a single bite. She looks like a woman with other things to do, which she is. Not that I’m much more relaxed.

I’m halfway through my eggs when she goes completely still. Not the normal kind, like she’s quiet and thinking. Instead, it’s the kind where every muscle in her body locks into place and her eyes fix on a single point. She’s locked in on a target.

I take a sip from my coffee, which I can no longer taste. “What?” I ask in a low voice.

“Don’t look at the door.”

Of course, the first thing I want to do is look at the door. I don’t. Instead, I keep my eyes on my plate and pick up a piece of toast. “Tell me.”

“A pair of men just walked in. One of them has a double-headed eagle tattoo on his neck.”

The toast folds in the fist my hand has tightened into around it. “Russo ink?”

“It’s the symbol of Vincenzo’s personal guard. Every one of them gets that tattoo when they’re inducted. It’s not something you’d get on a whim at a parlor. Custom work, always done by the same artist.”

She picks up her coffee and takes a sip while tracking movement over the rim of her cup. “They haven’t spotted us yet. They’re scanning the room.”

“How far from the door?”

“Fifteen feet. Standing by the register. The hostess is talking to them.”

I run the layout in my head. The front door is the obvious exit. The kitchen will have a back door, since every commercial kitchen has one, thanks to fire code requirements. The hallway to the restrooms probably runs along the back wall, and the kitchen entrance will be near it.

“Restroom hallway,” I murmur. “The kitchen will be past it.”

“I know.” She sets her coffee down and slides out of the booth in one smooth motion, like all she’s doing is heading to the bathroom on a normal afternoon. I drop two twenties on the table and follow her.

The hallway is narrow and smells like industrial cleaner. The restroom doors are on the left. At the end of the hall, a swinging door leads into the kitchen, where a cook in a stained apron looks up from the grill with the expression of a man who’s seen stranger things than two people walking through his workspace.

“Back door,” I grunt.

He points with his spatula. We’re through the kitchen and out the rear exit in under ten seconds, emerging into a gravel lot behind the diner where the dumpsters sit baking in the afternoon sun. Our car is parked alongside the building. I have the keys out before we reach it.

“They’ll know we left,” she points out as she slides into the passenger seat.

“Not if they’re still scanning the dining room. We’ve got maybe two minutes before they figure it out.” I start the engine, pull out of the lot, and take the first turn back toward the highway without flooring it. Peeling out of a parking lot is a great way to attract the attention of everyone within a quarter mile.

We make it roughly five minutes before I see the truck behind us.

Black. Full-size. Tinted windows. It appears in my rearview, hanging back three or four car lengths on a stretch of highway where there’s almost no traffic. It’s not tailgating. No flashing lights. Nothing overly aggressive. Just following.

“We have company,” I announce.

She adjusts the side mirror without turning around. “I see it. How long?”

“Just appeared. Same guys we met at the diner. I thought we got rid of them. I guess they somehow followed us after all.”

“Or they have another way of tracking us.” She says it quietly, and the implication sits much heavier in my stomach than the plate of bacon and eggs I just ate.

I push it aside for now. At the moment, my priority is the truck.

I gradually accelerate, testing them. The truck matches my speed. When I change lanes, the truck follows suit. I take an exit and loop back onto the highway. The truck follows, maintaining the same distance, patient and professional.

“They’re not amateurs,” she observes.

“No, they’re not.”

“Are we going to talk about this, or are we going to deal with it?”

Good question.

I press the accelerator. The rental isn’t built for speed, but it has enough under the hood to put distance between us if I push it. The speedometer climbs to seventy, eighty, and finally to ninety. The truck responds immediately, closing the gap easily. It tells me somebody put money into that vehicle.

The highway curves ahead, threading through a stretch of hills with guardrails on either side. Trees press close on the right. I take the curve hard, feel the tires protest, and pull ahead by three car lengths.

“Brace yourself,” I warn.

“I’m fine. Drive.”

The next curve is sharper. I take it at full speed, using the full width of the lane, and the truck follows in a wider arc. It’s heavier, and the center of gravity is higher. I watch it rock on the turn. The tires scream against the asphalt.

They’re committed. They’re not going to back off.

A straightaway opens up ahead, and I floor it. The engine roars, and for a few seconds, we pull ahead. Five lengths, six. The truck pushes to match, but the next curve comes fast. Too fast.

I see it happen in the rearview. The truck enters the curve at full speed, and the rear end breaks loose. It fishtails once, twice, as the driver overcorrects, which is the worst thing you can do at that speed. It crosses the center line, clips the guardrail on the left side with a sound like a cannon shot, and flips.

It goes over once, twice, three times before coming to rest on its roof in a ditch. Glass and debris scatter across the asphalt. The engine block is exposed while steam and smoke rise from the wreckage.

I slow down, but I don’t stop. Not yet. I watch the mirror for movement that never comes.

“They’re done,” she announces in a flat, emotionless voice. She’s seen enough death to know what it looks like from a distance.

I pull over half a mile past the wreck, on a shoulder hidden from the crash site by a bend in the road. We sit there for a minute, engine idling, while we both breathe harder than we’d like to admit.

“We can’t question them if they’re dead,” I mutter.

“They’re dead. Nobody walks away from that.”

She’s probably right. That means we’ve lost our best chance of finding out how they tracked us here. The men at the cabin had a phone with intel. These men had a truck and a tail, somehow. The question underneath both situations is the same: how are they finding us?

I pull back onto the highway and drive until a rest stop comes up eight miles ahead. It’s a small one with restrooms, vending machines, and a few picnic tables. I park at a distance from the other cars before killing the engine.

“They found us at the cabin,” I recall, thinking out loud. “Liam’s people swept that location. The security specs might’ve been compromised, which would explain that one. But this? We left in the middle of the night. We drove for hours on random highways. We never used credit cards and didn’t check in anywhere they could trace. There’s no way they followed us from the cabin—we would’ve spotted a tail in the dark on empty roads.”

“Unless they didn’t need to follow us,” she suggests.

I look over at her. She’s already there—I can see it in her face. The same thought that’s now forming in my mind has already formed in hers.

Liam put a tracker in Aurora back when their relationship was a little rockier than it is now. He had it implanted under her skin, in the back of her shoulder.

Is it possible? Could they have done that to her? All the way back in the early days, when she was recovering. When Vincenzo would’ve wanted to keep her close. In the many years since, it would’ve been a convenience, being able to track one of his weapons.

And she knows it. There’s a sick certainty in her voice when she concludes, “They’re tracking me. Not us. Me.”

“It makes sense,” I have to admit. In fact, it’s the only thing about the last half hour that makes sense. How else could they zero in on her the way they did?

She’s quiet for a long moment before opening the car door and getting out. I follow her inside to a restroom, one of those single-occupancy family bathrooms with a lock on the door. She goes in first. I follow, locking the door behind us.

The lighting is harsh and makes a buzzing sound, washing the room in a shade of gray that makes anyone look sick when they stand under it. She waits in front of the chipped porcelain sink with her back to me. “Check me,” she says before pulling her shirt over her head.

I step closer. Her back is bare under the fluorescent light. The scars from the explosion are visible on her arm, trailing down her left side. I start at the base of her neck and run my fingers slowly over her skin, pressing gently, feeling for anything that isn’t muscle or bone. Across her shoulders. Down her spine. Along each shoulder blade.

There. On her upper back, just below the right shoulder blade. There’s a tiny lump under her skin, maybe the size of a grain of rice. If you weren’t looking for it, you’d never notice. It’s deep enough that it doesn’t show on the surface, but it’s unmistakable under my fingertip. A hard, smooth object that doesn’t belong in a human body.

I have to swallow back my rage. “Found it.”

She reaches back, and I guide her hand to the spot. When she presses it, she goes very still. “That son of a bitch.”

“We can find a vet’s office nearby,” I suggest, watching her face in the reflection as she processes the latest betrayal. “Break in, get the right tools to take it out properly⁠—”

The look on her face stops me mid-sentence. It’s not fear or disgust. It’s cold fury, maybe edged in something that could be dark humor. “I’ve dug bullets out of my own body,” she tells me. “I’m not a pussy. Just get me a blade and something to clean it with.”

I stare at her for a beat, then leave the bathroom with a grin.

There’s a small convenience counter near the entrance to the rest stop, staffed by a teenager who looks like he’d rather be literally anywhere else. I buy a first aid kit, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and a pack of gauze pads. There’s already a pocketknife in my jeans. I’ve carried one since I was fifteen.

She’s standing in front of the mirror when I get back to the bathroom, her shirt still off and her jaw set in a way I’ve come to understand means she’s preparing for pain. She knows what’s coming. She’s already building the wall around herself, shielding herself from what’s definitely going to hurt.

First, I wash my hands thoroughly, then open the pocketknife and hold the blade under a stream of rubbing alcohol until every surface has been covered. I soak a gauze pad and clean the area on her back, wiping in widening circles around the lump.

“Ready?” I ask.

“Just do it.”

I press the tip of the blade against her skin and make a small, precise incision. She doesn’t flinch or make a sound. Her hands grip the edge of the sink, her knuckles white, but that’s the only hint she gives of being in pain. Blood wells up immediately—not a lot, but enough to run down her back in a thin, red line.

I widen the cut just enough to get my fingers in, pinching the tiny device between my thumb and forefinger. It resists for a moment—it’s been in there a long time, and the tissue has grown around it—before it slides free. A small, smooth capsule, no bigger than a pill. Dark in color, slick with blood.

I hold it up so she can see it in the mirror.

She looks at it the way you’d look at a cockroach you found in your bed. She then takes it from my hand, turns to the toilet, and drops it in. The flush is satisfying.

“Gone,” she says.

After cleaning the wound with alcohol—this time, she hisses through her teeth—I close it with butterfly strips from the first aid kit, then cover everything with a gauze pad and tape. It’s not pretty, but it’s clean and it’ll hold.

She pulls her shirt back on and looks at herself in the mirror. The only thing to give away what’s turning inside her is the way her eyes burn. The tracker was in her body for twelve years, and she never knew. Every move she made, every city she traveled to, every safe house she slept in… he knew. The freedom she thought she had was really a longer leash, and the other end was always wrapped around Vincenzo’s fist.

“Let’s go,” she decides.

I unlock the bathroom door, but rather than head straight for the exit, she stops off at the convenience counter. “Jack Daniel’s,” she announces, pointing to one of the bottles behind the register.

When she glances my way, I realize she’s waiting for me to pay. And as much as part of me wants to remind her we need to be clearheaded, she just finished having a foreign device extracted from her body. Something tells me clearheaded is the last thing she wants right now. Refusing her would be cruel.

Besides, good luck to me. I couldn’t force her to do anything.

Her purchase made, we head out to the car, where she slams the door harder than necessary before staring straight ahead, both hands wrapped around the bottle like it holds the answers she needs.

By the time we pull back onto the highway, still headed south, the tracker is spinning in a sewage pipe somewhere beneath a rest stop in the middle of nowhere. For the first time since Prague, nobody on earth knows where we are.

It should feel like freedom.

Something tells me, from the passenger seat, all of this looks a lot more like just another betrayal.

IVY

Maybe I need to slow down with the drinking.

Maybe I need to drink more so the know-it-all voice in my head will finally shut up and stop telling me what to do.

I uncap the bottle—really, why do I bother putting the cap back on in the first place?—and raise it to my lips to take a sip. The whiskey burns on the way down. I welcome it like an old friend.

The Jack Daniel’s is doing what Jack Daniel’s does. Smoothing the edges of my rage. Blunting the sharp corners of every thought in my head until the situation is almost tolerable.

Almost.

Because underneath the warmth spreading through my chest is something much hotter. Burning, searing, corrosive.

And the liquor isn’t drowning it. It’s feeding it.

Twelve years. That thing was inside me for twelve years, and I didn’t have the first clue.

I take another drink while the thought sits in my head along with so many others. Buried under my skin. Nestled against my shoulder blade. Transmitting my location to a man who looked me in the eye and told me I was free.

Free. What a joke. I was never free for a single day. Every city I traveled to, every time I thought I was making my own choice about where to go and how to get there, he knew. He was watching. Tracking me like a dog with a chip in its neck, except the dog doesn’t have the luxury of understanding, either way. That chip is for its own good.

Maybe Vincenzo told himself the same thing was true of me. Though really, it doesn’t make me feel much better. Knowing he thought of me as a dog. The cruelest part? The illusion. He didn’t lock me in a room or chain me to a bed, the way Nick did. No, he was smarter than that. He gave me the appearance of autonomy. My own apartment, my own routines. My own missions planned with what I believed was my own strategy. He let me think I was choosing. That I was in control.

The whole time, he was looking over my shoulder. I just never saw him.

Another drink. The bottle is more than a quarter gone now, which is only the result of what’s left of my good sense making one last desperate plea at being heard. Otherwise, I would be much deeper into it than I am now. My head is starting to feel loose and floaty. Nick keeps glancing at me from the driver’s seat. I can see him calculating—how much I’ve had, how much more before it becomes a problem, whether or not he should say something.

He doesn’t, because he’s a smart man. Anything he says right now will come back at him with teeth.

Staring at the road, I’m almost consumed by memories of all the times I felt proud of myself. The jobs I completed without supervision. The cities I navigated alone. The moments I thought, I built this. This life is mine. My apartment in Prague. The safe houses across Europe. The languages I learned, the skills I honed. The reputation I earned.

None of it was earned. It was allowed. Now I understand the difference, and the difference is eating me alive.

Vincenzo allowed me to have an apartment. He allowed me to travel. He allowed me to feel independent because it made me a better tool. A weapon that believes it’s free is more dangerous than one that knows it’s caged. I was more effective and loyal because I believed I was choosing loyalty instead of having it forced down my throat.

He was the engineer behind everything. Right down to the tracker in my back.

Another drink, and it hits my stomach like a lit match. The eggs and grits from the diner aren’t enough to soak up the damage I’m doing, not by a long shot, if the warmth in my cheeks is any indication.

“You should eat something else,” Nick suggests. It’s the first thing he’s said in over an hour.

“I’m fine.”

“You never finished your food at the diner.”

“I said I’m fine.” I take another gulp to make the point, and the look he gives me is somewhere between concern and resignation. He knows better than to push it.

Another hour passes before he pulls off at a hotel. Another mid-range chain, like the one before. Another lot where he parks behind the building, away from the main road. Another room paid for in cash under a name that doesn’t exist. This routine is becoming familiar in a way that should bother me, but doesn’t, since I’m used to routines. My old life had them, too. Different cities, same patterns. At least this time, I know I’m not being watched.

Unless I am, and I just haven’t found that tracker yet.

The idea sends a spike of paranoia through my whiskey haze. I have to physically stop myself from reaching back to touch the bandage on my shoulder blade. The tracker is gone. Nick cut it out. I flushed it. It’s fucking gone.

I wish I could be so sure about the feeling of being watched, because I have to wonder whether that will ever go away.

The room is standard, though this time there’s only one bed. Neither of us comments on that. A bathroom, a window with blackout curtains. Nick does his sweep of the closet, bathroom, and under the bed while I sit on the edge of the mattress and take another drink, because what the hell. Might as well get what he paid for.

Once he’s finished, he turns to face me, leaning against the dresser with his arms folded. Fatigue radiates from him. Not just the physical kind, either, though the dark circles under his eyes and the careful way he favors his injured leg tell that story clearly enough. There’s something deeper at play. The kind of exhaustion that comes from carrying someone else’s pain on top of your own.

I never asked him to carry it for me. I’m not even sure I want him to.

“So.” His concerned gaze flickers over me. “What do you want to do now?”

It’s a rather open-ended question that could mean a hundred things. What’s the plan? Where do we go next? How do we handle Vincenzo?

But that’s not what I hear. What I hear is a man asking me what I need, and for once, he’s not trying to steer me in one direction or another.

“I need to get my mind off this,” I tell him.

Before I can talk myself out of it, I set the bottle on the nightstand with a heavy clunk and stand up. The room tilts slightly, then rights itself. Whiskey warmth pools in my stomach and begins to spread lower.

I cross the space between us and stop when I’m close enough to feel the heat coming off his body. He’s still leaning against the dresser, arms folded, but his posture shifts. Tenses. I see his throat work as he swallows.

“Ivy…”

“Shh.” I reach for his belt buckle. “Don’t talk. Don’t ask if I’m sure. Don’t treat me like I’m fragile.”

His hand covers mine, stopping me. I look up, ready to go off on him, but his eyes are dark and serious, searching my face for something.

Whatever he finds there must be enough, because his hand falls away.

I undo the buckle. The leather hisses through the loops. His jeans hang loose on his hips, and I push them down, along with his boxers. I don’t give him time to think or hesitate. I sink to my knees and take him into my mouth.

He sucks in a sharp breath, his hand finding the edge of the dresser behind him.

I use my tongue, my lips, the slight scrape of teeth until he’s fully erect, and his hips are making small, involuntary thrusts into my mouth. I can taste him, feel the pulse beneath veined, sensitive skin. It’s grounding… empowering. This is where I control the pace, the pressure, the outcome.

When I pull back, he’s breathing hard, pupils blown wide. I stand up and strip off my clothes without wasting any time, watching his gaze rake over my body. Letting him see all of me—the bruises, old scars—noticing how his expression doesn’t change, doesn’t reflect pity.

I push him back until he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, then climb onto his lap. I reach between us and guide him inside me, taking him in one slow movement, the sensation so good it draws a groan from both of us.

He’s so big… thick, filling me completely. I pause for a moment to allow myself to adjust, to feel the stretch and burn. Then I start to move.

I set the pace. Fast, then slow, grinding down when I want to feel him deep, rising up just enough, letting the tip remain inside before slamming back down. I’m using him. Using his body to chase away the thoughts that won’t stop spiraling. The tracker. Vincenzo. The twelve years of lies. I focus on chasing the sensation, the building heat, the way his fingers dig into my sensitive flesh, how his hands grip my hips hard enough to bruise.

“Look at me,” he says, voice rough.

I don’t. I can’t.

I keep my eyes closed and ride him harder, going after the release I need. The bed creaks, the sound matching the rhythm of our bodies moving in sync. I’m getting close, feeling the growing tension coiling tight in my belly, and I angle my hips to grind my clit against him with every downward stroke.

“Fuck, Ivy…” His voice breaks as my pussy starts milking him, drawing my pleasure out even more.

I come with a strangled cry, orgasm sharp, sudden, and exactly what I needed. For a few seconds, there’s nothing but the aftermath of pleasure, the empty silence in my head.

Then he’s moving, flipping me onto my stomach before I can catch my breath. My face presses into the pillow, my knees hit the mattress, and he’s behind me, his cock pushing back inside with one hard thrust that forces the air from my lungs.

This isn’t gentle.

He pulls my hips up, angles me where he wants me, and fucks me rough and relentless, with a force that makes the headboard slam against the wall. Each stroke hits deep, sparking aftershocks from my first orgasm, building toward something more intense.

I push back, wanting it harder, wanting the pain and the pleasure to work together until I can’t tell the difference. His hand slides into my hair, grabbing at the roots, anchoring me as he drives into me again and again.

“Don’t stop.” The words tear from my throat. “Don’t you dare fucking stop.”

He doesn’t.

He pounds into me, the sound of skin against skin filling the room, his breathing ragged and desperate. I feel him swell, then the moment he loses control. He comes inside me with a feral groan that sounds like my name, his hips stuttering through the aftershocks.

“Fuck, Ivy,” he manages, collapsing over me, his weight pressing me into the mattress, feeling his heart hammering against my back. We’re both sweating, both breathing hard, and for a long moment neither of us moves.

He finally rolls off, pulling out of me slowly, and I feel the wetness between my thighs. He wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me back against his chest, his lips finding my shoulder, my neck, the shell of my ear.

“Stay,” he whispers, and I don’t know if he means tonight or forever.

I don’t say anything. But I don’t pull away either.

His breathing is deep and slow against my neck. One arm is draped over my hip, heavy with sleep, and his heartbeat has settled into a steady, unhurried rhythm. He’s out cold. Whatever tension he carried into this room left his body somewhere between the second and third time I pushed him back down when he tried to take control. He eventually got the message. This was for me.

I lie in the dark, staring at the ceiling, and take stock of things.

My body is wrung out. Loose in a way it hasn’t been in days, maybe even weeks. The anger is still there—not that I expected it to go anywhere—but it’s been banked for now. Turned down to a low simmer instead of the rolling boil it was at an hour ago. The whiskey helped, but this helped more, though I would rather eat glass than ever admit that out loud.

Nick shifts in his sleep, his arm tightening around me before relaxing again. A reflex. Even when he’s unconscious, he reaches for me. I wonder if he knows he does it, or if it’s the kind of muscle memory that bypasses the brain. The same way my body slid across the bed toward him last night without my permission.

I turn my head to look at him. In sleep, with the tension drained from his face and his guard completely down, he looks peaceful. Softer. The hard lines around his mouth have smoothed out. The furrow he usually wears between his brows is nowhere to be seen. He doesn’t look like someone who’s spent the last four months searching for a ghost. He’s not a man who’s been shot, sprayed, kicked, and chased across two continents either by or because of a woman he claims to love.

He looks like a man who trusts me.

Which is when I notice the obvious. He didn’t cuff me.

No handcuffs. No restraints. No chain linking our wrists. My hands are free, my legs are free. The door is twelve feet away, and the car keys are on the dresser where he left them.

I could leave. I could be really free.

The realization moves through me like cold water. I could get up right now, pull on my clothes, take the keys, and walk out. He’s asleep, genuinely, deeply asleep, the heavy kind that comes after physical exhaustion and days of running on fumes. I could be miles away by the time he wakes up. I could disappear the way I’ve been trained to disappear, and he would never find me again. Not without knowing where I was headed, because I don’t know that myself.

I could start over. I could find a new city, a new name. A new life that doesn’t belong to Vincenzo or Liam or to Nick or to a dead girl named Laura. I have the skills and the instincts. I’ve survived worse than this with less.

My eyes move to the door. Then to the keys. And back to Nick.

Either he forgot to restrain me, or he chose not to. The fact is, I’m not sure which possibility unsettles me more—that he made a mistake, or that he trusts me enough to sleep beside me with nothing holding me in place.

I lie in the dark for a long time, turning it over.

The highway is outside, stretching in every direction, and nobody in the world knows where I am.

So what do I do now?

NICK

She’s gone.

I don’t know how I was able to sleep through her leaving but I know she left before I open my eyes. It’s the way the weight on the mattress has shifted. The lack of warmth on her side of the bed. It’s cool over there, where her body should be. The room is quiet in the wrong way. It’s not the quiet of someone sleeping, but the quiet of absence.

My thigh screams when I suddenly sit up, head snapping around. The bathroom door is open, the light’s off. I can see from here the room is empty.

My eyes go to the dresser, because of course, that’s where I left the keys to the car.

Keys that are now gone.

“Son of a bitch.”

I’m on my feet before the words finish leaving my mouth, ignoring the fire in my leg, scanning for confirmation of what I already know. Her shoes are gone. The whiskey bottle’s on the nightstand, half-empty now. The closet is open, and the jacket she was wearing is missing.

She left. She actually left.

I press both hands against the dresser and lean into them, my head bowed, breathing through the rush of something that isn’t quite anger and isn’t quite grief. It exists somewhere in the middle. A hot, sick feeling in my chest that tastes like failure and feels like a door sliding shut.

I didn’t cuff her, goddammit. I made a conscious choice not to restrain her last night, because something in me believed, after everything we’ve been through, she wouldn’t run. After the cabin and the attack, the car chase, then the tracker; something stupid and hopelessly optimistic that shouldn’t exist wanted to honestly believe she would stay.

The woman who fought beside me. Who let me cut a device out of her back with a pocketknife and kissed me like she meant it. I wanted to believe that same woman wouldn’t wait for me to fall asleep and disappear into the night.

What a fucking fool I am.

I should’ve known better. Hell, I do know better. This is who she is. Not Laura. Not the girl who curled against my side and fell asleep listening to my heartbeat. This is Ivy. The trained operative who sees trust as a vulnerability and intimacy as a tool. I gave her an opening, and she took it. It’s exactly what I would’ve done in her position.

That doesn’t mean it hurts any less.

It’s going to hurt a hell of a lot more before Liam flat-out kills me. After everything, I had her, and I let her walk out the door because I thought one night meant something.

I’m pulling on my boots when the door handle turns. I freeze, staring, watching the door swing open as she walks in carrying two cups of coffee and a small brown paper bag.

When she sees me, she stops. I’m standing in the middle of the room, one boot on, one boot off. Phone in hand. Wearing an expression that probably looks exactly as wrecked as I feel. Her eyes move from my face to the phone to the boot and back to my face before something moves in her expression. It’s not quite amusement, and it’s not quite guilt.

“You thought I left,” she murmurs.

I don’t trust my voice. I settle for setting my phone down on the dresser and staring at her.

“There’s a coffee shop down the road—we passed it on the way here, remember?” She sets the cardboard carrier on the dresser next to my phone and takes out one of the cups. “The coffee in the room looked terrible. They had food, too, so I got a couple of muffins and some scones, too. They looked too good to resist.”

She pulls out what looks like a blueberry muffin before sitting on the foot of the bed and crossing her legs. She then takes a sip of her coffee like she didn’t just take ten years off my life.

I pick up my cup and take a big gulp. It’s excellent, though even if it wasn’t, it would taste that way. I guess relief has something to do with it.

“I thought about it,” she admits after a moment in a calm, matter-of-fact voice. She’s a woman who’s thought something through and come out on the other side. “After you fell asleep last night. The keys were right there, waiting for me. I had the angel on one shoulder, the devil on the other.”

I’m glad this all seems funny to her. It didn’t feel so funny from where I’m standing. “Why didn’t you?” I ask, because I have to.

Now she’s quiet, staring into her cup before breaking off a piece of muffin, popping it into her mouth, and chewing slowly. She looks a hell of a lot better than I expected this morning after everything she drank yesterday, but then again, she could be used to it. Hard drinking and being able to keep a calm head afterward could have been one of the many lessons drilled into her, and it would be easy to understand why. One never knows when the situation will call for sitting down with a bottle of whiskey before pulling off a job.

Finally, she breaks the silence. “Running means starting over alone. I’ve been alone for the last twelve years. I just didn’t know it until a few days ago.”

She looks at me, and her green eyes are clearer than I’ve seen them since Prague. Still sharp and focused, yes, but without the hostility. There’s still a wall between us, but that wall has a door in it now. Cracked open, just enough. “I’m tired of being alone.”

My hands are still trembling when I sit down next to her. I wrap them around the coffee cup to hide it, though I think she notices and pretends not to.

“So,” she continues, straightening up, all business again. Whatever vulnerability she just showed has already been folded up and tucked away, stored somewhere I can’t reach. “What are we doing next?”

“About?”

“About everything. Vincenzo’s not going to stop. With or without a tracker, he won’t leave a loose end. I know too much about his operation, his network, his people. I know every safe house and every asset he’s run through Europe in the past five years. That’s not the kind of information he can afford to have walking around in someone else’s head.”

She’s right. The clinical way she lays it out, through an assassin’s perspective, treating herself as a liability to be neutralized, makes my stomach clench. “First things first,” I decide, forcing myself through a bite of muffin, which quickly turns into a second, bigger bite because this thing is damn good. “I need to talk to Liam.”

She watches me pick up my phone and pull up his contact. The fact that he answers on the second ring tells me he’s been waiting. These days, he’s always waiting.

“Where are you?” His voice is clipped, intense. The voice of a man who’s been running scenarios in his head all night and is only waiting to find out which one turned out to be true.

“South. New location. We had company yesterday.” I give him the rundown—the diner, the tattooed man, the car chase, the truck in the ditch. With every detail, his silence gets heavier. I can hear him absorbing it before trying to process it.

Once he has, there’s only one question. “How did they find you?”

I look at Ivy, who probably hears his side of the conversation and is choosing to pay close attention to one of the two cinnamon scones she bought. “A tracker. Implanted in her back. I found it and cut it out once we got far enough away from the crash to cover our tracks.”

His voice is heavy, edged with anger. “I should’ve thought of that. Goddammit.”

“We both should have, but it’s done now. She’s clean.”

“And the guys from the diner? You’re sure they didn’t live through the crash?”

The memory of that ugly crash repeats in my head. The crunch of metal, the shattering of glass. The smoke that rose from the wreckage afterward. “I don’t know how anyone could’ve lived through that,” I tell him. “The car looked like somebody took a can opener to it by the time it was all done. Even if they had lived, there wouldn’t have been any way to question them. They wouldn’t have been conscious.”

“So Vincenzo sent his own personal guard to do what his mercenaries couldn’t,” Liam concludes. “He’s escalating.”

“Yeah, he is. That’s why I need you to do something.” I glance her way. She’s given up any pretense of not listening in, her body very still as she concentrates every shred of herself. “I need you to set up a meeting with Gabriel.” Her eyes widen.

Liam is quiet for a long moment. “Gabriel Russo.”

“He’s the one who told us she was alive. He pointed me in her direction. I doubt it was because his father asked him to. Gabriel has his own agenda.”

“And you think he’ll help us?” The disbelief is heavy in his voice, to put it mildly.

“I think he already has. He gave us Laura.” I ignore the way the woman next to me flinches. I guess that’s better than her correcting me… or hitting me. “That wasn’t an accident. We’re part of whatever game he’s playing with Vincenzo now. I’d rather know what that game is than keep reacting blindly.”

More silence. I can almost hear him thinking, which is always dangerous. “I’ll reach out,” he decides. “It’ll take time. The guy doesn’t exactly advertise his phone number.”

“Use the channels we used before. He’ll respond. He wants this conversation as much as we do.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because his dad just sent his personal guard to kill his own asset. If Gabriel gave us Laura, he’s making a move against his father. He needs allies. So do we.”

Liam heaves a sigh, but I recognize the sound. He hates the idea, but he sees the sense in it, meaning he has to let go of his pride long enough to admit he doesn’t always have all the answers. “I’ll set it up,” he announces. “Where should I tell him?”

“Somewhere neutral. Somewhere his father can’t reach. I’ll leave the details to you.”

“Fine. What are you going to do in the meantime?”

I look at her again. She’s watching me, wearing an expression I’m still learning to read. I’m still learning this woman, since thinking of her solely as Laura isn’t doing either of us any favors. “I’ll let you know,” I tell him, still watching her. “I’ll check in tonight.”

Once the call is over, I set the phone down. Ivy raises an eyebrow. “Gabriel?”

“He’s the key to everything,” I point out. “He gave us the information that led me to you. If his father’s escalating, he might be the only person who can help us shut this down.”

She considers this, turning it over while sipping her coffee. I appreciate her focus, the way she sinks into a problem and gives it all of her attention rather than reacting emotionally. “Gabriel was always different from him,” she says slowly. “He’s more thoughtful and measured. Less… brutal.” Does she realize her nose wrinkled when she said it?

“Did you trust him?”

“I didn’t see that much of him,” she points out. “But on his trips to visit, I think I trusted him more than Vincenzo, though.” She wears the ghost of a dark smile. “But he was a little kinder to me than anyone else in that house for a long time. Take it for what it’s worth.”

“It’s worth a lot.” Though granted, I’m not going to fool myself into believing the man has a soft side. He’s still his father’s son. You don’t exist in that world without picking up some of the darkness and carrying it with you like a film you can never wash clean.

“So what do we do while Liam works on Gabriel?” she asks, finishing her coffee and setting the cup aside.

There’s really only one option left now. “We drive.”

“Where?”

“I’ll tell you when we get there.”

The look she gives me tells me she’s not thrilled with the mystery, but she doesn’t push it. Instead, she stands, pulls on her jacket, and heads for the door. I grab the bag I never bothered unpacking, then follow her.

It’s another twenty minutes until we’re back on the highway. This time, we’re heading northeast. She notices the change in direction but doesn’t comment right away, only giving me a pointed look after furrowing her brow. Instead of peppering me with questions, she leans her seat back a little and watches the road with a quiet sort of attention that’s different from yesterday’s thousand-yard stare.

Something is different now. I saw it when she walked in with the coffee, but it’s becoming clearer. Her sharp edges are still there—they always will be, they’re part of who she is—but she’s dialed down the combativeness. She isn’t fighting me on every point. She’s not challenging every statement or looking for exits.

Instead, she’s present. Engaged. Sitting in the passenger seat of a car she chose not to steal, heading toward a destination she chose not to refuse.

For the first time since I found her in Prague, it feels like she’s with me because she wants to be.

“Tell me about the neighborhood,” she requests after about an hour on the road.

“What neighborhood?”

“The one where Laura grew up. Where you grew up.”

Her voice is carefully neutral. Like she’s asking about the weather rather than the most loaded topic between us.

“A few blocks made a hell of a lot of difference,” I explain. “I met Liam when we were twelve. He punched a kid who was giving me trouble. After that, we were inseparable. I came from a… less than stable situation.” That’s putting it mildly.

“How so?”

“I was in a revolving door of foster placements until I aged out.” I keep my voice even because this isn’t about me. “My part of the neighborhood was rough. The kind of place where you learned to watch your back before you learned to ride a bike. I was always placed in homes like that, but when I was twelve, it was the worst it had ever been. But then… I met him, and it got better.”

“How?”

“I started spending more time at your house than my own. Your mom fed me. Your dad gave me a little money to run errands. It was…”

I have to clear my throat over the lump that suddenly forms there. “It was the first really good time in my life.”

She’s quiet for a long time, and the miles roll past before she asks, “What about Laura?”

I hate the way she still refers to herself in third person, but she’s asking questions. That’s still a positive step. “You were Liam’s little sister,” I recall, chuckling. “I never really noticed you until I was around sixteen. Then I couldn’t stop noticing you.”

I think she might be wearing a tiny smile, but she turns her face to the passenger window before I can confirm it. “You’re taking me there, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“Why?”

“Because the doctor said familiar environments can trigger memory recovery. Smelling the air, seeing the streets. It’s sensory. It bypasses the conscious mind.”

“So you think walking down a street I haven’t been on in more than a decade is going to suddenly bring everything back?”

“I think it might bring something back. A fragment, a feeling. But maybe nothing at all.” I have to accept that as a possibility. “You want to know everything there is? You want to know what happened to you, who you were before the explosion? This is the best shot we’ve got.”

She absorbs this without arguing. A week ago, she would’ve torn my reasoning apart with both hands. Now, she only nods and looks out the window.

I glance her way from the corner of my eye. For just a second, the afternoon light catches her face at an angle that takes me back in time. To a girl sitting on a porch railing with her hair blowing across her face, laughing at something I said, looking at me like I held the world in my hands.

When she looked at me that way, it was exactly how I felt.

As we draw closer to the city, the skyline getting larger every minute, she sits up straighter. Her gaze narrows with an intensity that has nothing to do with surveillance and everything to do with searching.

She might not know it yet, but she’s looking for something she lost.

IVY

The row house has a blue door.

Nick didn’t tell me that. He told me the street name and the house number. I’ve been standing on the sidewalk across the street for the last few minutes, staring at it. Waiting for something to happen inside my head. A piece clicking into place. A light turning on. Anything.

Nothing happens.

The house itself is small, crammed between identical neighbors with identical stoops and the same façade. There’s a kid’s bicycle chained to the railing. A different family lives there now, with a different life. The people who lived here before are gone. The only proof they existed stands across the street with clenched fists and a blank mind.

“Anything?” Nick asks. He’s beside me, not quite hovering, but not exactly leaving me on my own, either. His fists are shoved into his pockets, telling me what it’s taking him to keep silent while I work this out. Like he has to consciously keep a grip on himself, or else he’ll pounce or something.

I appreciate the effort he’s making. I don’t appreciate being studied, though.

Still, I’m sorry when I turn to him and shake my head. “No.” The word has a bitter taste to it. I turn away from the blue door and start walking.

He falls in step next to me without a word. We walk the block, then the next one, then the one after that. He points out things as we go. The corner store where Liam got into his first fight. The basketball court with the chain-link fence where Nick spent hour after hour. The alley where he hid from a foster parent who had no business being responsible for a child. He tells me all these things in a quiet, even voice. Not pushing, just laying them out in front of me, like he’s putting down a path he wants me to walk.

He’s not the only one who wants something. I want to feel. That’s the worst part. I’m not resisting anymore—I’ve moved past that, past the denial and the reflexive rejection of everything he says. I want the memories to come now. I want to look at that basketball court and see a boy with pale eyes shooting hoops. I want to walk past the corner store and hear the bell above the door and remember the times my mother sent me down there for milk or bread. I want to stand in front of the blue door and feel something other than the hollow ache of absence.

But I can’t. And the wanting only makes the absence worse.

“It’s okay,” he says, because he can read me now. “It doesn’t always happen right away.”

“I know.” But my jaw is tight, and my hands are shoved in my pockets to keep them from shaking in frustration that’s starting to edge its way closer to rage with every step I take.

Because here’s what I keep coming back to: Nick has these memories. The basketball court, the corner store, the blue door, and everything in between. Those memories are warm, living things inside him. He carries an entire childhood in his head, and apparently, that childhood included me. A girl named Laura, who was loved. Laura had a family that ate together and kept flowers in the window boxes.

According to every photograph and story, and detail he’s shared, I was that girl.

But I have nothing. Only Vincenzo’s version of love, which turned out to be nothing more than a tracker in my back. He didn’t take me in to take care of me. He took me in to develop me into something he could use.

And maybe, if it hadn’t been for Nick finding me and finding the tracker, I could have been all right with that. I could have lived with it my whole life because I would never have known anything else.

It’s too late for that now. I’ve crossed a line I can’t uncross.

Laura was loved. The thought repeats like a heartbeat I can’t slow down. She was loved, and she didn’t know it, because she became someone else. Someone who was used.

And dammit, I wish I could be her.

It’s not an invited thought, or a comfortable one. Still, I let it stay, because I’m too tired to fight it. I wish I could be the girl in the photos. The one sitting on the dock with her feet in the water, leaning against her brother while they both laughed at something. Maybe it was a joke only the two of them understood, the way I’ve heard siblings can be. I wouldn’t know. Ivy could never understand what Laura lived.

It doesn’t matter how much I wish. Wishing doesn’t make it true. This is just a street. Concrete and brick, with the same stoops and the same cracked sidewalk for block after block. I don’t belong here.

I don’t belong anywhere.

He reaches out, takes my arm, and his touch brings me back to the present. “Come on. There’s one more place I want to take you.”

We need to drive, as it turns out. The diner sits on a corner about ten minutes from the old neighborhood. From the outside, it looks like every other diner I’ve ever seen: glass front, neon sign, metal siding that probably looked modern back when the place was built. A chalkboard by the entrance advertises the daily special in large, loopy cursive.

It doesn’t hit me until we get out of the car in the tiny lot behind the building that I’ve been hoping I’ll remember something. It’s unanticipated, and I’m getting a little more nervous with every step I take. I don’t know why. When did everything change? When did I go from refusing to accept his stories to craving more? Not very long ago, I would’ve resented this. Now? I’m fighting not to get my hopes up.

After all, diners are diners. They have pretty much the same layout. The same booths. The same laminated menus with pictures of food that never looks like what finally reaches the table. There’s nothing unique about this place that should mean anything to me.

Then Nick opens the door, and we step inside. The smell hits me all at once.

It’s not one thing in particular, but rather a combination of aromas. Grease and maple syrup and something underneath, something I’ve never smelled anywhere but here. It could be the oil they use in the fryer, or maybe it’s the way the ventilation carries the scent of the kitchen through the dining room. It’s distinctive in a way I can’t identify, and it hits me in the chest like a fist.

I know this smell.

My body knows it before my brain can catch up. The aroma moves through me and touches something very deep. Something old. Something I didn’t know was there.

My head turns, and my eyes find the booth before I understand why.

It’s tucked in the back on the left-hand side of the room. A window seat overlooking the corner, where the light comes in at an angle that turns the table gold. I’m staring at it with a kind of certainty I can’t explain. It’s a pull, magnetic, involuntary. My body is being drawn to a place it remembers, even if my mind refuses to cooperate.

The booth is already taken by two people.

Liam is one of them.

He’s on the inside with his back to the wall, the way men like him always sit. Next to him is a woman I haven’t met. She’s blonde and pretty, quietly composed. Instinct makes me tick through the various aspects of her body language, the way she holds her face, everything, because it’s what my conscious mind was trained to do.

Then she looks at me, and I see something close to sadness mixed with the kindness radiating from her. Now she’s a full person instead of a list of characteristics, and she’s shining her full attention on me. It’s like she understands something about this moment I haven’t caught up to yet.

Liam’s voice is rougher than the last time I heard it. “Laura.” He rises from the booth, catches himself, and sits back down. Just like Nick, he’s learning to give me space. “I’m glad you came.”

Nick’s hand finds the small of my back. Not to push me. More like he’s trying to anchor me as we slide into the booth across from them. The vinyl creaks. The laminated menu in front of me is exactly what I expected, complete with faded photos of food that looks way too good to be real.

I’m more interested in the couple across from me right now. “This is Aurora,” Liam explains, looking at her. “My wife.”

She extends a hand across the table. Her grip is firm and her smile is warm. “It’s nice to meet you,” she says. I like the way she keeps it simple. There’s no pressure behind it.

“Likewise,” I manage, which is more than I expected to get out.

Liam’s eyes move over my face the way they did at the cabin. He’s searching, hungry for something I can’t give him. He’s trying so hard to hide how much it hurts. “You found us as soon as you came in.”

“I did,” I murmur. Something about it feels heavier than it should. “It’s like I knew where I would find you.”

“This was our booth. We came here every Sunday,” he explains. “This was where we would sit. Eventually, whoever was working the Sunday morning shift knew to keep the booth empty for us. Mom and Dad would sit on one side, and the two of us would sit on the other. Every week. As far back as I can remember.”

And I believe him because I almost feel it. A pressure in my chest, a stinging behind my eyes. The memory is so close. I feel it the way I would feel someone standing behind me in a dark room. Just out of my reach, but there. Right there.

“The waitress would always give us crayons,” he continues. His voice is rough but controlled. Like he’s fighting to contain his emotions, the way I am. “You would draw all over the placemats. Mom kept them. She had a whole stack in the kitchen drawer.”

My throat is so tight, I can barely breathe. Instead of letting him see what this has done to me, I stare at the menu.

The waitress appears. She’s a woman in her fifties with a pad and a pen and the kind of no-nonsense attitude that tells me she’s done this ten thousand times before. “What can I get you?”

“Pancakes,” I tell her. “With bananas and chocolate chips, please.”

I haven’t even looked at the menu. I don’t know where that came from. It bypassed my brain, and the order rose from someplace deeper. Someplace instinctive, automatic. It’s the middle of the afternoon, yet here I am, craving pancakes.

The table goes silent. It feels like all the air has been sucked out of the diner as I look back and forth between the two men staring intensely at each other now. “What?” I whisper. It’s pretty damn uncomfortable.

Liam sounds like he’s choking. “That was always your order. Every week. Pancakes with bananas and chocolate chips.”

Meanwhile, the waitress has no idea what we’re talking about. She only scribbles on her pad and takes Nick’s order before moving along to another table. The moment passes.

For everybody but me, anyway. He could be making it up, of course. Telling me what he imagines I want to hear. He couldn’t possibly know what I want to hear, right? Because he doesn’t know me. Nobody at this table really knows me.

But… for the first time in all the years I can actually remember, I want somebody to know me. I actually want to be known, because when I watch Liam and Aurora together, it makes something ache in my chest. Something I didn’t even know was there until now.

In spite of everything, this feels strangely normal. The four of us in a booth, chatting quietly until the food comes, and my eyes almost bulge out at the sight of pancakes big enough to almost hang over the edges of my plate. Aurora reaches over Liam’s plate for the ketchup to use on her fries. Liam steals one of them, and she smacks his hand playfully. When she laughs, the look on his face… he could light up a room.

“How did you two meet?” I ask, because I’m curious, and because asking questions about other people is safer than answering questions about myself.

She glances at Liam with an expression that’s equal parts affection and mischief. “He blackmailed me into marrying him.”

I blink. “Excuse me?”

“You heard her,” Nick mutters from beside me, sipping his coffee like this is old news.

“It’s a long story,” Liam says, eyeing his wife. I get the feeling this is not the version of their love story he would choose to lead with.

“It’s not that long.” Aurora’s eyes dance when she takes a sip of her water. “He needed a way to access my dad’s fortune. I was the way. He forced me into marriage, locked me up, and I spent the first few weeks plotting various ways to escape.”

I look at Liam. He looks back at me with the resigned expression of a man who knows this summary is the truth but wishes it wasn’t. “Are you ever going to let that go?”

“Absolutely not,” she chirps cheerfully.

But there’s warmth underneath the words. Real warmth, the kind that comes from two people who fought their way through something ugly and came out on the other side holding on to each other. Whatever their beginning was, however terrible it might have been, they built something genuine on top of it. I see it in the way he looks at her. The way she looks at him. The ease between them that only exists when trust has been earned the hard way.

And it makes that ache in my chest stronger than ever. It’s not jealousy, exactly. It’s closer to longing.

So I take another bite of my pancakes, trying to connect with whatever part of myself remembered them. As dangerous as it seems, it’s even more dangerous to want what I can’t have. And people like me don’t get the kind of life they’re building together.

The table quiets down as we finish eating. Somebody comes by to clear the plates. Liam orders more coffee and leans back in the booth with his arm stretched out along the back of the seat behind Aurora.

“The tracker is gone,” he says, shifting into the tone that tells me the fun times are over, and we’re back to business. “Nick confirmed it for me. That means Vincenzo has no way of finding you right now.”

“As far as we know,” I add, because I feel like it needs to be said.

“As far as we know,” he concedes. “But without the tracker, he’s working blind. That means you don’t need to keep running. Not right now.”

He pauses, as if he’s measuring his next words. Aurora leans into him, giving him the tiniest nod, like she’s encouraging him to say whatever comes next.

“The penthouse is secure,” he continues. “It’s the safest place I have. Armed security, surveillance, controlled access. I would like you to stay there, at least until we figure out the next move with Gabriel.”

I look at Nick. He gives me the same small nod Aurora gave Liam. Obviously, the three of them already worked this out without my knowledge. It’s the kind of thing that would normally piss me off, but at the moment, I’m too busy working out the pros and cons of the situation.

“It’s your choice,” Liam adds. He might not know he has a tell, but I do. It’s all in the way he says it. Carefully, deliberately. Like those three words took everything he had. It means he’s fighting the impulse to order me around, probably because Nick told him to. Either that, or he figured out on his own that pushing me will get him nowhere.

Nobody is telling me what to do. It’s up to me.

I look around the diner one more time. According to Liam, I spent every Sunday here for years. In this booth, waiting for pancakes with bananas and chocolate chips.

I think I might want to know more about her. “Okay,” I decide. “I’ll stay.”

Liam exhales. Barely visible, but I catch it. The release of something he’s been holding since he walked into the cabin, and I looked at him like the stranger he is to me. There’s no smile, no look of relief. He only nods once, but that’s all it takes for me to know how much this means.

And I’m glad I can give it to him. I don’t owe him anything, not really, but I sense how much he loved Laura.

Which tells me Laura probably loved him just as much, and she would want him to be happy.

NICK

Ivy moves through the new space systematically, silently. She catalogs everything in the penthouse with a few sharp glances through narrowed eyes. The exits first. The windows. Checking sight lines, gauging the distance to the nearest building.

And I stand back and let her work. It’s instinct. Fighting someone’s instincts is a waste of everyone’s time.

The penthouse is impressive, even to someone like me who’s been here more times than I can count. Compared to the hotel rooms we’ve bounced back and forth between over the past few days? It’s a palace.

She runs her fingers along the granite countertop as she passes through the kitchen, pausing at the hallway, looking toward the room where Liam and Aurora sleep and where they’re now holed up together. Her gaze moves over the security panel mounted on the wall and lingers as she studies it.

“The system was overhauled after an incident a while back,” I tell her. “I oversaw the upgrades myself. Reinforced entry points, new cameras, biometric locks. The stairwell access requires a code that changes every twelve hours. The panic room behind the office—steel-reinforced, independent air supply, a hardline to Liam’s security team.”

She listens, nodding, but her attention isn’t where I expected it to be. She stands in the middle of the living room, turning slowly, taking in the space. The view through the windows. The sheer scope of it.

“You’re safe here,” I add, because I assume that’s what she’s thinking about.

She looks at me, and the corner of her mouth lifts. It’s not really a smile. Something more thoughtful. “I wasn’t thinking about safety.”

“What, then?”

She glances toward the windows, where the city sprawls out in front of us. It’s dark now, lights glittering after we spent the rest of the day going from store to store, picking up clothes and essentials we’ve been going without for a while. “I was wondering what it took for the kid who grew up in that house with the blue door to build all of this.”

It hits me in a way I wouldn’t have expected. Not because it’s sentimental, she doesn’t do sentimental, but because it means she’s thinking about Liam as a person. Not as a stranger who claims to be her brother. Not a name attached to a story she can’t verify. He’s a person now, with a beginning she can picture, because she stood on the sidewalk today and saw where it all started.

“A lot,” I tell her quietly. “It took a lot. And you were part of it.”

“Me?”

“And your parents.” I didn’t mean for the conversation to move in this direction. Not now, not so soon. But standing here, surrounded by the results of Liam’s obsession… what better time is there? “You were the reason for all of this. He worked tirelessly; we both did. He built an empire brick by brick, and the goal was always to take down the man responsible for the explosion.”

I pause, glancing toward the room Liam and Aurora disappeared into when we first got here with a dozen shopping bags between us. “Aurora’s father.”

Her brows draw together. “Now I get it.” Her shoulders rise and fall in a sigh. “If this is all partly because of me, why did he practically run away as soon as we got here?”

“To give you space, probably. The only way he can do that is to keep himself away from you,” I add, when she gives me a curious look. “Nobody had to tell me. I know him. The way he thinks.”

She nods slowly, then moves down the hallway. I follow at a comfortable distance until she comes to a stop at an open doorway. She looks over one shoulder, and I nod. “Yes, we’ll stay in this room.”

It’s more like a suite, complete with an attached bathroom. I could weep at the sight of what I know is going to be a comfortable bed with enough pillows to keep me from getting a crick in my neck overnight. “I’ve missed comfort,” I admit, sitting on the corner of the bed and sighing at the firm mattress.

Ivy gives me an arched eyebrow over her shoulder before going back to gazing out the window. “You’ve gone soft. You realize that, right?”

“Did I go soft when I jabbed a hypodermic into your neck?” I counter. “Was that soft of me? Because from where I’m sitting, I outmaneuvered a trained assassin.”

She rolls her eyes, but I catch sight of the tiny grin she’s wearing when she turns back to the window. “This is very nice. And I won’t pretend I didn’t get used to a certain level of comfort over the years.”

“I guess your work paid well.”

The smallest shudder ripples through her, and she folds her arms, holding her elbows in her palms. “Yes, it paid well.”

She eyes the shopping bags lined up next to the bed. “I wouldn’t have blinked at spending this much money back in Europe. It was a drop in the bucket.”

I sense her pulling further away. Today is supposed to be about getting closer, but she’s slipping through my fingers. “If this is all too much for you, we can stay somewhere else. I know Liam wouldn’t…” The rest of the statement dies in my throat, because of course, he would mind. He would have to get over it, but I can’t pretend he’d be all right with it.

And she knows it. “No, this makes the most sense. We’re secure here.” Then she gets busy unpacking her new clothes, hanging them in the closet, and tucking things into drawers. She needs something to do. Something that will get her out of her own head for a little while.

When the time comes to settle in for the night, it’s obvious she has ideas about how to make that happen. “I’ve noticed something.”

I hear the difference in her voice. The playful note. Paired with the way she sits on the bed and leans back on her palms, she has something in mind that has nothing to do with the security system or anything else we’ve discussed since we got here.

“What’s that?” I ask, leaning against the doorframe after unpacking in the walk-in closet.

“There’s no way to tie me up in here.” She eyes the padded headboard. “What are we going to do?”

With a snicker, I ask, “Do I still need to do that?”

Something dark flashes in her eyes. The corners of her mouth quirk upward. “Who said anything about need?”

I look around the room, and my eyes land on the robes hanging in the closet. Perfect.

I cross the room and pull the two silk ties hanging from them, turning back to find her watching me with dark, hungry eyes. She knows what’s coming. And she wants it.

“Stand up,” I tell her.

She does, slow and deliberate, her gaze never leaving mine. I walk around her and take her wrists in my hands. I cross them behind her back, binding them together with the first tie, pulling it tight enough that she can’t get free but not so tight that it hurts. At least not yet.

Then I kneel, taking her ankle, lifting it. I bind her ankles together with the second tie—the silk smooth against her skin. When I stand, she’s completely at my mercy, arms trapped behind her, feet together, throwing her balance slightly off.

I push her gently, and she falls onto the bed, landing on her side. Her hair spills across the pillow, her eyes wide. I climb onto the bed behind her, positioning myself, lifting her legs and folding them toward her chest with her knees pressed against her tits, leaving her open and exposed, pussy already glistening with need.

Not holding back, I give one hard thrust.

“Fuck,” she gasps.

The angle is perfect: tight and intense. I grip her bound ankles, using them for leverage, pulling her onto my cock with every thrust.

Then I stop, still deep inside her, leaning down until my mouth is against her ear. “We’re going to play a game.”

She turns her head, trying to see me. “What kind of game?”

“You have two minutes to come.” I reach for my phone on the nightstand, setting the timer where she can see it. “If you don’t, you get punished.”

Her breath catches. Her pupils dilate. “And if I do?”

“Then you get to come. Simple.”

I start the timer and begin moving again. She tries to meet my thrusts, but she’s bound, completely under my control. All she can do is take what I give her.

Thirty seconds. She’s panting, her face flushed, she’s starting to get tight around me.

Forty-five seconds. I reach around with my free hand, finding her clit, rubbing it in tight circles as I fuck her.

One minute. She’s close, I can feel it, the sounds she’s making in the back of her throat. But the position, the restraint, the pressure of the game, it’s working against her.

Ninety seconds. She’s desperate, her hips trying to buck against the limitations of her restraints. “Please,” she gasps.

“Come,” I growl, pounding into her harder. “Let go.”

The timer beeps.

She didn’t make it.

I pull out slowly, seeing the frustration written all over her face. I position myself between her legs, still holding her knees to her chest.

“Five slaps,” I tell her. “Count them.”

The first one lands sharp against her sensitive folds, and she cries out, her whole body jerking. “One.”

The second is harder. “Two.”

By the third, her voice is ragged. “Three.”

The fourth makes her moan, a sound that’s closer to pleasure than pain. “Four.”

The fifth leaves her gasping, eyes glassy, her pussy even wetter than before. “Five.”

I reset the timer.

“Two more minutes.”

I push back inside her, and she’s so sensitive now that she screams out, her body clamping down on me like a vise. I fuck her hard, relentless, angling for that spot, rubbing her clit with my thumb, driving her toward the edge.

She’s closer this time. But the pressure, the fear of failure, it’s all working against her.

The timer beeps again.

She makes a sobbing sound, frustrated, desperate.

I pull out and roll her onto her back, her arms still trapped beneath her. I straddle her chest, my cock heavy against her sternum, and take her nipples between my fingers. They’re hard, sensitive, and I twist them.

Then I slap them. Left, then right, sharp, stinging blows that make her cry out.

“Please,” she begs. “Please, I can’t…”

“You can,” I tell her, leaning down to bite her earlobe. “And you will. Because if you don’t come this time, I’m going to fuck your ass raw. No lube, no mercy. I’ll take you hard, and you won’t be able to do anything about it.”

I reset the timer one last time. “Two minutes.”

I push back inside her, and she’s so wet, so ready, that she moans like she’s dying. I don’t hold back. I fuck her with everything I have, hard and deep, and punishing, angling perfectly, rubbing her clit in tight, relentless circles.

Thirty seconds. She’s climbing, I can feel it.

Sixty seconds. She’s panting, her head thrown back, her body wound tight.

Ninety seconds. She’s teetering on the edge, and I can feel her fighting it, fighting herself, too scared to let go.

“Come,” I growl. “Come now, or your ass is mine.”

She shatters. Letting out a scream she tries to muffle against her own shoulder, her body convulsing around me, pussy milking my cock in rhythmic spasms that feel like they go on and on. I keep fucking her through it, not letting her stop until the timer beeps again, marking two full minutes of her coming apart beneath me.

Only then do I let myself go, burying myself deep while coming inside her.

Afterward, I untie her slowly, checking her wrists and ankles for marks, massaging the circulation back into her limbs. She lies there, limp and dazed, her eyes half-closed, a satisfied smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

“I won,” she murmurs.

I laugh, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Yeah. You won.”

This is different. Not in a bad way. Sitting here in the bath with her back to my front, with her head fitting perfectly in the space between my shoulder and my jaw, her fingertips dancing up and down the length of my forearm once I’ve wrapped my arms around her. Her breathing is slow and steady—soon mine slows to match it. For a long time, there’s nothing but the sound of rain tapping the window and the gentle movement of the water whenever either of us shifts position.

“I could stay here for days,” she murmurs after a while. She sounds drowsy, content. I know the feeling. “One time, I was soaking in the tub and fell asleep, and the next thing I knew, I was choking and sputtering because my face had gone under the water.”

“Wouldn’t that be ironic?” I murmur, my lips close to the hair she piled up on top of her head. “The assassin, drowning in her own bathtub because she fell asleep.”

“I wasn’t quite the assassin yet, but I see your point.” She chuckles softly, nails gently grazing my skin. “Training would exhaust me. I would be covered in bruises, sore in places I didn’t know existed. That was half the reason I spent so long in the tub.”

The thought of her that way makes my jaw go tight and my teeth grind together. Not now. Not during this perfect moment. “What was the other half?”

“I wanted the peace and quiet. Nobody asking anything of me. Just myself, alone in my own head for a little while. Otherwise, everything was a test; even the cooking lessons with Elena ended when Vincenzo sent her away, and that was my only outlet. My only chance of having anything resembling what I imagined was normal.”

“What did she teach you to cook?” Because I’m craving the knowledge. Whatever scraps she feels like sharing, it might help me put together the full picture of who she was over all those years we thought she was gone.

“Would you believe one of the simplest recipes in the whole world took me an entire summer to master? Cacio e pepe,” she explains with a wry chuckle. “It’s just fresh grated cheese, tons of fresh pepper, and the starchy water you cook the pasta in. But I am telling you, it drove me insane. For ages, I kept coming up with pasta held together by clumps of cheese, floating in cloudy water. Elena always encouraged me to try again. And when I finally got it?” She pauses. “I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything so delicious.”

“I would love it if you’d make that for me sometime.”

“I would love to make it for you. And tiramisu. Have you ever had it?”

“I love tiramisu.”

“You only think you do. Wait until you’ve had mine. You’ll weep.”

“I look forward to it.” Truer words were never spoken. I tighten my grip on her and close my eyes, very much aware of the hope that’s flickered to life in my chest, warming me in a way the water can’t. She’s talking about the future. A future in which we’re together, where she’s doing something as simple as cooking for me, and I’m the lucky son of a bitch who gets to enjoy it.

Am I lucky enough for all of that to become reality?

I’d better be, because I’m not sure I could live with the alternative. Not now, after knowing a simple pleasure like this.

IVY

I’m dressed and ready before either of them, which I take private satisfaction in, waiting in the kitchen with the espresso already prepared. The machine is a lot like the one I got used to back in Italy. Liam has impressive taste.

I’m frothing milk when Nick joins me, pausing only half a second before joining me at the counter. “How do you take yours?” I ask.

“Just the milk, please.” He’s studying me, maybe amused. If he thinks there’s anything strange about me being fully dressed and ready to go, he doesn’t show it.

Somehow, I get the feeling that won’t be the case for much longer.

We’re both drinking our lattes when Liam comes in, dressed in a dark suit. The word formidable comes to mind. He’s a formidable person. Look where he ended up compared to where he started out. “I’m glad to see you’re making yourself at home,” he offers, and I believe him. There isn’t so much as a hint of sarcasm in it.

“Thank you for making it so easy to feel at home.” I slide an espresso his way, and he takes it straight, no milk. Interesting. Not surprising, though.

He checks the impressive watch flashing on his wrist. “The car should be ready in the garage. We’re set to meet at eight.”

I set down my cup. “We’re sure about this place? The restaurant?”

He arches an eyebrow but keeps his thoughts to himself, settling on nodding. “It’s where we met with Gabriel the day he gave us the information on you. I’ve already sent a car with three of my guys to make sure everything’s on the up and up. They texted to give me the green light.”

I have to remember this isn’t anything new for either of them. They know what they’re doing. While I was on the other side of the ocean, they were handling meetings like this. It’s not up to me to protect them.

Just like it’s not up to them to protect me, which is what makes Nick’s hesitation so irritating when I follow them to the elevator. “Are you serious?” he murmurs, though he knows better than to get in my way.

“Yes. I am.”

“You know you don’t have to do this. We can handle it.” All it takes is a sharp look for him to close his mouth. He doesn’t know by now that I don’t need to be hovered over? I hope whatever’s happening between us physically doesn’t blur any lines or make him forget who he’s dealing with.

Liam, I notice, doesn’t bother questioning me. He only gets into the front seat of a black SUV while Nick and I climb into the back. The driver doesn’t say a word before pulling out from the garage into a brilliantly sunny day. I watch the city go by and think about Gabriel and what I know of him. He was always careful and controlled. The kind of man who doesn’t reach for things unless he knows he can take them. Whatever he has to tell us, he’s had it in his back pocket for a while. He waited until the moment was right.

I find that more unsettling than if he had come to us and offered it. I don’t like the idea of him planning something, knowing we would eventually call on him for help. I keep my thoughts to myself, though, glad the ride is a short one.

The restaurant doesn’t look like much from the outside. The grates are pulled over the windows at this time of day, the place dark inside. A pair of men wait near the door, and when we step out of the SUV, they nod in unison. I clock them in two seconds flat: armed, competent. Well-dressed, professional. Two of Liam’s men who rode in the first car fall in step beside us as we head inside.

It smells like garlic and old coffee and something that might have been a sauce left simmering all night. A few dozen empty tables fill the main room, chairs still up on most of them. We move through all of it without stopping until we reach the back room, where Gabriel is already waiting. Because of course he is.

He’s seated at a table near the far wall with an espresso in front of him. He’s handsome in the manner of something dangerous, all clean lines and careful stillness. His eyes move over the three of us when we walk in, and when they reach me, they pause for a fraction of a second. “I see we have an addition.”

“Hello, Gabriel.” Since there are only two chairs set up across from him, I pull up a third and drop into it, crossing my legs, folding my hands in my lap. “It’s nice to see you.”

I can’t read his expression, but he inclines his head, accepting my presence, even though no one asked for his opinion. Nick takes one of the chairs and places it on my left while Liam sits on my right. Bracketed between them without any of us discussing it. Like they decided without checking in with each other to protect me. I’ll let it go for now.

Liam doesn’t waste time. “You said you had something.” He’s sitting completely straight in his chair, taking command of the meeting the way some people have the power to do without much effort. Men like Vincenzo practically shout, all volume and bluster. Other men don’t need it.

“I do,” Gabriel confirms before lifting his espresso and taking a measured sip. He sets it back down carefully in the saucer. “As you probably know, my father is a man who has spent his life constructing a particular image. Traditional. Principled. A patriarch in the old sense.”

I nod slowly. The men follow suit.

“His image is the foundation of everything he is,” Gabriel continues, speaking slowly, almost like the words are coming to him on the fly, unrehearsed. I know that can’t be true. This is not a man who makes a move without preparing first, something his father always praised him for. “It’s the foundation of his standing, his alliances. The loyalty he commands. He would do anything to protect it.”

I know where this is headed. “You’re saying the image isn’t real?”

“I’m saying it’s incomplete.” His gaze lands on me and stays there without drifting to either my right or my left. Like there’s something connecting us, which I suppose there is. A shared experience. “My father has a secret. Every Thursday evening, without exception, he travels to a private establishment in Milan. He’s familiar enough there that the staff know him and know his… preferences. He has specific arrangements.”

The word arrangements pairs up with the word establishment and starts painting a picture while we sit in silence for a second or two.

It’s Nick who gives in to curiosity first. “What kind of arrangements?”

Gabriel gives his espresso cup a quarter turn in its saucer. For the first time, there’s something in his expression that costs him something to show. It’s not embarrassment. It’s something colder than that. “I think it’s better you see for yourselves.”

“That’s not an answer,” I tell him.

“No,” he agrees lightly. “It isn’t. I’m giving it to you for a reason.” He looks at each of us in turn before settling on me again. “If I describe it, you’ll form a picture. That picture will be wrong, or it will be incomplete, or it will be close enough to the truth that you’ll think you understand it before you actually do. What my father does in that room⁠—”

Whatever he’s seeing behind his eyes, it isn’t pleasant. “It would be better to witness it without expectation. You’ll understand why when you see it.”

The table goes quiet. Nick drums his fingers once along the edge, lightly. He’s arriving at the same conclusion I’ve already reached because he’s good at this. As good as I am.

Liam speaks before either of us can. “We’re supposed to walk into a situation blind on your word alone?”

“You’re supposed to walk in knowing everything except one detail,” Gabriel corrects him. “I’ll give you the location, the layout, the schedule—everything I have. The only thing I won’t give you in advance is the specifics of what you’ll find. That part you’ll see with your own eyes, and it will be enough.”

The three of us go tense, along with the guards standing behind us, when he reaches inside his jacket. All he pulls out is a folded piece of paper, which he sets on the table in front of the three of us. “The address. Membership only, no walk-ins, private security at the entrance and at least two more checkpoints inside. My father arrives at nine in the evening. The same room every time. He’s gone by midnight.”

Liam unfolds the paper. His face reveals nothing.

“There’s a staff entrance at the rear,” Gabriel continues. “Less traffic, no guest security checkpoint. Getting footage of my father would require someone already inside the building.”

He pauses again before adding, “Inside as an employee.”

I know exactly what he’s saying. Considering the way the men to my left and right sit up straighter and barely stop short of growling, they understand, too. There’s a solid chance this will end up being a battle, but it’s not a battle we’re going to fight here.

Gabriel waits, letting all of this sink in. When the silence has gone on long enough, he continues. “Leverage. It’s the only currency that works against a man like my father. Money won’t move him. He’s heard threats before. His network is too deep to dismantle piece by piece—you could spend years pulling at loose threads, and he would rebuild faster than you could work. But this?”

He taps the folded paper in front of Liam. “This would cost him everything he’s spent his life protecting. His allies would step back. His standing in the family would collapse. Men who deferred to him out of respect would find their respect suddenly very difficult to locate.”

He looks at me directly before adding, “You want to stop looking over your shoulder? This is how.”

“I need everything you have on the staff entrance,” I announce, without checking in with either Liam or Nick. “The timing, the shift rotations, uniform. How they handle new hires.”

Nick turns to look at me. It isn’t a sharp look. It’s worse than that. The long, searching kind, the one that goes somewhere I don’t always know how to meet. “Ivy.”

“I need this to be over,” I murmur. “You know that.”

I watch as he swallows whatever he was going to say. I turn to Liam, whose jaw is clenched tight enough to make the muscle jump in his cheek. “I know what I’m doing,” I insist.

“I know you do.” He doesn’t say it easily, but it sounds like he means it. That matters more.

Gabriel finishes his espresso and sets the cup aside before standing and buttoning his jacket. “I’ll send everything I have before the end of the day,” he promises. “Schedule, layout, personnel. Get in, get the footage, get out clean. If this goes the way it should, he’ll have no choice. Men like my father don’t fight battles they know they can’t survive.”

His men fall in around him without a word. In under a minute, the room holds only the three of us and the guards Liam brought along.

Nobody speaks right away. I look at the piece of paper still sitting in front of Liam and think about this so-called establishment in Milan. No doubt it’s a brothel of some sort, somewhere flesh is sold. All I can do is wonder what goes on in there that could be so damning to a powerful man.

“I want a team on the ground before we land,” Liam decides, looking at Nick. “Armed, mobile, no traceable connection to us. I want three extraction routes mapped in advance and eyes on the building for at least forty-eight hours before anyone goes near it.”

“Not my first rodeo,” Nick reminds him, already typing something into his phone.

“I want a safe house within ten minutes of the location.”

“That, I can take care of,” I announce. They both swivel to look at me. “I have a safe house in Milan. Work took me there often enough that it only made sense.”

“A safe house Vincenzo would know about,” Liam points out, and a shudder of revulsion runs through me. Of course. I never gave out the address, but Vincenzo would be aware of it. Thanks to the tracker.

“He wouldn’t think to watch that location,” I decide, and I mean it. “I have safe houses all over Europe, for one thing. For another, he won’t expect me to come back now that I’m in the States. I have resources there that will come in handy.”

Liam exchanges a look with Nick before sighing like he hates the idea but knows better than to think he can stop me. “Whatever you say.” He picks up the piece of paper and folds it again along the existing crease, then slides it into his jacket pocket.

We ride back to the penthouse in silence. The city looks the same as it did on the way over, but I watch it anyway, because it gives me something to do that isn’t thinking too hard about Milan or the expression on Nick’s face when he understood I fully intend on going in there.

When we get back to the penthouse, Aurora is in the living room, curled into the corner of the sofa with a book in her lap. She looks up when we come in, and whatever she sees on Liam’s face makes her close the book without marking her page. She’s good at reading him.

He goes to her and says something low that I don’t catch. She listens, nods, then looks past his shoulder to me. Her steady gaze is probably meant to be reassuring, and somehow it is.

Then she looks back at Liam. “Do you want to go?” she asks him quietly. “You can tell me the truth.”

He hesitates, then nods. “Yes.”

“Then you should go.”

“No.” He says it the same way. Quiet, certain. Taking her hand, he turns it over in his, looking at it like there’s something important in the lines of her palm. “You’re here. My place is with you. Nick will keep them safe.”

She holds his hand with both of hers and doesn’t argue. Something tells me she knows better than to argue with a decision that was never really up for debate in the first place. He made it before she asked. He made it the moment she told him she was pregnant, probably, and every day since has only confirmed it.

The moment feels private, so I look away. Something aches in my chest, quietly, persistently.

Nick appears at my elbow. He says nothing. He only hands me a fresh latte from the kitchen, and when I take it, we exchange a look that contains more than I think either of us could ever put into words.

NICK

Here we are again. This time, though, we’re on her home turf.

The safe house is tucked above a leather goods shop on a narrow street that smells like canal water and fresh bread. From the outside, it’s nothing. A nondescript door between two storefronts, a buzzer panel with faded names that probably don’t belong to anyone real. The kind of place your eyes slide right past.

Ivy doesn’t buzz. She produces a key and lets us in. The stairwell is clean but bare, lit only by a single window on the landing. She takes the stairs without hesitation, two flights up, to a second door with three separate locks. One key, a second key, then a code punched into a pad so fast I only catch the last two digits.

“Welcome to my office,” she says as she pushes the door open.

I don’t know what I expected. Something sparse, maybe. Functional. A cot, a table, a weapon rack. The kinds of places I’ve set up for short-term operations over the years. Bare bones, nothing personal. In and out.

This isn’t that.

The apartment is small but organized with a precision bordering on surgical. The main room serves as both living space and workspace, and it’s the workspace that stops me in the doorway. One wall is lined with shelving units, and on those shelves is everything a person would need to become someone else entirely. Wigs on foam heads. Contact lens cases in a row, each marked with a color. Makeup kits, and not the kind you’d find at a drugstore. Theatrical grade, professional. Below it, there’s a rack of clothing spanning everything from business formal to evening wear to what looks like a nurse’s uniform still in dry-cleaning plastic.

Below the shelves sits a locked cabinet, which she opens with another key. Inside, arranged in neat rows like library cards, are passports. At least a dozen of them. Different countries, different names. She fans through them with casual efficiency, like she’s done it countless times before.

“Italian, French, Czech, Austrian,” she lists without looking up. “The German one is expired, but it served its purpose.” She pulls one out and checks the photo, then sets it aside. “Greek. That one was a good time.”

There’s nothing I can do but lean against the wall and watch her work. This is Ivy in her element. Not the woman who let me hold her in the bathtub at Liam’s penthouse or the one who ordered pancakes without thinking about it at the diner. This is the version of her that existed for more than a decade without me. The version built from the ground up to disappear and reappear as needed. Watching her is like watching a musician pick up an instrument they haven’t touched in a while. There’s no rust, no hesitation. She moves through the space like it’s an extension of her body.

It should unsettle me. Some of it does. But if I’m being honest with myself—and I’m trying to be—there’s something else underneath the discomfort. Something closer to admiration. She’s good at this, better than good. She operates at a level I’ve only seen in a handful of people, and most of them had entire governments behind them.

She had Vincenzo Russo. The rest, she built herself.

“Stop staring,” she murmurs without turning around.

“I’m not staring. I’m admiring.”

“You’re staring.” She opens a drawer and pulls out two small cases, both about the size of a contact lens container. When she pops them open, I see they hold earpieces. Compact, flesh-toned, nearly invisible. “These are good for about three hundred meters,” she tells me, holding one up. “Longer than that if there’s no heavy interference. We’ll be able to hear each other the entire time we’re inside.”

“You have military-grade comms lying around in a drawer?”

“I have a lot of things lying around in drawers.” She sets the earpieces aside and turns to face me, leaning against the edge of the desk with her arms folded. “Let’s talk about how we’re getting you inside.”

We’ve been circling the membership issue since the jet landed. An establishment like the one Gabriel described doesn’t exactly hand out guest passes. “Liam’s people came through,” I confirm, checking his message again. “One of his contacts in Milan located a member who’s been having financial difficulties. Gambling debts, the expensive kind. In exchange for a very generous and very quiet settlement of those debts, we now have his membership credentials, his entry protocols, and his PIN for the door. The team will leave them for me to pick up on my way in. He’s been encouraged to take an extended holiday somewhere far from Italy for the next month.”

She arches an eyebrow. “Encouraged.”

“Strongly encouraged. Liam’s people can be very persuasive when the situation calls for it.”

“And if someone at the door recognizes that the man walking in isn’t the man whose name is on the membership?”

“Then I’ll be relying on the fact that this particular member hasn’t visited in over six months, and the staff turns over frequently. Gabriel confirmed that. The door security checks credentials, not faces.” I pause and shrug. “It’s not airtight, but it’s the best we’ve got on short notice.”

She considers this. I can practically see her running scenarios in her head the way I’ve watched her do a dozen times now. Testing the weak points. Probing for the gap that could get one of us killed. After a few seconds, she nods. “It’ll work. Just don’t volunteer information. Hand over the credentials, keep your head down, let them lead you in. Men who frequent places like this don’t make small talk with the staff.”

Rather than remind her this isn’t my first job, I settle for nodding. “Noted.”

“I’ll go through the staff entrance thirty minutes before you. That gives me time to get situated and make sure the room is accessible before Vincenzo arrives.” She pushes off the desk and moves to the clothing rack, fingers walking through the hangers. “Gabriel said Vincenzo uses the same room every Thursday. That means there’s a setup routine. Someone prepares the room for him. If I position myself as part of that routine, I have access before he ever walks through the front door.”

“And the camera?”

She reaches into another drawer and holds up something no bigger than a shirt button. “Pinhole. Streams to a secure feed I can access remotely. He’ll never notice it if I place it somewhere on my outfit.”

She thinks of everything. Every angle and contingency. It occurs to me, not for the first time, that if Vincenzo had aimed her in any other direction, she’d be running entire operations by now. Instead, she spent years being someone else’s weapon to use as he chose.

The thought makes me want to put a fist through the wall.

“The team Liam sent is set up at a rental property eight minutes from the club,” I tell her. “Four men, two vehicles. They’ll monitor the exterior and the street. If anything goes sideways, they can be at the staff entrance in under two minutes.”

“Nothing is going to go sideways.”

“Humor me.”

The look she offers is the one that means she’s deciding whether to be annoyed or amused. She settles somewhere in between. “Fine. Eight minutes. Two vehicles. I feel very protected.”

“You should. Liam insisted on it, and when Liam insists on something⁠—”

“It happens. I’m getting that.” She pulls a garment bag from the far end of the rack and unzips it partway, checking the contents without giving me a glimpse of what’s inside. Whatever she sees satisfies her. She zips it back up and drapes it over the desk chair. “I need to get ready. This is going to take a while.”

“How long is ‘a while’?”

“Long enough for you to make yourself useful and go over the building layout one more time.” She nods toward a folder on the desk—Gabriel’s intel, printed and annotated in her handwriting. Notes in the margins, arrows, circled points of entry. She’s already been through it more than once on the jet. Anything to distract herself from flying, I guess. “There’s a second exit on the east side that Gabriel didn’t mention. I found it on the city’s building permits. Fire escape, exterior stairwell. It’s worth knowing about.”

Of course she found something Gabriel missed. I pick up the folder and settle into the chair by the window while she disappears into the small bedroom with the garment bag and closes the door.

I go through the layout. Memorize the corridors. Trace the route from the main entrance to Vincenzo’s preferred room, then from the staff entrance to the same room, then from both to every exit. I mark the second stairwell she found. Calculate the distance from there to the street where Liam’s team will be parked. I do it twice, and then again, because repetition is the difference between panic and muscle memory when things go wrong.

Things aren’t going to go wrong, but I prepare like they will because that’s what keeps people alive.

The bedroom door opens.

I look up from the folder, and for about three full seconds, I forget what I was doing.

She’s transformed. The shoulder-length black hair has been replaced by a dark auburn wig that falls past her shoulders in loose waves. Her makeup is different—heavier, more dramatic, the kind that changes the geometry of a face. Her eyes are larger, her cheekbones sharper. She’s wearing a black corset that cinches her waist and pushes everything else into territory I’m trying very hard not to stare at, paired with a skirt that’s more of a suggestion than an actual garment. Sheer stockings, heels that add three inches to her height.

She looks like a different woman. That’s the point. She also looks…

I have to set the folder down before I crush it.

“Well?” She turns once, slowly, with her arms held slightly out from her sides. Showing me the full picture. Professional. Checking her work the way she checks everything else.

“It works,” I choke out.

“Just ‘works’?”

“It’s very convincing.”

The corner of her mouth lifts. She knows exactly what she’s doing to me, and under any other circumstances, I would enjoy the fact that she’s enjoying it. Right now, knowing where she’s about to go dressed like that, knowing what the role requires? It’s doing something to me I’d rather not take the time to examine considering the circumstances.

“How many times,” I ask, keeping my voice level, “have you done this?”

The playfulness leaks from her eyes as they hold mine. “Enough times to know what I’m doing.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No, it isn’t.”

She isn’t going to tell me. I’m not sure I want her to. What I want is to pull her out of that corset and lock the door and forget any of this is happening, but that’s not an option, and wanting it won’t make her any safer. I settle for nodding once and letting it go, because that’s what you do when the person you love is better at something than you are and the job requires it.

I watch as she attaches the camera to the front of the corset, then checks the earpiece one last time, tapping it twice to test the connection. Mine crackles faintly in my ear. “Check,” she says.

“Check,” I confirm.

“Good.” She pulls out one last accessory: a black lace mask designed to cover the top half of her face. After tucking it into the pocket of a long coat, she slides her arms into the sleeves, then buttons the coat to her throat. Now she’s anyone and no one all at once. “I’ll go in first. Give me thirty minutes, then follow. You’ll enter through the main door, give the credentials, and let them seat you. Order a drink. Look bored. Do not come looking for me.”

Somewhere along the way, she got the idea this is her mission alone. I won’t argue. It would be a waste of time, not to mention it could ruin her focus. “And if something goes wrong?”

“Then you’ll hear it.” She taps her ear. “And you’ll do exactly what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it. Not before.”

There’s a version of me that would argue. The version from a few weeks ago, the one who was still trying to reconcile the woman in front of me with the girl I used to know. That version would’ve pushed back and insisted on being the one in control. I would’ve made it about protecting her.

But I’ve watched her. I’ve seen what she can do. She knows her shit, and I’m smart enough to stay out of her way.

That doesn’t mean I have to like any of this.

“Thirty minutes,” I confirm.

She nods, picks up a small clutch from the desk—inside it is the compact blade she thinks I didn’t notice—then walks out the door without looking back.

I stand at the window and watch her emerge onto the street below. The coat, the heels, the unhurried pace. She turns the corner and disappears, and I’m alone in a room full of her other lives, listening to nothing but the faint static hiss of an open comm line and the sound of my own breathing.

The first twenty minutes are the longest of my life. I pace. I check the earpiece. I go over the layout again, though I could draw it from memory by now. I then change into the suit I brought: dark, expensive enough to look like I belong, but not so expensive that anyone would remember it. I then check the earpiece again.

Once I’m ready, I step out. The club is a ten-minute walk, but I make it twelve because I take the long way, circling the block once to confirm the position of Liam’s team and the decorative stone planter half a block down in which my credentials are waiting. The SUV is parked exactly where it should be, dark and quiet. I don’t acknowledge it, and they don’t acknowledge me. Good.

Her voice comes through not a moment too soon, since my nerves are frayed to the breaking point. “I’m in.”

“Any trouble?” I murmur as I approach the building.

“Two guards, neither of whom were interested in asking questions once I mentioned I was here for Mr. Russo’s private arrangements this evening.” She pauses, then adds, “They had another girl scheduled. I told them they should let her know she won’t be needed tonight.”

“And they accepted it?”

“They pushed back. I told them it was their call, but if Mr. Russo doesn’t get what he’s expecting, they’re the ones who’ll have to explain it to him.” There’s a faint trace of amusement in her voice. “They decided I had a point.”

I can breathe. She’s in. She’s fine. She’s doing exactly what she said she would do, exactly the way she said she would do it.

“Take your time coming in,” she tells me. “There’s no rush.”

No rush. Easy for her to say. I’m the one carrying another man’s credentials while trying not to think about every single thing that could go wrong between now and midnight.

The entrance is understated. A black door set into a stone facade, no signage, no indication of what’s inside. None of this comes as a surprise. A small brass plate with a number etched into it is the only thing to indicate I’m in the right place. I press the buzzer and wait.

The door opens. A man in a dark suit looks me over without expression. I hand him the membership card, which he glances at, then glances at me before stepping aside.

And that’s all it takes. I walk in. The door closes behind me, cutting off the sound of the street like someone threw a switch.

IVY

The room is exactly what I expected, and nothing like what I expected at the same time.

It’s private, tucked at the end of a corridor that smells like leather and burning candles. Dim lighting, the kind designed to soften everything, to make a room feel smaller and more intimate than it actually is. Red undertones in the walls. A heavy door with a lock on the inside. Soundproofing—I can tell by the way the noise from the rest of the club drops to nothing once the door clicks shut behind me.

And then there’s the table.

It runs along the far wall, arranged with the kind of care that suggests ritual. Everything in its place, everything deliberate. Leather restraints. A riding crop. A collar with a short lead attached. Candles, maybe for wax play? Probably. A blindfold, silk by the look of it. A paddle. A few items I recognize from experience and a few I’d need a longer look at to identify.

Whatever Vincenzo Russo does in this room every Thursday night, it isn’t vanilla.

I slide the mask into place. Black lace, covering everything from my hairline to the bridge of my nose. In the mirror across the room, I barely recognize myself. The auburn wig, the heavier makeup, the corset, the mask. I’m someone else entirely, which was the point.

“I’m in the room,” I murmur, my lips barely moving. The earpiece picks it up anyway.

Nick’s voice comes back, low and steady. “What do you see?”

“Vincenzo has a hobby.”

“Meaning?”

I run my fingertip along the edge of the riding crop without picking it up. “Meaning there’s an entire table full of things that would add up to a real problem for our friend if anyone found out what he likes.” I glance over the rest of the spread. “The works. Restraints, crop, collar. Whatever the old man is into, he’s very specific about it.”

“Is the camera running?”

I adjust the pinhole on the corset so it faces outward at chest height. The angle will capture most of the room. I checked the feed on my phone before tucking it away. Clear image, good resolution. “Done.”

“Good. Now we wait.”

Yes. We wait. For me, it means standing in the middle of the room with my hands clasped in front of me and my spine straight, because that’s what the role requires. A woman like the one I’m pretending to be doesn’t sit. She doesn’t fidget. She occupies space like she owns it and waits for the person who’s paying for her time to arrive and submit to her.

The word submit keeps circling back in my head. I glance at the collar again. The restraints. A man like Vincenzo, who has built an empire on dominance and fear, comes to this room every week to be the opposite of the man in control of everything and everyone around him. It’s textbook, in a way.

No wonder Gabriel wouldn’t tell us the specifics.

A few minutes pass before the door opens. I straighten, expecting to see the man I once considered my protector, the closest thing to a father I ever knew. Instead, I find a woman in her forties with sharp cheekbones and a tablet balanced on one hand. She’s dressed in the kind of understated black dress that tells me she’s management. She’s wearing an apologetic look. “Mr. Russo called in a moment ago.” There’s a slight accent to her voice. “Something has come up. He sends his apologies and says he’ll be in next Thursday instead.”

Goddammit. Does he know? Is this a message? How could he have found out?

“Son of a bitch,” Nick mutters in my ear.

It takes everything I have not to show my disappointment and the fear touching the edges. “I see.”

“However,” she continues, looking down at her tablet, “we do have another client who’s been waiting, and he has specifically requested someone with your… skill set. If you’re available.”

In my ear, Nick’s voice goes tight. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

I keep my expression neutral. Controlled. This woman is watching me, expecting an answer. The answer matters because a real employee doesn’t turn down work. A real employee doesn’t look rattled. She says yes because saying no raises questions, and questions are the last thing we need right now.

“Send him in,” I reply.

“Ivy, you’re fucking kidding me,” Nick mutters. There’s a warning in his voice.

I don’t respond because I’m not alone. The woman nods, taps a finger to her tablet, and leaves. The door closes.

“It’s fine,” I murmur once she’s gone.

“It is not fine.”

“If I say no, they’ll notice,” I hiss. “If they notice, they’ll start asking questions about the new girl who showed up for Vincenzo and then refused to work. We can’t afford that. Not when we need to come back next week.”

The silence on his end is thick. “Nick?” I whisper.

“I’m here.” His voice is clipped. “I don’t like this.”

No shit. “You don’t have to like it. You just have to sit there and drink your drink and let me do what I’m good at.”

The door opens again.

The client is a man in his mid-fifties. Soft around the middle, wearing a suit that costs more than most people’s rent. Salt-and-pepper hair, neatly combed. He has the look of a man who spends his days giving orders and his Thursday nights paying someone to take that away from him. I’ve seen the type before. They’re predictable and manageable, and they usually finish faster than they’d ever admit.

He stops just inside the door, taking me in. The corset and the mask, and the heels. Whatever he sees, he likes it, because he swallows hard and his breathing changes.

I don’t smile. Women like the one I’m playing don’t smile.

“Close the door,” I order. My voice is lower than usual, stripped of everything that makes it mine. This is a performance. I’m very good at performances.

He closes the door.

“You know the rules?” I ask.

He nods, eager. Already, he’s changed from the man he was ten seconds ago.

“Say it out loud,” I command.

“Yes. I know the rules.”

“And you know what to do.” I don’t move or gesture. I simply wait. That’s the art of it, really. The waiting. Most people think dominance is about action or force, but it isn’t. It’s about the space between commands. The anticipation that builds in the silent moments. The pause that makes a grown man forget he runs a company or commands vast fortunes. Right now, in this room, he is nothing unless I decide otherwise.

He lowers himself to his knees. Slowly. I wonder what it does to his suit. Obviously, whatever he gets out of this is worth more than whatever he paid for it.

“Good,” I murmur. “Hands behind your back.”

He obeys without hesitation. “Good boy.”

In my ear, Nick is very, very quiet. I can hear him breathing, though. Short, controlled breaths, the kind that come from a jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth. Good. Let him listen. Let him sit out there with his borrowed membership and hear every second of this, because this is who I am. This is what I can do. If he’s going to be with me, he’s going to know all of it.

“Eyes on the floor,” I tell the man kneeling in front of me. “You don’t deserve to look at me. Do you?”

“No. I don’t.” His chin drops immediately.

“Good. Do not look at me unless I give you permission. Is that understood?”

“Yes,” he murmurs.

“I can’t hear you.”

“Yes.” Stronger this time, but trembling a little.

I circle him once. Slowly. My heels click against the hard floor with each step. I let it build. I let the anticipation do the work. When I come to a stop in front of him, I wait until I see his hands trembling behind his back before I speak. “Tell me why you’re here.”

“I—” His voice catches. “I wish to serve.”

“You wish to serve?” I scoff before clicking my tongue in disappointment. “Do you deserve to?”

A visible shudder goes through him. “No.”

“No. You don’t. You haven’t earned anything yet.” I pick up the riding crop from the table—not to use, just to hold. To let him hear the leather shift in my hand, to let him see it from the corner of his vision as he stares at the floor. “You are going to stay exactly where you are. You will keep your eyes on the floor. And you will tell me every reason you don’t deserve what you came here for tonight. Every single one. And if I think you’re lying or you aren’t trying hard enough to please me, we are finished. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t hear you.”

“Yes.” Louder this time. Raw.

“Very good. Start talking.”

He does. He lists his failures with the desperate urgency of a man who’s been waiting all week for someone to demand this of him. On and on he goes, like he’s been making a list. Allowing someone to speak over him in a meeting. Upsetting his wife by forgetting their anniversary—then being unable to perform later on, in bed, something he attributes to stress at work. He forgot to rinse the sink after shaving this morning. His company’s quarterly revenue didn’t go up at the rate he projected.

In other words, he goes from A to Z, listing every single mundane aspect of his life while I tap the end of the riding crop against my palm.

The whole time, Nick listens.

I let it go on for exactly as long as it needs to, and not a second longer. When my customer has run out of words, breathing like he just ran a mile, I ask, “And what about that useless thing between your legs? Is it hard now, for me? Or is it limp and useless?”

Nick’s breathing changes.

“It’s… hard,” the man admits, trembling. “Very.”

“Show me. Do not look at me,” I warn, sharp, and he jumps a little before fumbling for his fly. “Show me what little control you have over yourself, you useless nothing.”

“Yes. Yes, I will.” He’s breathing faster and harder than ever as he unzips himself, then withdraws what is by any standard an average penis. Nothing more, nothing less.

“Look at you,” I sneer, circling him again. “So excited by your own failure. I think you fail in order to get off. Is that what you do? Are you that fucked in the head?”

“Jesus,” Nick whispers.

“No,” the man insists.

“Don’t lie to me.” I tap the end of the crop to his tip, and he sucks in a sharp, pained breath—but his dick also twitches, harder than ever. “Tell me the truth, or this ends now. Do you keep a running list in your head of all your little failures because it’s the only thing that gets you hard?”

“Yes.” It’s a whisper, filled with shame.

“I can’t hear you.” With the crop under his chin, I tip his head upward until our eyes meet. “Repeat yourself. I want to hear you admit what a sniveling little nothing you are.”

“Yes. Yes, that’s why.” His eyes are watery, like he’s on the verge of tears.

“Pitiful,” I spit out. “You aren’t fit to lick the bottom of my shoe, much less to get off tonight. Why should I allow you to do that?”

“You shouldn’t!” he rasps, and now I understand what this is about. It isn’t about release. It’s about the torture element for him. I can’t pretend I’m not relieved. That’s exactly what I need in order to keep up the act.

“I agree. You don’t deserve it.” I tap his chin lightly with the crop before taking a step back. “We’re finished here. I want you out of my sight.”

He releases a shuddering breath but nods, tucking himself into his shorts, raising his zipper. “Get up,” I order. “Fix yourself.”

He does, fumbling with his cuffs, adjusting his tie. Strangely enough, he does look relieved now. Like there’s something deeper at play than simply coming. It’s fascinating, in a way.

“Get out of my sight,” I order. He wastes no time. The door closes behind him, and the room goes quiet, and I can finally exhale.

“That,” Nick says through the earpiece, “was the longest twenty minutes of my life.”

“Was it?” My voice is light, because I’m still acting. I’m not completely unaffected by what just happened, but he doesn’t need to know that. “I thought it went well, myself.”

“Ivy,” he growls.

“Relax. It’s over. Nothing happened.”

The sound he makes isn’t quite a word. Closer to a growl through clenched teeth.

I’m straightening the table, because a professional would leave it the way she found it, when the door opens again. This time, it’s one of the bouncers. Broad-shouldered, wide enough that he almost fills the doorway. “There’s a customer out front asking for a private dance.”

Jesus, this is turning into a nightmare. “I’m not interested.”

“He’s already paid.”

“You’ll need to give him his money back or find someone else.”

“I’ll send him in so you can tell him yourself.” Before I can object, he steps aside, and Nick walks into the room.

He must’ve taken out the earpiece at some point, because I didn’t hear a word of what went down between the two of them. His jaw is tight enough to cut glass. His pale blue eyes find mine, and whatever he sees doesn’t make him any calmer. He closes the door behind him without breaking eye contact.

“Hello,” I murmur.

Instead of responding, he locks the door. That’s all the response I need.

I can feel his anger, hot and alive, directed at everything. At the situation… at me. I probably should be scared, but all I feel is… excitement.

I don’t apologize. I don’t explain. I stand in the middle of the floor in my mask and corset, waiting for him to decide what he wants to do with me.

“Take it off,” he says, his voice low and dangerous. “The mask. The wig. All of it.”

I reach behind my head and unlace the mask first. It falls to the floor. Then the wig, revealing my cropped hair underneath. I don’t feel like Ivy right now, and I don’t feel like the woman I was pretending to be either. I’m something else entirely, something that only exists in the space between his fury and my willingness.

He crosses the room in three strides. His hand wraps around my throat, not to hurt me, just holding me there while he looks at me with those pale eyes that see too much. “You enjoyed that,” he says. And it’s not a question.

“I was working,” I say, but my voice comes out breathier than I intend for it to.

“Bullshit.” His thumb presses against my jaw, tilting my head back. “I heard you. The way you talked to him. The way you owned every second of it. You were wet, weren’t you? Standing over him with that crop in your hand, listening to him beg.”

I don’t deny it. There’s no point. Nick sees through every lie I tell, even the ones I tell myself.

His free hand finds the front of my corset, yanking at the laces until the whole thing loosens so he can push it down. My breasts spill free, and his gaze drops. Filled with hunger and something else I don’t want to name.

“On your knees,” he orders.

I go down, the hard floor showing my knees no mercy. He doesn’t give me time to situate myself or get comfortable. He’s already unbuckling his belt, pulling it through the loops with a sound that makes my stomach clench with anticipation. His cock is right in front of my face, hard, thick, and heavy. Pre-cum already leaking from the head. “Open.”

I obey, and he immediately pushes inside. His hand is still wrapped around my throat from where he’s standing over me. He tastes like salt, anger and the bourbon he was drinking while I worked. His size fills my mouth completely, stretching my lips around his girth, and I have to fight the urge to gag as he hits the back of my throat.

“That’s it,” he growls, his hips starting to move. “Take it. Take all of it.”

He isn’t gentle. In fact, there’s nothing gentle about this whole interaction. He fucks my mouth the way he wants to fuck me, deep, relentless, and punishing. His hand tightens at my throat, not cutting off air but controlling it, letting me breathe only when he allows it. I grip his thighs for balance, feeling the muscle tighten, the tension in every part of him. And I fucking love it. 

I love the roughness, the lack of pretense, the way he’s using me to work out whatever monster is raging inside him. My eyes water as he pushes deeper, holding himself there while I struggle to swallow, to breathe through my nose, to accept what he’s giving me.

“Look at me,” he commands.

I force my eyes up. He’s watching me with an intensity that should scare me. His jaw is tight, eyes dark with possession. He pulls back just enough, then thrusts forward again, setting a rhythm that has me desperate, aching between my legs for more.

I moan around him, and the vibration makes him curse under his breath. His thrusts get harder, more erratic. He’s close. I can feel it in the way his thighs tense, the way his grip tightens to the point of pain.

When he finally comes, it sounds like he’s being ripped apart; his hips jerk against my face as his cum spills down my throat. He doesn’t pull out until I’ve swallowed every drop he gives me, and even then, he stays there. Knowing this isn’t over, by the way his cock is still hard. 

His hand drops, and he begins to slowly pull out. Causing me to gasp for air. I should feel used… small. But instead, I feel alive. In a way I haven’t in years, my whole body humming.

“Stand up,” he says, his voice rough.

My legs shake as I stand. Of course, he doesn’t help me. He watches me struggle to find my balance in these ridiculous heels. There’s something in his expression that tells me he’s memorizing every second of this.

“Turn around.”

I face the wall with the table of toys still arranged on it. I hear him moving behind me, the rustle of his clothes, and then his hands are on my hips, yanking me back toward him. He bends me over the table until my cheek is pressed against the cool wood.

His fingers find me between my legs, and he laughs. Sounding dark and satisfied. “Soaked,” he says. “I knew it. You loved every fucking second of that.”

I don’t respond. I can’t. His fingers are working me exactly where I need him. He circles my clit once, twice, and then he’s pressing against it, rubbing with the same relentlessness he used when he was fucking my mouth.

It doesn’t take long until I’m wound tight, and on the edge of another orgasm. When I come, it’s so intense, causing me to cry out. My nails dig into the table hard enough to leave marks.

But that doesn’t make him stop, he keeps going, drawing it out longer until I’m pushing back against his hand because it’s too much and not enough all at once.

Only then does his hand go still between my legs, his breath hot against the back of my neck.

“Mine,” he whispers, and I’m so spent, I don’t have the strength to argue.

NICK

By the time I open my eyes the next day, Ivy is already dressed. This time, she wears her own clothes rather than a costume. Dark jeans, a fitted black top, boots. No wig or mask. Just Ivy, standing by the window of the safe house, gazing out.

“Good morning.” Propping myself up on my elbow, I run a hand down my face. The clock by the bed tells me it’s well past two in the afternoon—I guess the time change is fucking with me, though the fact that it took hours to fall asleep didn’t help. “When did you get up?”

“Oh, I don’t know. A while ago.” She glances over her shoulder. There’s a twinkle in her eye I would never have seen a few weeks ago. “Get up. I’ve been waiting to show you something, and you chose today of all days to sleep in.”

I don’t bother asking what it is she wants to show me, because I know better by now. She’ll only dig her heels in and refuse harder than ever to give me a clue. Instead of pressing the issue, I get up and splash my face with water before getting dressed. She’s waiting by the door when I finish—even though she’s trying to hide it, I can tell she’s excited about something. I like seeing her like this. Like a kid, almost. The kid she used to be.

I shut that down before it has a chance to take root and get any bigger. It’s bad enough I can’t forget what I heard last night. She slid into that role so easily. It was damn uncanny, and I’m still a little thrown by it.

No trace of that today. Today, she’s smiling as we take the stairs down and step out into the kind of day that makes a man glad he’s alive. The air is warm but not heavy. It carries traces of coffee and bread from the bakery two doors down. Something green and alive from the nearest canal. She turns left without hesitating, moving at a pace that says she’s walked this route a hundred times. I fall in beside her and let her lead the way.

It’s about three blocks in that I realize I’ve never seen her like this. This isn’t the woman who turned a grown man into a puddle on the floor last night. Not the woman who fanned through passports like they were playing cards. This is something else. She moves through the streets as if they belong to her. Not the way Vincenzo’s world belonged to her, like she had to survey her surroundings all the time. More like the way a place belongs to someone who chose it on their own. Freely. Her shoulders are lower and her stride is easier. She looks up at buildings when we pass them—not checking sightlines. Actually looking, the way people look at things they like.

“Should you be showing your face around here?” I ask. Really, it’s amazing I waited this long before I couldn’t help voicing that question.

She gives me a sideways glance. “This part of the city was mine. They never came here. Vincenzo wouldn’t be caught dead in a tourist area, and his people followed his lead. There are too many cameras around, for one thing. Too many foreigners, too much exposure. He stuck to private places—clubs, restaurants, places where he could control the guest list.”

We step around a man walking a small, fluffy dog. “I figured that out early and made it work for me. Everything on the other side of the canal was his. Everything on this side was mine.”

“Nobody ever checked up on you?”

“I was careful. No patterns or regulars. Nothing anyone could trace.” She pauses a beat. “I needed something that was just for me. I think everyone does.”

I can’t argue with that. Years of living inside someone else’s machine, being shaped and directed? Of course she carved out a space they couldn’t touch. The fact that she managed it under that level of control says more about her than any dossier ever could.

She leads me down a side street that opens onto a small piazza. There’s a church on one side, so old the stone is worn smooth in some spots. Across from it, there’s a restaurant with a faded green awning and tables spilling out onto the cobblestones. It’s the kind of place a guidebook would call a hidden gem, which usually means it’s neither hidden nor a gem, but this one might be the exception. The tables are half-full with locals and a handful of what look like tourists, considering the selfies they keep taking. The smell coming from inside is the kind that makes your stomach sit up and pay attention.

“This is my favorite place in Milan.” She says it simply. No fanfare. At the same time, she glances at me when she says it, like she’s checking whether I’m paying attention. The fact that she cares whether I am tells me more than the words do.

We take a table outside, shaded by the awning. She doesn’t look at the menu. When she orders, she does it in Italian, speaking so fast I catch only every third word. Whatever she says makes the waiter smile and nod like she just complimented his mother’s cooking. He disappears inside, and a moment later, a woman comes out.

She’s around our age. Olive skin, dark hair pulled back at the nape of her neck, wide brown eyes that go even wider when they land on Ivy. “Dio mio,” she breathes. Then she’s moving, rounding the table, pulling Ivy out of her chair into a hug that lasts longer than a casual greeting. A lot longer. She then holds Ivy by the shoulders and looks at her the way you look at someone you’ve been worried about, then says something in rapid Italian that I don’t catch but makes Ivy laugh. She actually laughs, the real kind, the kind I’ve heard more often lately but still not often enough.

“Lucia.” Ivy switches to English with a glance in my direction. “This is Nick.”

Lucia turns to me, wearing a smile that warms up a degree at a time. “Nick,” she repeats while looking me over with an openness that borders on appraisal. Is she making sure I’m worth Ivy’s time? “Very nice. Welcome.”

Then she turns back to Ivy, takes her face in both hands, and says something else in Italian. Whatever it is, Ivy’s expression goes soft in a way I’ve rarely seen from her. Lucia kisses both her cheeks—lingering, familiar—before squeezing her hands and disappearing back inside with a promise to bring something special.

All I can do is sit and watch the whole exchange. The way Lucia touched her, the comfort of it. The intimacy. Ivy didn’t stiffen or pull back, the way she does with almost everyone else in the world. The way Lucia looked at her wasn’t the way a friend looks at a friend. Or maybe it was, but it was the way a very specific kind of friend looks at a very specific kind of friend.

Food arrives. Small plates, nothing I ordered, but all of it is incredible. Bruschetta with tomatoes so red they look painted. Some kind of whipped cheese with honey and pistachios. Thin slices of prosciutto draped over melon so ripe and juicy I almost can’t believe how good it is. There’s a carafe of white wine cold enough to sweat.

For a little while, it’s enough to sit and eat and enjoy the rich, fresh flavors. But while I do, I can’t help wondering how to ask a question without sounding like the kind of man I don’t want to be.

Lucia comes back twice. The first time, it’s to bring more bread. The second time, she refills the wine. That’s when she rests her hand on Ivy’s shoulder and lets it slide down her arm as she walks away.

Fuck it. I have to do it. “So. You and Lucia.”

Ivy looks at me over the rim of her glass. Her expression is perfectly neutral. “Me and Lucia.”

“How do you know each other?”

“We used to sleep together.”

That’s when I choke on my wine. Not a subtle, dignified clearing of my throat. I actually choke, the kind where the liquid goes down the wrong pipe, and my body stages a revolt. I cough into my fist while she watches me with patient amusement.

“Are you all right?” she asks. Oh, yeah, she’s enjoying this. Not cruelly. More like the way you enjoy catching someone off guard when you like them.

“Fine,” I manage before clearing my throat. “Just fine.”

“You asked.”

“I did ask.” I pick up the wine and take a sip, then set it down. I need to move on. This is not the hill I’m going to die on, no matter what my face is doing right now. “How long?”

“On and off for a couple of years. It ended well. We’re friends.” She says it the way she says most things: directly, no apology, no checking to see how it lands. Because she doesn’t owe me an explanation, and we both know it.

That doesn’t stop me from sitting here with an expression on my face I can’t seem to get rid of. When I catch my own reflection in the restaurant window, it’s pretty damn obvious I’m rattled.

She takes a bite of bruschetta and chews thoughtfully before asking, “Does it bother you?”

“No,” I say, too quickly.

“Liar.” But she says it gently, the way she’s been saying things to me lately. Like the word has a softer landing when it’s aimed at me than it would at anyone else.

“It doesn’t bother me. I’m just—” I have to search for the word. “Adjusting.”

“Adjusting.” She repeats it like she’s testing it in her mouth. “To the idea that I had a life while you thought I was dead?”

“To the scope of it.” I lean back in my chair, narrowing my eyes at her. “I spent twelve years with a ghost. You spent those years actually living. I’m catching up.”

Something shifts in her face. It’s not pity—she doesn’t do pity—but something closer to understanding. “It wasn’t all like this, you know. Just to be fair. In fact, most of it wasn’t like this. Lucia was one of a few good things. This restaurant, this neighborhood, they were the exception. The rest of it was work and training and doing what I was told.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” It’s not a challenge. It’s a genuine question.

“I’m learning.” And I mean it. Every day I learn something new about the years I missed, and every day I have to decide whether to grieve the version of her I lost or be grateful for the one I found. Most days, it’s both.

She holds my gaze another beat before taking a sip of her wine. A breeze moves through the piazza and ruffles the edge of the awning. For a few seconds, everything is quiet and good.

I should leave it alone. I know I should. But I’ve never been very good at leaving things alone where she’s concerned. “What about men?”

Slowly, her eyebrow arches. It’s a warning shot, and I see it, and I keep going anyway, because that’s apparently who I am. “How many have there been?”

“Are we really doing this?”

“I’m curious,” I tell her with a shrug.

“You’re jealous.”

“I’m curious and also possibly jealous, and I would like an answer.”

“How many women have you been with since you thought I was dead?” she counters, leaning forward with her arms folded on the table.

Ouch. “That’s different.”

“Exactly how is it different?”

“I thought you were dead.”

“I didn’t know you existed.” She lets that land, and it sits heavy in my chest. “So, by your logic, we were both single and free to make our own choices. Which means the number doesn’t matter for either of us. Unless you want to tell me yours first?”

I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“I thought you might say that.” The smile she gives me is small and knowing. I would be annoyed by it if it wasn’t so goddamn beautiful. She knows she won. Hell, she won before the conversation started, because she’s smarter than me in all the ways that count. The sooner I make peace with that, the better off I’ll be.

We finish the meal slowly. Lucia brings dessert without being asked—some kind of almond cake with powdered sugar that melts on the tongue. Along with that, we have coffee. By the time we leave, the sun has crossed the sky. It’s heading for the horizon with the kind of unhurried inevitability that only happens in places where time doesn’t feel like it’s working against you.

Ivy leads again. We walk through narrow streets that open onto wider ones. We pass shopfronts and churches and a small park where children are playing while their parents sit on benches and argue about something in rapid Italian. She doesn’t narrate or explain. She just walks, and I walk beside her, and that’s enough.

At one point, her hand finds mine. She doesn’t look at me when she does it. She just reaches over and threads her fingers through mine like it’s something she’s always done, and we keep walking.

She stops on a bridge over one of the smaller canals. Our hands are still linked when she leans against the railing and looks out over the water. The light turns everything gold and amber and makes the yellow and cream buildings on either side of the water glow. For a long time, it’s enough to stand by her side and admire the way the water sparkles where the sunbeams hit it.

It’s enough to stand here, arms touching, breathing together in this moment. Neither of us needs to say a word. It’s enough to be here. It’s even better when she leans closer, her head almost touching my shoulder.

“This is a good spot,” I decide.

“I used to come here after jobs to decompress.” She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly as I watch. In this light, I see the faint scar at her temple. I’ve noticed it before, and I’ve never asked about it, and I probably never will unless she brings it up first. “I wanted to feel like a normal person.”

“Did it work?”

“Sometimes. More than anything else did.” Now her head rests against my shoulder, and I welcome the weight as much as I welcome the music coming through an open window somewhere along the canal. It’s a slow song, kind of pretty, and it fits the moment perfectly.

Then she turns her head until her mouth is close to my ear, and I can feel the warmth of her breath on my skin. “In case you were wondering,” she murmurs, “I’ve never done this with anyone else.”

“That’s good to know,” I reply. She’s giving me something she’s never given anyone. The simplest thing in the world. Her trust, her true self. I bring her hand up and press my lips to her knuckles, and she lets me do it.

The sun slowly sinks and eventually disappears, but neither of us is in any hurry.

IVY

It’s been four days since the club. They’ve been the closest thing to normal I’ve had in longer than I can remember.

We’ve been back to Lucia’s twice. Nick pretended not to notice the way she touched my arm when she brought the wine, which I appreciated—but the faint color in his ears told me he’s still adjusting. We’ve walked until I ran out of streets to show him, then found new ones. He bought me gelato from a cart and watched me eat it like it was the most important thing he’s watched lately. Like he was cataloging every second, every reaction, and storing it. Normally, I would find it unnerving. It would probably piss me off. It doesn’t bother me now.

I took him to a bookshop where I used to spend entire afternoons. The owner, an old man named Sandro who smells like pipe tobacco and doesn’t ask questions, nodded at me like I’d been in last week instead of several months ago. Nick browsed the shelves while I sat by the window and watched him. For a few minutes, the distance between who I was and who I’m becoming narrowed down until it felt a lot more manageable.

It’s been nice. I’m not used to nice. Nice usually makes me suspicious, because in my experience, nice is usually the thing that happens right before everything goes wrong.

There’s an open-air market near the canal that sets up every morning and sells everything from fresh produce to leather bags to cheap scarves for the tourists. I have a paper bag under one arm filled with fresh pasta, bread, wine, and a huge wedge of pecorino. I promised him I’d make cacio e pepe tonight, and I intend to keep that promise. We walk together, side by side, content to be together. I’m actually content.

Which is, of course, when I see him.

He’s on the other side of the street, maybe thirty meters ahead of us. Mid-forties with a stocky build, his hair going gray at the temples. He’s wearing a blue linen jacket that’s too warm for the weather, which tells me he’s carrying something underneath it. He’s walking with purpose but not urgency, phone in one hand while the other swings at his side.

Marco Ferretti. One of Vincenzo’s mid-level associates. Not inner circle, but close enough to know faces. Close enough to know mine.

In the space of a heartbeat, everything changes. The market noise goes flat. The colors drain away. The warm, easy feeling I’ve been carrying these past several days folds up and disappears. Something older and colder replaces it.

I don’t grab Nick’s arm. I don’t do anything that might draw attention. I only angle us toward a fruit stand on our side of the street, putting a canvas awning between us and Marco’s sightline.

“Two o’clock,” I murmur. “Blue jacket. Don’t look.”

“Who?”

“His name is Marco Ferretti. Works for Vincenzo. Logistics, mostly. He manages supply routes between Milan and Naples.” I pick up a peach from the stand and pretend to examine it, tilting my head just enough to track Marco’s reflection in the glass storefront beside us. “If he sees me, he reports it, and Vincenzo knows I’m here. If he knows I’m here⁠—”

“Everything is finished before it starts.” His voice has gone flat. The shift is instant, the way mine was. “Did he see you?”

“I don’t know.” And I don’t. He was looking at his phone when I spotted him, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t glance up thirty seconds earlier and clock me from the corner of his eye. It doesn’t mean he isn’t on the phone right now telling someone what he saw. I can’t know, and not knowing means I can’t take the chance.

The calculation is ugly and immediate, and it runs itself without my permission. If Marco saw me, he calls Vincenzo, who sends people. The operation is blown, and we’re running again.

If Marco didn’t see me, he goes about his day, never knowing how close he came.

But I can’t bet everything on that. Not when the stakes are this high. Not with Nick standing next to me.

I set the peach down. “We need to follow him.”

Nick studies my face. He doesn’t argue with whatever he sees there. He only starts to move when I do.

Marco is still headed north, now with the phone to his ear. I keep us on the opposite side of the street, half a block behind, matching his pace. The market crowd thins as we move further from the canal. The streets narrow into the older part of the neighborhood where the buildings press closer together and the foot traffic drops. Less cover, but also fewer eyes.

He turns left onto a side street. I hold up a hand, and Nick and I wait at the corner for three seconds before rounding it. Marco is still walking. His phone call is over, and he’s pocketed the device. Now he’s moving with less purpose, like a man killing time between appointments.

“I need you to get ahead of him,” I tell Nick. “Come at him from the other direction. Get his attention. Draw him somewhere narrow.”

Nick looks at me. A question passes between us that neither of us has to ask out loud, because we both already know the answer.

“There’s an alley past the green door,” I continue, my voice steady. “I noticed it on the way to the market. No cameras, no windows facing in. Dead end.”

He holds my gaze for one more second. Then he nods, crosses the street, and moves.

I watch him go. He cuts through a passageway between two buildings, looping around to get ahead of Marco without being seen. I hang back, tracking Marco from behind while Nick positions himself.

It takes less than two minutes. Nick emerges ahead of Marco, walking toward him. He has his phone out, looking at the screen, and as they approach each other on the narrow sidewalk, Nick stumbles slightly. He bumps Marco’s shoulder. Apologizes in Italian with a rough accent, but it’s passable enough for a brief exchange. Marco stops. Nick gestures with his hands, asking something about directions to keep him talking.

While I close the distance from behind.

Nick angles his body, still talking, then takes a half step that guides the guy’s attention toward the mouth of the alley. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but Marco glances in the direction he indicates and takes a step toward the alley to look.

Nick steps with him. Another half step. Then another. Marco is in the alley now, still turned partly toward Nick, still thinking about directions or whatever it was that got him out here today.

I come in behind him.

He doesn’t hear me. Not until I’m close enough that it doesn’t matter whether he hears me or not. When he turns, his eyes go wide and his mouth opens, and I see the recognition hit. It’s not surprise or confusion, but the terrible clarity of a man who knows exactly who he’s looking at and what it means.

“Ivy—”

My name is the last thing he ever says. My hand is already moving. The blade I’ve been carrying in my jacket since we left the safe house does its work quickly and efficiently. The way I was taught. One motion. Clean. He drops, and I catch him, lowering him against the wall so there’s no sound of a body hitting the ground.

Nick is at the mouth of the alley, blocking the view from the street. He doesn’t watch. He doesn’t need to.

I crouch beside Marco and go through his pockets. Phone first—I power it down and pocket it. We’ll get rid of it later. Then his wallet. I open it and pull the cash. Three hundred euros, give or take. Enough to make it look like a motive. I wipe the wallet and drop it beside him, open and empty, the way a thief would leave it.

And that’s when I see the photos. Two of them, tucked behind a clear plastic sleeve the way people used to carry pictures before phones made it unnecessary. The first is a woman, dark-haired, smiling, standing in a garden with her hand shielding her eyes from the sun. The second is a family portrait. Marco, the woman, and two children—a boy and a girl, both under ten. The boy has Marco’s chin. The girl has his eyes.

I stare at the photos, and something cold lodges itself in my gut.

I’ve done this before. Stood over bodies and gone through pockets and walked away without looking back, because that was the job. The job didn’t require me to think about what I was leaving behind. It required me to be precise and efficient and to not ask questions. Vincenzo trained that into me the way you train any reflex—through repetition, through reward. Through the steady, patient erosion of the part of a person that hesitates.

I used to be proud that I never hesitated.

Now I’m looking at a picture of two children whose father isn’t coming home tonight, and the pride is nowhere to be found.

My hands are steady when I stand up, because they always are. That’s what training does. It keeps your hands steady even when the rest of you is falling apart.

Nick is beside me, checking the street, confirming we’re clear. He’s doing all the practical things that need to be done while I stand here holding a dead man’s cash and thinking about all the other wallets I never opened. All the other pockets I went through without looking at the photos. The families I never thought about, because thinking about them wasn’t part of the job description.

How many of them had children? How many of them were someone’s father, someone’s husband, someone’s son? I never asked, because Vincenzo never told me, and I never wanted to know. The targets were names on a page. Coordinates. Schedules. Vulnerabilities to exploit. They were never people. They couldn’t be people, because if they were, then what I was doing had a weight to it I couldn’t carry.

Now I’m carrying it. All of it, all at once, standing in a narrow alley with blood on my hands and a dead man’s family staring up at me from behind a plastic sleeve.

Were the reasons even real? The justifications Vincenzo gave me for each assignment—were any of them true? Or was every job just another move on his board, another piece removed because it served his interests? Did the man in Prague deserve what I did to him? The woman in Lyon? The couple in Budapest?

I’ll never know. That’s the worst part. The man who gave the orders is a liar, and liars don’t leave records of their reasons.

We’re three blocks away before either of us speaks. Nick dropped Marco’s phone down a storm drain. The cash is in my pocket. The blade is clean and back in my jacket. From the outside, we’re just two people walking home from the market. Inside, I am somewhere very far away.

“Well,” Nick murmurs, breaking the silence. “We make a hell of a team.”

I don’t look at him. He lets the silence stretch for another half block before trying again, quieter this time. “Ivy. Talk to me.”

“He had kids.” My voice is flat. The professional version of me, the one that gets through things by turning off everything that isn’t essential. “A boy and a girl. Both young. There were photos in his wallet.”

He’s quiet for a moment. “I saw.”

“I used to be able to do this without thinking about it. That was the whole point. You don’t think, you don’t feel, you do the job and move on.” I stare at the street ahead of us. “I can’t stop thinking about how many times I moved on.”

“You did what you had to do.”

“Did I? Every time?” Jesus, there’s an edge of hysteria in my voice, and I can’t soften it no matter how I try. “Or did I do what Vincenzo told me to do and call it the same thing because it was easier than asking questions?”

He doesn’t answer right away. That’s one of the things about him. He doesn’t fill silence with noise just to make it more comfortable. He lets it breathe. He even lets it hurt, if it needs to.

We cross a small bridge. The water catches the afternoon light and throws it back in scattered pieces. Everything looks normal. The world doesn’t rearrange itself when you take a life. It just keeps going, indifferent, while you’re the one who has to figure out how to keep going with it.

“This time was different,” he finally decides. “You know that.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.” He stops walking. I take two more steps before stopping, too, and turning to face him. His pale blue eyes are steady, the way they always are, but there’s something harder underneath the calm. Something that isn’t gentle. Something that brings to mind the man he was in the years we spent apart. “This time, you did it to protect yourself. To protect me, too. You did it to protect everything we came here to do. That man would’ve picked up his phone and made a call, and within the hour, Vincenzo would’ve known exactly where we are. And then what? We run? We lose the only chance we have to stop him? What happens after that? I’ll tell you. We would spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders.”

“That doesn’t make it⁠—”

“It makes it necessary.” He steps closer. It’s not aggressive. He’s not crowding me. He’s stepping closer like he wants to make sure I hear what he’s about to say and let it sink in. “I will never feel sorry for someone dying if it means protecting you. I won’t. You can ask me to feel a lot of things, and I’ll try, because it’s you. But not that. There is nothing in this world more important than your life. Nothing.”

When the words hit, they don’t land gently. It’s more like I just fell from a great height and all the air got knocked from my lungs.

“You didn’t know those people, Ivy,” he reminds me. “The ones from before. And you might never know. But this one, you did know. You know exactly why you did what you did, and the reason is that you deserve to be alive. That’s it. That has to be enough.”

Here’s this man who spent twelve years thinking I was dead and still came looking for me. He let me shoot him and fight him at every turn, and he never once stopped showing up. He watched the street while I did something terrible, and he’s not judging me for it. He’s still standing in front of me, telling me my life is worth more than my guilt, and he means it. I know he means it.

I don’t know how to cry anymore, not really. Still, there’s a burning sensation behind my eyes that I haven’t felt in a long time. “Okay,” I say quietly.

He doesn’t ask if I’m all right, because he knows I’m not. He probably knows I won’t be for a while. Instead, he takes the paper bag I’m still carrying so my hands are free, and we walk together back to the safe house. The city is still moving around us the way it always does, completely oblivious. Somewhere behind us, a man in a blue jacket sits in an alley and will never go home again.

I’ll make dinner tonight. I’ll boil the pasta and grate the cheese. I’ll do something completely ordinary with my hands, because ordinary is the only antidote for what’s crawling through my chest right now.

I didn’t know until now how much I need the ordinary.

NICK

I wake up with her ass pressed against me, and my arm draped over her waist. The room is still dark, with that early dawn look that makes everything feel suspended. She’s warm and soft, the smell of her shampoo lingers on everything.

I don’t move, letting myself have this moment. But unfortunately, my dick has a mind of its own. She starts to stir, and the way her breathing changes, she can feel my growing hardness pressed against her; she’s deliberately grinding against my cock. 

“You’re awake,” she says, her voice rough with sleep.

“Getting there.”

She does it again, a slow roll of her hips that sends sparks up my spine. “This says otherwise.”

I pull her closer, eliminating any space that’s still between us. She makes a tiny moan, pushing back harder. 

“Keep doing that,” I warn her, “and I’m going to fuck you.”

“Promises?”

I roll her onto her stomach, pinning her with my weight, my knee between her thighs spreading her legs. Before she can catch her breath, my cock is sliding between her slick folds.

“Nick…”

I don’t let her finish, pushing inside with one hard thrust, burying myself to the hilt. She cries out, arching her back. I don’t give her time to adjust before I start moving, the angle deep, hitting the spot that makes her nails dig into the mattress.

“Fuck,” she breathes, and I feel her pussy start to tighten around me, already close.

I lean down, my mouth against her ear, my weight pressing her into the bed. “You wanted this. Grinding against me like a little tease.”

“Yes,” she gasps, pushing back to meet my thrusts.

“You wanted me to wake up hard and desperate for you.”

“Yes.”

I grip her hips and lift her slightly, allowing me the perfect angle to drive deeper, making her tremble. 

“Come for me,” I growl, my rhythm getting harder, more punishing. “Let me feel it.”

She comes with a cry that she tries to muffle, her body going rigid, her back arching hard enough to lift her shoulders off the bed. I keep fucking her through it, wanting to draw it out as long as I can.

I ease up when I feel her body go limp, my dick still inside her, and still very hard. I run my hand down her spine, feeling her shiver under my touch. Then I slide my thumb between her ass cheeks, pressing against the tight ring of muscle there.

She tenses, her head turning quickly to look at me over her shoulder, eyes wide.

“Has anyone—” I start to ask.

“No,” she says, and I can hear the hesitation in her voice. “Not like this.”

I use my thumb and gently apply pressure, just enough to let her feel it. “Do you want me to stop?”

She’s quiet for a moment, then she shakes her head, pushing back against my hand.

I reach for the lube in the nightstand drawer. I coat my fingers, then slowly start to press one against her, waiting for her to relax.

She’s so fucking tight, and I can feel her tense, fighting the instinct to pull away. I keep my other hand on her hip, grounding her, giving shallow thrusts that keep her on the edge.

“Breathe,” I tell her, and she gives a shuddering exhale.

I work my way in deeper, feeling her stretch around me, watching her face for any sign of real discomfort. But she’s biting her lip, her eyes closed, and when I curl my finger slightly, she makes a sound that sounds so sweet.

“More,” she whispers.

I add more lube taking my time even though everything in me is screaming at me to take her in every way possible. When I have two fingers moving easily, I pull out of her and position myself.

“Last chance,” I say, my voice rough.

“Fuck me,” she says, fierce and desperate. “Now.”

I push the head of my cock in slowly, feeling the resistance at first, then the overwhelming give. She groans, a deep, guttural sound, and I stop, giving her a moment, my whole body fighting to hold back.

“Are you okay?” I manage.

“Don’t stop,” she pants. “God, don’t stop.”

She pushes back harder, demanding more, and I lose the last of my control. I grip her hips and fuck her the way we both need. 

She comes again, unexpectedly, her body clamping down on me so tight I see stars. I follow her over the edge, with a sound that’s closer to a roar than anything human.

I keep my arms wrapped around her, with my face buried in her neck.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” I ask again, softer this time.

She turns her head, her eyes finding mine. She looks wrecked, undone, more open than I’ve ever seen her. “Yeah,” she whispers. “I’m okay.”

I kiss her shoulder, her neck. “Good.”

Neither of us moves for a long time. The sheets are tangled around our legs, and the morning light cuts through the window in a warm, pale stripe that falls across the foot of the bed. Her hair is damp at the temples. Mine probably is, too.

I press my mouth to the curve of her shoulder and leave it there, feeling her pulse slow under my lips. She makes a small sound that’s not quite a sigh before wiggling closer. Her spine fits against me in a way that makes me wonder how a body can be used as a weapon one minute and feel like coming home the next.

There’s nothing else for a long time. Just this. Her warmth, her breathing. The smell of her shampoo mixed with sweat and sleep. I close my eyes and let myself have it. I’ve learned the hard way that moments like this are finite. They only exist in the spaces between everything else—and everything else always comes back, usually a lot sooner than we want it to.

Now, it comes back.

Tonight. The club. Vincenzo.

The thought is like a blade between my ribs. Impossible to ignore once it’s there. I open my eyes and stare at the ceiling as I feel the day rearrange itself around the fact that in roughly twelve hours, she’ll be back in that room with the table of tools, waiting for one of the most dangerous men in Europe to walk through the door.

I don’t let myself move. I don’t tighten my grip or change my breathing or do any of the things that would give away what’s going on in my head. But my mind is already running. Through the layout again, the exits. The extraction routes, the position of Liam’s team. I go through all of it the way I did last week, only last week it settled me. The same is not true this week.

I’ve been doing this long enough that the morning before an operation is just another morning. You run your checklist; you go through the motions of the rest of your day, and you execute once the time comes. Calm is what separates professionals from amateurs, and I’ve never had a problem finding it.

But I’ve also never sent someone I love into a room alone with a man who would kill her if he knew who she was. The scenarios keep multiplying. Vincenzo recognizes something—a gesture or a posture, the way she tilts her head when she’s thinking. Her mask could slip. He could notice the camera. He could bring someone with him who wasn’t in Gabriel’s intel. There are a hundred ways it could all go wrong, and every single one of them ends with her in danger, and me on the other side of a locked door, unable to reach her in time.

I realize I’m grinding my teeth and force myself to stop.

“You’re thinking too loud,” she murmurs.

Dammit. “I’m not thinking about anything.”

“Liar.” She turns over to face me, still in my arms. Her green eyes find mine with a directness that still catches me off guard sometimes, even now. She doesn’t look sleepy or satisfied or any of the things she should be after what we just did. She looks like someone who’s been paying attention, gauging the tension in my body, correctly assuming what’s going on in my head.

“You’re worried about tonight,” she concludes with a soft sigh. Almost like she’s disappointed in me.

“I’m always a little wound up before a job.”

“My god, you suck at lying. You know that, right?” Her hair falls across her collarbone when she props herself up on one elbow. “You were focused last week. You were methodical. Right now, you’re grinding your teeth in bed loud enough for me to hear. There’s a big difference.”

I can’t argue with that. She wouldn’t let me even if I tried. “It’s different this time.”

“Because last time was a dry run, and this time is real?”

“Because last time he didn’t show up. This time he will, and you’ll be alone in a room with him.”

She watches me for a moment. Something moves through her expression. Not defensiveness. Not the sharp edge she would’ve given me a month ago if I’d said something like this. It’s something quieter now. “I’m not used to this,” she whispers.

“To what?”

“To someone worrying about me.” She says it simply, like she’s talking about the weather, but I hear the slight tremor in her voice. She would hate it if she knew how easy she is to read sometimes. “Nobody else ever worried. Not Vincenzo or my handlers. Worrying implies you care about another person, not just the asset.”

She pauses, her brow wrinkling. “I was always the asset.”

“You are more than an asset,” I tell her, brushing hair away from her shoulder, letting my fingers linger there.

“I’m learning that.” She reaches out and traces a line along my jaw with her fingertip, light enough to barely register. “But when someone’s never worried about you before, it’s strange to feel it coming from someone else. I don’t always know what to do with it.”

“You don’t have to do anything with it. It’s up to me to carry that.”

“That’s very noble, but that’s also not how it works.” The corner of her mouth lifts in a smirk, but there’s no fresh light in her eyes. They’re still flat, pensive. “Your worry affects your focus. Your focus affects your performance. If you go in tonight distracted, you become a liability. I can’t afford liabilities.”

She’s right. She’s also deflecting, turning the emotional into the tactical because the tactical is easier to manage. I recognize the move because I’ve used it myself more times than I’d care to admit.

“I’ll be fine tonight,” I tell her. “I’ll do my job. You know I will.”

“I do know that.” She holds my gaze like she’s daring me to look away. “So trust me to do mine.”

This woman has surprised me in every way a person can be surprised. She’s dismantled every assumption I brought with me to Prague and replaced it with something more complicated, more real. A few days ago, I watched her kill a man in an alley and carry groceries home in the same hand. She made dinner afterward, standing at the stove with steady hands and distant eyes, and I held her that night while she slept while not sleeping much myself.

I’ve spent the past week getting to know Ivy. Not Laura, not the ghost, but Ivy. Who walks through Milan like it belongs to her. Who carries a blade in her jacket the way other women carry lip balm. She took me to her favorite restaurant, introduced me to her ex-lover without flinching, then stood on a bridge at sunset and told me she’d never done that with anyone else.

Every day I know her better, and every day it gets harder to let her walk into danger. That’s the paradox. The closer she gets, the more I want to protect her. The more I want to protect her, the more I risk becoming something she doesn’t need: another man who thinks he knows what’s best for her.

She’s watching me think. I can see her reading my face, all of it, because I stopped trying to hide things from her somewhere around day three in Milan. There’s no point. She sees through everything I put up.

“After tonight,” I begin, then stop myself, because I’m not sure how to finish the sentence. After tonight, we have the footage. After tonight, we go home. After tonight, we take what we have to Vincenzo and force his hand, and then…

Then what?

For me, the answer has been obvious since before we got on the plane. We go home together. She stays. We build something. I’ve been operating under that assumption, so naturally it didn’t occur to me until right now, lying in this bed, looking at her face, that she might not be operating under the same one.

“After tonight?” she repeats, waiting.

Oh, to hell with it. “What happens? With us.”

The change in her is subtle, but I feel it. She’s pulling back slightly. Not physically—she doesn’t move away or break eye contact. But something in her eyes changes. Like the question caught her off guard, which means she hasn’t been thinking about it, which means the thing I assumed was obvious wasn’t obvious to her at all.

“Let’s get through tonight first,” she says.

It’s reasonable. It’s practical. And it’s exactly the kind of thing a person says when they don’t want to answer the actual question. “But…”

“I mean it,” she insists firmly. “Tonight matters. What comes after—” She stops and looks away for the first time. Her gaze drifts toward the window. The morning light catches the green in her eyes and turns them translucent. “I don’t know how to plan for after. I’ve never had an after. Every part of my life has been about the next mission, the next job, the next city. When you’ve lived like that long enough, you stop thinking in terms of what comes next because what comes next was always someone else’s decision.”

“It’s your decision now.”

“I know.” She says it quietly, and the quietness is the part that worries me. Not because she’s shutting me out—she isn’t, not completely. It worries me because I can feel the edge of something she’s not ready to say yet. The sort of hesitation that has nothing to do with how she feels about me and everything to do with whether she believes she’s allowed to feel it.

Every part of me wants to take her by the shoulders and tell her this is real, that I’m not going anywhere, that she doesn’t have to earn the right to want something for herself. I want to lay it all out—the future I see so clearly, it’s practically a photograph. The two of us. A place that’s ours. Something ordinary and permanent, and safe.

But I’ve watched her long enough to know that pushing is how you lose her. She doesn’t retreat from threats or confrontation. She retreats from pressure she never asked for. The wall she’s built isn’t made of hostility. It’s made of twelve years of survival. You don’t dismantle that by demanding she open the door. You stand on the other side, and you wait, hoping she decides to open it herself.

It’s the most goddamn frustrating thing I’ve ever experienced in all my life, and I’ve been shot in the leg by the woman I love.

“Okay,” I say. “Tonight first.”

She looks at me. Studies me the way she does, reading whatever lies beneath my words. After a few seconds, something in her expression eases. Not all the way, but enough.

Then she leans in to kiss me. Slow, deliberate. Her hand rests against my chest over my heart like she’s checking it’s still beating. When she pulls back, she rests her forehead against mine. “I don’t know what comes after,” she murmurs. “All I know is I want you in it. Whatever it is.”

It’s not a promise. It’s not the answer I was looking for. But it’s honest, and it’s coming from someone who spent a long time being lied to by everyone she trusted. When I look at it that way, honest is worth more than any promise I could ask for.

I’ll take it. For right now, I’ll take it.

“Go get dressed,” I tell her, stretching, trying to grin. “We’ve got work to do.”

She almost smiles. Then she kisses me one more time and rolls out of bed, and the day begins.

IVY

The first thing I wasn’t prepared for: being taken to a dressing room on my arrival, though I’m already prepared the way I was last week. “Mr. Russo needs time to ready himself for you,” one of the other employees informed me before directing me here. It’s simple, narrow, with a rack stuffed with various costumes. I guess not everyone has their own collection like I do. The mirror mounted along one wall is lined with warm bulbs that make everything look softer than it is. I don’t feel soft.

The wig is in place, and the makeup is done. The corset is laced, and the camera is pinned exactly where it was last week, angled outward at chest height. My hands are steady, because they’re always steady. It’s the rest of me that’s a different story.

I keep thinking back to this morning, no matter how I remind myself to focus. Nick’s face when he asked me what happens after tonight. The silence I filled with practicality because I didn’t have anything better in the moment. Let’s get through tonight first. As if tonight is the reason I don’t have an answer, when the truth is I wouldn’t have one regardless.

I’ve never thought about the future. Not the way he means it. The future was always the next assignment, the next identity I pulled from the cabinet and wore until it was no longer useful. Life happened in the spaces between, but it was never the point. The point was the mission. The mission was the structure, and the structure was the only thing holding me together.

Without it, what am I? A woman with a drawer full of passports and no idea which name is really hers. A weapon without a hand to aim it. Nick wants to build something, and I can see it in his eyes every time he looks at me—a vision he has of a life that includes me. Permanently. Not as a mission or an objective, but as a person who stays.

I don’t know how to stay. I’ve never stayed anywhere. Every place I’ve ever lived was temporary by design. Every person I’ve ever trusted has eventually revealed themselves to be something other than what they promised. Vincenzo promised me a family and gave me a leash. My handlers promised me purpose and gave me a kill list. Even Elena, the one person who showed me genuine kindness, was taken from me the moment Vincenzo decided she’d gotten too close.

So when a man lies beside me in the morning light and asks me to imagine a future, the first thing my mind does is search for the trap. Where’s the hook? What’s the cost? What will he take from me once I’ve given him enough to make the taking worthwhile?

I hate that I think this way. I hate it even more that I can’t stop.

Nick is not Vincenzo. I know that. He’s proven it in every way a person can prove something without words. Through patience and presence, through his stubborn, infuriating refusal to walk away no matter how many times I’ve given him a reason to. But knowing something and believing it are two different animals, and the distance between them is more than a decade wide.

A knock on the door pulls me back into the room. The bouncer who led me here. “He’s here. Whenever you’re ready.”

“One minute, please.”

The door closes, and I look at the mirror one last time. The woman staring back isn’t me. She’s a role, a performance. A thing someone built from the ground up to be whatever the situation required. How ironic that I’m about to use his own creation against him.

I check the camera. The tiny green light pulses once. Live.

“Feed’s up,” Nick confirms in my ear. His voice is taut but controlled. Professional. Whatever he’s feeling, he’s packed it away for now. Good. I need him sharp tonight.

I make sure the mask is in place, take one breath, and step out of the dressing room.

The corridor is dim. My heels click against the floor as I walk toward the room at the end of the hall. The same room we used last week. I push it open and step inside.

Then I stop.

Vincenzo Russo is on all fours in the center of the room. He’s wearing nothing but a leather collar buckled snug around his throat, a leash attached to the D-ring and pooled on the floor next to him. His clothes are folded neatly on a chair by the wall: jacket, trousers, shirt, all arranged with the same brutal precision he brings to everything. His head is bowed. He hasn’t looked up.

I can’t move for what feels like forever. This is the man who controlled every aspect of my life. The patriarch, the iron hand. A man whose voice could silence a room and whose name made powerful men careful with their words.

He’s naked and collared and waiting on his hands and knees for a woman he thinks he’s never met to tell him what to do.

“Holy. Shit,” Nick whispers.

Yes. That’s roughly the whole situation in a nutshell.

I need to get myself together. I’m supposed to be prepared for this, but nothing could have prepared me for the sight of this man wearing a collar and a leash, waiting eagerly for whatever is supposed to come next.

“Let him take the lead,” Nick advises me. “Let him show you what he wants.”

He’s right. His good sense shakes me out of the worst of my shock, and I remember in time to put on a German accent—the one I’ve used for jobs I was sent on by the man now waiting on his hands and knees.

“What is it you require this evening?” My voice is flat, full of command. Exactly the way I need to sound.

It doesn’t occur to me until he begins crawling toward the table along the wall that he doesn’t intend to talk. Of course. He’s a dog, isn’t he? He wouldn’t be able to speak.

“I cannot fucking believe this.” I can’t tell if Nick is still in shock or whether he thinks this is funny. I’m not sure how I feel about it either.

Vincenzo crawls to the table and then crawls down its length, studying the toys and tools, waiting before finally panting, like he’s excited. Dear God, he even wiggles his ass a little the way a dog would before nudging one of the toys with his nose and panting louder.

It takes a moment for me to understand what I’m looking at. A butt plug, smooth and gleaming in the low light. It’s the long, fur tail attached to the flared base that makes my heart stutter.

He wants me to put that in him. No. There was no way to prepare for this.

“You better do it,” Nick urges, and he’s still walking the thin line between concern and amusement. “Don’t forget the lube.”

I won’t forget it. “Yes, a tail. Like the dog you are.” I allow disgust to leak into my voice. It isn’t difficult. And it has nothing to do with the act I’m currently going through, opening the small bottle the club provided and pouring clear gel over the plug.

Here we go.

“Turn,” I demand, holding the toy, using my other hand to gesture for him to present his ass. I cannot believe I’m doing this. Nothing I came up with in my wildest imaginings came close to touching this. Gazing at Vincenzo’s bare ass, which he lifts, eager to be filled.

I take a deep breath, brace myself, and slowly guide the plug into his ass. His short, excited breaths get faster, like he’s enjoying it. I’m sure he is.

“Now,” I announce once he’s good and full, “I expect you wish to be walked.” His head bobs, tongue hanging out of his mouth like he’s excited. He’s given no indication of recognizing me. I need to remind myself what this is about, that I need as much embarrassing evidence as possible.

So far, so good.

I pick up the end of the leash and loop it around my fist once, twice. “Now walk,” I demand, my heels snapping against the floor while I lead him around the edges of the room. He pants happily, grunting, growling.

“He’s loving this,” Nick observes with something like wonder in his voice. “This is what gets him off. Tell him what a bad boy he is.”

“You’ve been a very bad boy,” I scold, clicking my tongue. “Bad boys don’t get treats, do they? No, they do not. Bad boys are punished.”

Vincenzo gazes up at me for the first time, which might be the worst part of all of this so far. Looking him in the eye. This man, who sat across from me at dinner countless times, who taught me, molded me. Who struck fear into the hearts of so many powerful men with nothing more than a glare, maybe the flaring of his nostrils.

Here he is, my bad dog, and I think he wants to be punished.

“What does my dog want? Does he want pets?” I ask as we continue our stroll around the room’s perimeter. He pants louder, harder, even getting up on his knees. His hands hang in front of him like a dog’s paws. Now I see what’s hanging between his legs. It’s almost pathetically small—really, I’m not surprised. If there’s anything the man has always radiated, it wasn’t big dick energy.

“I don’t think he deserves it,” I decide. “Only good dogs get pets. Bad dogs get punished, don’t they?”

He whines—it’s a high-pitched sound, nasal, and I actually have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. “He is really into this,” Nick muses in my ear. “I wonder exactly how far he’s willing to go.”

I would swear he can hear Nick, because he now scrambles around on the floor, turning in circles on his hands and knees, whimpering louder now. “What is it? What do you want?” I ask. He leads me to the corner opposite the table full of toys.

At first, I don’t realize what I’m looking at. When he lifts his leg, angled toward the corner, I don’t understand until I hear the sound of piss hitting the floor. “Holy fuck,” Nick mutters. “Rub his nose in it. Humiliate him.”

Yes. I have to remember this is all for the sake of footage. The more of this I can get, the better. “You filthy pig!” With the end of the leash, I strike his back once, twice, while he yelps and whimpers. “How dare you? Doing your business here without permission. Because you’re a bad dog, aren’t you? Bad, bad!” I punctuate the words with more lashes from the leash.

Then I reach out, thread my fingers through his hair, and pull his head back. The frantic, almost ecstatic light in his eyes turns my stomach. “You know what happens to dogs who do their business wherever they feel like it, don’t you?” I ask, pulling his hair until he whimpers again. “They get their noses rubbed in it. Is that what you want? Do you want me to rub your nose in that puddle you just left?” His tongue hangs out of his mouth as he pants his agreement, and the tail swings as he wags it back and forth.

Jesus Christ.

Without warning, I shove his head down into the mess he made. “There you go. You’re disgusting. You bad, filthy boy.” This time, he whimpers almost like he’s apologetic, and the sound turns my stomach. Not because this is what he likes—I literally could not care less, having seen much worse from much better people than him. No, it’s the fact that it’s coming from him, this man who does everything he can to project power and confidence, who would most definitely cut anyone out of his life if he so much as suspected they were involved in this kind of role-play. Yet here I am, watching him enjoy it. Fucking hypocrite.

“I am very disappointed in you,” I grunt, shaking my head. “I don’t even want to look at you.”

He gets up on his knees, whining, panting. And now, much to my horror, I find him getting hard. He’s sniffing, nudging my knee with his nose, running his nose down the length of my calf. It takes everything I have not to shudder and move away. Instead, I allow every ounce of disgust to leak into my voice when I ask, “What is it you want? What do you think I’m going to let you do when you’re such a filthy, naughty boy, who relieves himself in a corner without permission? What do you think I’ll let you do?”

He shows me by getting up on his knees again, one of them on either side of my right foot until he’s basically straddling my leg.

Then he starts to hump. Breathing hard, heavy, fast. Moving his hips, grinding his dick against my leg the way a dog would.

And that’s what does it. I angle my body to make sure the camera picks up every humiliating moment until finally, I can’t take it anymore. “No!” I shout, kicking him away with my other foot. “No! Only good boys get to come, and you’re not a good boy. You are very, very bad, and you are being punished for it. I want you to think about that the next time you decide to be so filthy and naughty. You make me sick.”

And that’s the truth. He does. Not because of this, but because of who he is. Because of everything else. If anything, I’m glad this gave me the opportunity to tell him exactly how I feel about him, even if this is just a role.

I can’t look at him for another second. I drop the leash, then walk toward the door, turning to look back at him one more time to make sure he’s picked up on camera. “I want you to think about what you’ve done,” I snap coldly, the way I’m sure he likes it. “And maybe next time, if you’re a good boy, I’ll let you have what you want. But not tonight, you filthy beast.”

For all I know, he’ll jerk off once I’ve left the room. For all I know, that’s exactly how this was supposed to end.

Really, I can’t be bothered to find out. There’s only so much I can take, and I’ve reached my breaking point.

“You did well,” Nick tells me once I’m on the other side of the door, almost frozen in a daze.

I hope I did. I hope it was enough. Because honestly, I doubt I could ever go through that again. Maybe with anyone else, but not with a man I used to respect and fear in equal measure.

NICK

The night air hits me like a slap when I step outside, but it’s a welcome one. After hours in that place with the dim lighting and the leather and the lack of windows, the open street feels like surfacing from deep water. Milan at midnight is cool and damp. The cobblestones are slick with the kind of mist that isn’t quite rain. I take a breath that reaches the bottom of my lungs for the first time since I walked through that black door.

Ivy is already outside, waiting for me. She stripped the wig off in the dressing room and scrubbed most of the heavy makeup away, though traces of it are still visible around her eyes. Her black hair is loose on her shoulders. The corset is hidden under her long coat, buttoned to the throat. The mask is gone.

She looks like herself, which is of course the point.

“The feed uploaded while you were in the room,” I tell her, checking my phone one last time. The footage—every stomach-turning second of it—is sitting on a secure, encrypted server which Liam’s people set up before we left the States. There are redundant backups in three separate locations. A dead man’s switch is tied to both our names. If either of us fails to check in within a forty-eight-hour window, the footage goes live. Sent to every major news outlet in Italy, every family associate on the list Gabriel provided, and every law enforcement agency with jurisdiction over organized crime in southern Europe.

Vincenzo Russo, patriarch of the Russo family, on his hands and knees wearing a dog collar. Panting. Crawling. Having his nose shoved into his own piss.

It would end him. Not just his reputation, but his life. Men like Vincenzo don’t survive that kind of exposure. The family would disown him. His allies would evaporate. Men who followed him out of fear dressed up as respect would find their fear suddenly pointed in a very different direction, and the wolves who’ve been circling for years would move in before the footage finished its first news cycle.

He knows all of this. He’s spent his entire life making sure no one ever had this kind of leverage over him.

Tonight, that changed.

“He should be out any minute.” Ivy’s voice is steady, but there’s a tightness underneath it. She’s holding herself together the way she always does, through sheer force of will. Whatever she feels about what happened in that room, she’s locked it away and put it somewhere I can’t reach. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

I position myself slightly ahead of her and to the left. Not blocking her—she’d kill me for that—but close enough that if things go wrong, I’m between her and whatever comes through that door. Liam’s team is parked two streets over. I texted them our status five minutes ago. They’re ready to move. All that’s left to do is wait in a wide alley between the club and the building beside it.

Finally, the black door opens, and Vincenzo Russo steps out into the night.

He looks exactly like the kind of man who runs an empire. Impeccable suit, silver hair combed back, shoulders set with the rigid posture of someone who has never in his life allowed himself to slouch. He’s smiling, too. A private, satisfied smile, the kind a man wears when he’s just had exactly the evening he wanted. His guards flank him, two of them, both large and both armed. They scan the street with the automatic efficiency of professionals.

Vincenzo takes three steps before he sees her.

The smile doesn’t fade. It drops off his face like something that was never attached properly to begin with. What’s left underneath is a color I can only describe as chalky. Not pale. Deathly white. The blood leaves his face so fast I can almost see it happen, draining downward, leaving nothing behind but the hollowed-out expression of a man who just realized the worst thing he can imagine is standing ten feet away from him, looking him dead in the eye.

“Ciao, Vincenzo,” Ivy says.

His mouth falls open, but nothing comes out.

The guards react before he does. They step forward, hands moving to their jackets, and I feel the change in the air the way you feel a storm coming. The pressure change, the static, the hair on your arms standing up. I move one step closer to Ivy, my hand already resting on the weapon holstered beneath my jacket.

“I wouldn’t,” I warn. My voice carries in the quiet street. Level, calm. The voice I use when I need someone to understand the next five seconds will determine whether they live or die. “Whatever you’re thinking about doing right now, I need you to stop thinking about it.”

Vincenzo’s eyes haven’t left Ivy. He hasn’t blinked. He looks like a man watching his own house burn down from across the street.

“Everything that happened in that room tonight is on video,” I tell him. “Every second. Every detail. It’s been uploaded to a secure server that neither you nor anyone in your organization will ever find. The footage is tied to a dead man’s switch linked to both of our names. If anything happens to either of us—and I mean anything at all, at any point, for the rest of our lives—the footage goes live. Every news outlet in Italy, every associate in your family’s network. Every law enforcement agency with an interest in your operation. All of it, everywhere, all at once.”

The street is very quiet. One of the guards looks to Vincenzo, waiting for instructions. The other is looking at me, obviously calculating the distance between us, the angle, the odds. I’ve already run through all of it. If he moves, I’ll be faster. I have to be.

“Your best option,” I continue, “is to walk away. Let us live in peace. Let Ivy live in peace. No more surveillance or kill orders, no more men sent to track her down. It’s over. She’s done. In exchange, the world never has to see Vincenzo Russo on all fours with a tail shoved up his ass, getting his nose rubbed in his own piss.”

The words land like I hit him. I watch it. His jaw clenches, his nostrils flare, his hands curl into fists at his sides. For a long, terrible moment, I see something in his eyes that goes beyond anger. It’s the look of a man confronting the end of everything he’s built, every wall he’s erected, every carefully maintained fiction about who he is. It’s the look of a man who understands with absolute clarity that he has lost.

“You—” His voice comes out rough, broken. He clears his throat and tries again, and when he speaks, his accent is thicker than I expected, the English strained. “You were in my room.”

It isn’t directed at me. It’s directed at Ivy.

She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to. She stands there with her arms at her sides and lets him look at her. She lets him see the face he trained and molded and controlled all those years. The weapon he built.

I watch the recognition settle into him. Not only that she was in the room, that she saw everything. It’s that the girl he raised, the assassin he created, stood over him while he crawled on his hands and knees and begged to be degraded, and he never for a single second knew it was her.

His hand moves to his jacket.

I step in front of Ivy. My weapon is in my hand before I’ve finished the thought. Behind me, I feel her move, feel her hand close around my arm—not pulling me back, just there. Steady. Ready.

Vincenzo pulls a gun.

Time stretches. Every detail sharpens. The streetlight reflecting off the barrel. The mist on the cobblestones. The sound of Ivy’s breath behind me. The guard to Vincenzo’s left reaching for his own weapon.

I’m ready to take the bullet. I’ve made peace with it in the space between one heartbeat and the next, the way I’ve been trained to. If it means she walks away from this alive, I’ll take whatever he gives me.

Then Vincenzo turns the gun to his left and fires twice.

The first guard drops. The second guard has half a second to register what’s happening before the third shot takes him down. Both men hit the cobblestones with the heavy, final sound of bodies that won’t be getting up.

The street echoes, then silence.

Vincenzo stands over them with the gun still in his hand, the barrel smoking in the damp air. His face is blank, expressionless. Empty. The mask is back—not the one Ivy wore, but the one he’s worn his entire life. The iron hand. The man who eliminates problems with the efficiency of someone crossing items off a list.

He just killed two of his own men. Not because they threatened him, but because they heard what I said. Because they knew what he does on Thursday nights, and Vincenzo Russo does not leave witnesses.

He looks at me, then Ivy, before turning back to me again.

He doesn’t say a word. He only tucks the gun back into his jacket, buttons it with steady hands, then walks to the black sedan waiting at the curb. The driver doesn’t get out. Vincenzo opens his own door, gets in, and closes it behind him. The engine is already running. The car pulls away from the curb, moves down the street, then turns a corner.

My heart is hammering so hard I feel it in my fingertips.

I holster my weapon before turning to Ivy. She’s standing exactly where she was, half in shadow. Her face is blank. Not calm, but completely blank. Whatever she’s processing, it’s happening somewhere I can’t see. “Are you hurt?” I ask.

“No.”

“Are you⁠—”

“I’m fine.”

She’s not fine. I know she’s not. But she’s alive, and I’m alive, and Vincenzo just drove away from us instead of putting bullets in our heads. Right now, that’s going to have to be enough.

I pull out my phone and text Liam’s team. Stand down. Target departed. Two casualties, not ours. Seconds later, they let me know they’re on their way.

These two men woke up this morning thinking they’d go home tonight. They did their jobs, stood where they were told to stand, and died because the man they worked for couldn’t afford to let them live with what they had heard.

I’ve seen worse. I’ve done worse. But something about the casual efficiency of it—the way Vincenzo didn’t flinch or even look at their faces—sits in my stomach like ice.

This is the man who created her. This is what she comes from.

I turn back to Ivy, who’s looking down the street where the car disappeared. There’s something in her face I can’t read. It’s not shock or relief. It goes deeper, something that doesn’t have a name. I’ve spent weeks learning every expression she has, and this one is new.

“Let’s go home,” I offer.

The silence that follows is only a few seconds long but feels like an hour. “I am home,” she replies. Her voice is flat. Stripped of everything. There’s no warmth, no edge. No trace of the woman I came here with tonight. It’s the voice of someone who finished the only mission that mattered, and now that it’s done, she doesn’t know what comes next.

Or worse, she’s already decided.

“The mission is over now,” she adds, before turning and walking away. Not toward the safe house. Not toward me. Just away, down the slick cobblestone street. Her boots click against the stones, and the long coat sways around her legs. She moves the way she moved the first time I ever saw her: alone, deliberate, a woman who doesn’t need anyone and has spent years proving it.

“Ivy.” She doesn’t stop. “Ivy!” She doesn’t turn around.

I stand there in the mist with two dead men on the ground and the taste of something bitter in the back of my throat as I watch her walk away. Every instinct tells me to follow her. To run after her, grab her arm, and make her look at me. To make her hear me say that this isn’t over, that we’re not over, that the mission being done doesn’t mean we’re done.

But I know her. I’ve spent weeks learning her, and I know chasing her now will only make her run faster. She isn’t walking away because she doesn’t care. She’s walking away because she does, and caring is the thing that scares her more than Vincenzo ever could.

She reaches the end of the street. For a single second, she pauses. Her shoulders rise with a breath, then fall. She doesn’t look back before turning the corner, and then she’s gone.

I stay put long enough for Liam’s team to arrive and the bodies to be handled. Long enough for the mist to turn into actual rain, which soaks through my jacket. I pull out my phone and call Liam. He answers on the first ring. “How’d it go?”

I set off down the empty street toward the corner where she disappeared. The rain pools in the gaps between the cobblestones. She’s gone. There’s no trace of her.

“We got the footage,” I tell him. “Vincenzo backed down. It’s over.”

“And my sister?”

There’s only one way I can answer the question. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

IVY

Three days. It’s been three days since I walked away from Nick on a wet street in Milan with my ears still ringing after those gunshots. Three days since I turned the corner and kept walking and didn’t look back, because looking back would’ve meant staying, and staying would’ve meant trusting. Trusting is the thing that breaks me every time.

I’m staying at a hotel near the Duomo. Not a safe house. I’m not looking for safety right now. I’m looking for anonymity, which is different. Safe implies you’re being protected. Anonymous means no one knows you’re there, and no one is coming to find you.

No one is coming to find me.

That’s the part I keep coming back to, no matter how many times I tell myself that’s what I wanted. He let me go. I walked away, and he didn’t follow. He didn’t chase me down the street or do any of the things he would’ve done a month ago when he was still operating under the delusion he could keep me if he just held on tight enough.

He let me go.

Which is what I wanted, right? It’s what I told myself I needed, in fact. Space, distance. A clean break so I could find out who I am without a mission to define me. The freedom I fought for. The thing I blackmailed a mafia patriarch in order to get.

So why does it feel like I’ve been gutted?

I lie on the hotel bed and stare at the ceiling, listening to the city outside the window. Hating myself for checking my phone every twenty minutes. He hasn’t called or texted. There’s nothing. No messages or missed calls. No sign that the man who flew across the ocean and took a bullet for me, held me in a bathtub, bought me gelato, and stood on a bridge at sunset is making any effort whatsoever to reach me.

This only confirms what I already knew. It was a mission. It was always a mission. He came to Prague because Liam sent him. He stayed close because I was the objective. He was patient and persistent, yes, and impossibly kind. That was his strategy. Now the strategy worked, the mission is over, and I am no longer the objective.

I served my purpose. I know how that story ends. I’ve lived it before.

The voice in my head that sounds like Nick—the one that says things like you’re more than an asset and there’s nothing more important than your life—tries to argue, but I shut it down. I’ve been shutting it down for three days, and I’m getting better at it each time. Practice makes perfect. Vincenzo taught me that.

On the morning of the fourth day, I get dressed and leave the hotel because the walls are closing in and the ceiling has no more answers to give me, not that it ever had any in the first place. I walk with no direction, the way I used to walk in the years before Nick found me, back when walking was how I processed things and solitude was my only companion.

My feet take me to the piazza before my brain catches up. To Lucia’s restaurant. The outdoor tables are half-full with the late-morning crowd. The smell of coffee and something with rosemary makes my stomach ache. Not because I’m hungry. Because the last time I smelled it, Nick was sitting across from me, choking on his wine.

I should really leave. I should turn around and walk in the other direction and find a different restaurant in a different neighborhood where nothing reminds me of anything.

Instead, I sit down.

Within minutes, Lucia comes out, wiping her hands on a towel. When she sees me, her face does something interesting. First there’s surprise, then warmth. Then I see a flicker of concern when she registers that I’m alone.

“Where is the handsome man?” she asks as she slides into the chair across from me without waiting to be invited. Her eyes search my face. “The one who couldn’t stop looking at you,” she teases.

I don’t see the humor. It feels more like she hit a bruise I didn’t know was there. “Don’t worry about him,” I tell her. “That’s over.”

“Over?” She looks at me the way she always has: directly, with no pretense. The kind of honest attention that used to make me feel seen in a world where I was trained to be invisible. “He didn’t look at you like something that could be over, at least not so suddenly.”

“People look at a lot of things they eventually walk away from.”

She’s quiet for a moment before reaching across the table and covering my hand with hers. Her skin is warm and familiar. “You look terrible,” she says gently.

“Thank you.”

“I mean it. You look like you haven’t slept. Have you eaten?”

“I’m fine.”

“That is not what I asked.” She gives my hand a squeeze before standing. “Stay here.”

She brings food I didn’t order and coffee I never asked for, then sits with me while I eat because she knows me well enough to know I won’t eat if someone isn’t watching. We talk. Not about Nick, or about the mission, or anything that matters. She tells me about her sister’s new baby. The plumbing disaster that flooded the kitchen last month. The new waiter she hired, who is beautiful and completely useless.

It’s normal and ordinary. It’s exactly what I’ve needed, but it does nothing to fill the hole in my chest.

At some point, her hand finds my knee under the table. It’s casual, the way it used to be. Testing me, seeing if the boundaries are in place. I look at her, and she looks at me, and something passes between us that’s made of memory and loneliness and the kind of comfort that comes from someone who already knows your body and doesn’t need a map.

“Come,” she murmurs, tilting her head toward the restaurant and wearing a knowing look I recognize too well. “I want to show you something.”

She doesn’t want to show me anything, and we both know it. The back room is where they store the extra chairs, the cases of wine, and the olive oil they buy in bulk. It’s where we used to go when the restaurant was between rushes; the door could be locked, and no one would notice we were gone.

And I follow her, knowing all of this, because I want to feel something that isn’t what I’m feeling now. Anything, so long as I don’t have to feel the way I feel right now. The door closes behind us, and she turns to me in the dim light between the wine racks. Her hands come up to my face the way they always did, her fingertips light on my jaw.

And she kisses me. Her lips are soft. She tastes like espresso and the honey she puts in her tea, which she drinks after she’s already had enough espresso to make her practically vibrate. She kisses the way she always did: slow, deliberate, with the patience of a woman who knows exactly what she’s doing and has no interest in rushing. It’s good, too. It was always good with her. Easy and uncomplicated.

I wait for it to work. For the warmth to spread, and my brain to go quiet. For the gnawing ache in my chest to be replaced by something simpler and easier to manage.

It doesn’t happen. None of it does.

Because I’m kissing her, but all I can think about is pale blue eyes and a rough voice saying my name in the dark. Hands that are larger than hers, rougher. Hands that know how to take apart a weapon and how to hold me like I’m something worth being careful with. The way he drums his fingers when he’s thinking. The way he looks at me when he thinks I’m not paying attention, like I’m the answer to a question he’s been asking for a long time.

I pull back. Lucia’s eyes open to search mine. She sees it before I say it.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

She doesn’t look surprised. She looks like she knows the answer before she asks the question. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

I can’t speak, so I settle for a nod.

She studies me for a long moment, then presses her lips to my forehead in a brief, final sort of way. “Then why are you here with me instead of with him?”

I don’t have an answer. No, that’s not true. I have too many answers, and none of them are good enough. Because I’m scared. Because I don’t trust it. Because every time I’ve let someone matter, they’ve turned into something that could hurt me, and Nick matters more than anyone ever has. That means he could do more damage than anyone ever has.

Because the thing I’m most afraid of isn’t that he’ll leave. It’s that he’ll stay, and I won’t know how to let him do that.

“Go,” she murmurs, opening the door. “Before you talk yourself out of it.”

I leave the restaurant without looking back. The piazza is bright and busy, and I walk through it the way I’ve walked through every city I’ve ever lived in. Quickly, purposefully, like a woman with somewhere to be, even when she has nowhere to go.

I’m three blocks away from the restaurant when I feel it.

The awareness is instinctive. A change in the air behind me. A presence at the edge of my peripheral vision that matches my pace a half beat too precisely to be coincidence. Someone is following me.

My training kicks in before my brain does. I catalog without turning around. A single person, male, judging by the weight of the footsteps. He’s maintaining a consistent distance—close enough to keep visual contact, far enough away to avoid detection by anyone who isn’t me.

But I’m me.

I angle toward a shopfront with a wide glass window and let my gaze drift casually across the reflection. Dark hair. The outline of a jacket I’ve seen a hundred times. A stride I could identify blindfolded, because I’ve fallen asleep listening to it cross a room.

It’s Nick.

My heart has no right to do what it does. It doesn’t spike with alarm or go cold with anger. It lifts. Despite everything. Despite three days of silence and the wall I’ve built, and the lies I’ve been telling myself about missions and objectives.

I keep walking without speeding up or turning around. I let him follow me, the way I let him follow me in Prague all those months ago, when I was a different woman who thought she had everything figured out.

At the next window, I look again. He’s closer this time. And in his right hand, held low against his thigh and barely visible, is something small. A syringe.

Something cold and practical inside me registers the threat. The same syringe, the same play as Prague. He’s going to sedate me. He’s going to take me now the way he took me then, because I won’t go willingly, and he knows it, and he’s decided he doesn’t care.

I should be furious. Every rational part of me says I should spin around and disarm him, and break his wrist for even thinking about it. A month ago, I would have. I would’ve put the man on the ground without hesitating.

But then my heart has to go and do it again. That stupid, traitorous lift.

Because this is Nick. The man who doesn’t give up. Who doesn’t let go. I told him without saying a word to sit on the other side of my wall and wait, and he waited. But now he’s done waiting.

He’s coming for me. He will always come for me. That’s not a strategy or a mission. It’s just him. It’s who he is. He’s never going to stop. I don’t want him to either.

I slow my pace. Not enough for him to notice—or maybe enough, because he notices everything, doesn’t he? My hand relaxes at my side. My shoulders drop a fraction of an inch.

I keep walking, and I let him close the distance.

The footsteps behind me get closer. Ten feet, eight, five. I can now hear his breathing, controlled and deliberate. I feel the warmth of him at my back.

But I don’t turn around. I don’t fight. I only close my eyes.

The needle pricks the side of my neck, quick and precise, and immediately the world starts to soften at the edges. My knees loosen. My vision blurs. His arm is around my waist before I can sway, catching me, holding me against him with the practiced ease of a man who has done this before.

“I’ve got you,” he murmurs against my hair.

This time, I know. The last thing I feel before everything goes dark is his heartbeat against my back, steady and sure. The last thought I have is that Lucia was right.

I should have gone to him sooner.

NICK

Two hours and fourteen minutes. That’s how long Ivy is out. I know because I keep track while sitting in the seat across from her on the jet with my elbows on my knees and my eyes on her face, watching for the first sign of movement.

I used zip ties this time. Her wrists are secured to the armrests of her seat. Not tight enough to cut into her skin, but tight enough she won’t be free before I see it coming. I remember what happened the last time she woke up restrained. I’d rather not end up half-blind again.

We’re somewhere over the Alps by now. Liam arranged the flight within hours of my call—no questions beyond the ones that mattered, no judgment in his voice when I told him what I was planning. All he said was, “Bring her home.”

I spent the past three days watching her from a distance. Following her through Milan, keeping far enough away that she wouldn’t spot me but close enough that I could reach her if anything happened. Three days of standing on street corners and sitting in parked. I gave up the safe house when she didn’t come back to it and couldn’t bring myself to leave the city without her.

Three days of telling myself I was giving her space, when the truth is I was terrified.

Not of losing her. I’ve already lost her twice—once when she was fifteen and the world exploded, once on that cobblestone street when she turned the corner without looking back. I’ve survived losing her. I know what it feels like. I know the hollow feeling it leaves behind.

What terrified me was the possibility she was right. That the mission was the mission, and everything else was something I built in my own head because I needed it to be real. That I’d spent weeks falling in love with a woman who was never falling back, who was only tolerating my presence because I was useful. A woman who walked away the moment she no longer needed me because there was nothing left to stay for.

I didn’t really believe it, though. Not after the bridge. Not after she told me she wanted me to be part of whatever came next. But belief is a fragile thing at three in the morning when you’re sitting in a car watching a hotel window and wondering if the woman behind it is thinking about you at all.

I followed her on the fourth day. Watched her leave the hotel and followed her to the piazza. To the restaurant. I watched as she and Lucia disappeared into the restaurant together. There I was, standing across the street with my hands in my pockets and my jaw clenched so hard I thought my teeth would crack, and I waited.

When she came out alone, something had changed. I could feel it. The look of a woman who just figured something out and wasn’t happy about it.

That was when I made my decision. That was when I knew I couldn’t wait another minute. I wasn’t going to let fate decide. I was going to act, because acting is what I do. So I did it.

She’s starting to stir. At first, it’s a small sound. Not quite a groan. More like a confused murmur. Her head lifts from where it was resting against the window, and her eyelashes flutter.

I watch the moment consciousness comes back. The tightening of her features. The automatic flex of her hands against the restraints. The quick, sharp intake of breath that says her training kicked in before her brain did.

Her eyes snap open. Green, clear. Instantly focused. They find me, and for a second, neither of us moves. We might not even breathe.

I’m ready for anything, or at least that’s what I need to believe. For anger. Even fury. Maybe the cold, calculated look she wore the first time she woke up restrained. The look that said she was already planning three ways to kill me. I’m ready for her to spit at me, to curse at me, to promise to make me regret this. I’m ready for the fight, because with Ivy there’s always a fight, and I’ve learned to love the fight because it means she still cares enough to have one.

She looks at the zip ties. Looks at me. Then looks out the window, where the clouds are bright and white and seem to stretch on forever.

Her tongue darts out to moisten her lips, and I brace myself for whatever comes next. “What took you so long?” she asks.

At first, I can only stare at her. She stares back. There’s no anger in her face. No strategy. She looks tired and honest, and maybe a little relieved. “What took me so long?” I repeat.

“Three days.” She adjusts her position in the seat, testing the zip ties again. Not like she’s trying to escape. It’s more absent, like she’s still taking stock of the situation. “You made me wait three fucking days.”

I fell asleep, right? I haven’t done much sleeping over the past few days, after all. I’m dreaming now, because there is no version of reality in which this is happening. But I hear the jet engines humming, and I smell the leather seats, and the weight of her in my arms when I held her up after I used the syringe was very real. I clear my throat, then point out, “You walked away from me.”

“Yes.”

“You told me the mission was over.”

“I did.”

“You walked around the corner and didn’t look back.”

“I looked back,” she says quietly. “You just didn’t see it.”

Something swells in my chest. I lean forward in my seat, studying her face for the flicker that would let me know this is a strategy. A new approach to an old problem. It’s what she does, what she was trained to do. Adapt, improvise, use whatever tools are available—including the feelings of the man sitting across from you.

I don’t find any of it. Either she’s gotten better at hiding it than I am at reading it, or it isn’t there at all.

“Were you waiting for me?” I ask. “Is this a game?”

“No.” She doesn’t blink or look away. She doesn’t hesitate at all. “I wasn’t sure you’d come. I wasn’t sure you’d want anything to do with me after what I said.”

“You thought I’d just let you go?”

“People let go all the time. It’s the easiest thing in the world to do. You just… stop holding on.” She turns her face toward the window. The clouds throw soft light across it and make her look younger than she is. Fragile, almost, though she’d gut me for using that word. “I thought maybe, once you had time to think about it, you’d realize I was right. That the mission was the only reason you were there, and without it⁠—”

“Goddammit. That’s not true, and you know it.”

“I know it now.” She looks back at me. “I didn’t know it then. Three days is a long time to sit in a hotel room with nothing but your own thoughts and a ceiling that won’t answer your questions.”

I almost smile. “I was watching you the entire time.”

“I know.”

She is determined to make me fall out of my chair. “You knew?”

“Not until today. But I should’ve known sooner.” She pauses. The jet hums around us, steady and constant. “You were never going to let me go, were you?”

“No.”

“Even if I told you to.”

“Even then.”

She nods slowly. Then something crosses her face, something more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen from her, and I’ve seen a lot from this woman. “There’s something I need you to understand. I need you to actually hear it, not just listen to it.”

“I’m listening.”

“I can’t guarantee I’ll ever be Laura again.”

At first, there’s nothing but jet engines to fill the silence while her words echo in my head. She gives me time to process, or at least to begin processing, before she continues.

“I know the doctor said it might happen.” Her voice is steady, but I hear the strain underneath it. “I know you and Liam have been hoping for it since the day you found me. Every time you take me somewhere from our childhood, every time you tell me a story about the girl I used to be. Every time you watch my face and hope something clicks—I see it. I feel it. And I can’t stand the thought of spending the rest of my life watching you look at me that way. Expectant. Waiting for someone who might never show up.”

“Wait a minute⁠—”

“Let me finish.” She holds my gaze, and I hold hers, because she asked me to hear this, and I owe her that much. “I need you to decide who you want to be with. Laura, or me. Because we might not be the same person. She was a girl who loved you when she was fifteen. I’m a woman who loves you now, and I come with a lot of damage. Twelve years of things I’ll never be able to undo. If you’re waiting for Laura to come back and fix all of that, you might be waiting forever, and I won’t do that to either of us.”

I have to look at her, really look at her. The way I’ve been looking at her for weeks, but with something cleared away now. A fog I didn’t realize was there until she pointed at it and made me see. She’s right. Some part of me, buried very deep down, was still hoping even now. Every time I took her to a familiar place or told her a story about us, there was a sliver of hope underneath that this would be the moment. The trigger. The thing that brought Laura back.

And every time it didn’t happen, there was a flicker of disappointment I thought I was hiding. Clearly, I was not.

How fucking unfair to her. To both of us, when I think about it.

I was a kid when Laura knew me. A teenager who thought the world was simpler than it turned out to be. I loved a girl on a dock at sunset and believed that love was enough to keep people safe.

I’m not that kid anymore. Years of working with Liam, building something from nothing, tearing down things that other men built—I’m not the boy she remembers any more than she’s the girl I remember. People change. Time changes them. Trauma changes them. You don’t get the same person back just because you want to. You get the person they became, and you decide if you can love that person, too.

I already decided. Weeks ago. I just didn’t say it out loud.

“I’m going to cut your ties,” I tell her, pulling out my knife. “And I’m going to need you to not hit me.”

The corner of her mouth twitches. “I’ll consider it.”

I lean forward and cut the zip ties. She rubs her wrists absently, more out of habit than discomfort, then watches as I settle back into my seat.

“I will never stop trying to help you remember,” I tell her. “If that’s something you want. If you want to know who Laura was, I’ll tell you every story I have. I’ll take you to every place we ever went together. I’ll do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, because those memories are yours, and you deserve to have them back.”

She opens her mouth, but I hold up a hand.

“But if you don’t want that? If it’s too much, or it hurts more than it helps, or if you just want to be who you are now without the weight of who you were—I can accept that. I’ll talk to Liam and make him understand. None of this is your fault. Pushing you isn’t going to bring anything back. It has to come on its own, or not at all.”

She’s holding very still, the way she holds still when she’s keeping something inside from getting out. But her eyes are bright.

“I’m not the same person, either,” I continue. “The kid I used to be is gone. He grew up. You’re not the only one who changed. But the part of me that loves you didn’t change. It just grew up with the rest of me.”

I lean forward, closing the distance between us until my knees touch hers. “I love you. Not Laura, not Ivy. You. Whatever name you go by, whatever memories you carry or don’t carry; however many fake passports are in your drawer. I love you for who you are. I love your heart and your courage, and your stubbornness. I love the way you make me absolutely insane. I love you because you’re the strongest person I’ve ever met, and because you let me see the parts of you that aren’t strong. Because you made me dinner the night after you killed a man, and your hands never shook once.”

My voice isn’t steady anymore, but I don’t care. “I love you because we stood together on that bridge, and you told me you’d never done that with anyone else. It meant you chose me. Out of everyone and everything and all those years, you chose me, and I will spend the rest of my life trying to be worthy of that choice.”

She’s looking at me with those big green eyes, and something behind them is cracking, giving way. It’s the wall she built, the one made of survival. It’s starting to fracture, and I watch it happen in real time.

A single tear rolls down her cheek. She wipes it away with the back of her hand, fast, like she’s angry at it for existing.

“I don’t know how to do this,” she admits in a rough voice. “How to be someone who stays. I don’t know how to trust it. I’m going to be difficult and guarded. I’ll probably be impossible sometimes. I might never remember being fifteen, and I’ll probably always carry a knife in my jacket.”

“I’d be worried if you didn’t.”

Her laugh comes out shaky. “I love you,” she says, like it surprises her. “I love you, and it terrifies me, and I don’t know what to do with it.”

“You don’t have to do anything with it,” I tell her. “It’s yours to carry. But you don’t have to carry it alone.”

She looks at me for a long time. Then she reaches out, takes my hand, and holds it. Not the way she held it on the bridge—tentatively, like she was trying it out. She’s holding it the way you hold something you’ve decided to keep.

“Okay,” she whispers.

“Okay?”

“Take me home.” She pauses, and when she speaks again, her voice is steadier. “Our home. Wherever that is. I don’t care, so long as you’re there.”

I bring her hand to my mouth and press my lips to her knuckles, and she lets me. “Our home,” I repeat. “I can work with that.”

Without warning, the jet drops in altitude, and it’s hard enough that my stomach feels like it’s in my throat. Ivy’s fingers dig into the armrests. She won’t admit it, but she hates flying.

The seatbelt sign dings overhead, and the captain’s voice comes over the intercom. Something about turbulence.

“Still scared of flying?” I ask.

“Not at all.” Her voice remains steady and controlled.

Lie.

Another drop. This time it’s rougher than before. I see the pulse ticking in her neck, her throat working, like she’s trying to force it down.

I cover her hand with mine, tracing back and forth with my thumb, slow and deliberate.

“I know exactly what will help.”

“Unless you can grow wings…”

I lean in close to her ear. “Do you trust me?” Her breath catches, the flecks of gold in her green eyes glistening.

“Yes,” she says without hesitation.

I lean in, pressing my lips to hers. It’s soft at first, the lightest brush. When she opens for me, I deepen it… tasting her, savoring every last bit. My hand finds her jaw, holding her there.

We hit turbulence again, causing the aircraft to shake under us. But right now, the only thing she’s thinking about is my tongue in her mouth, and the way I’m already hard against her hip.

“Feel that?” I murmur against her lips, grinding into her. “That’s what you do to me.”

She makes a sound, and I swallow it, kissing her harder, my thumb stroking her pulse where it flutters wild and fast. “Nick…”

“Quiet. Unless you’re going to tell me to stop. Do you want me to stop, Ivy?”

She shakes her head, arching into me instead. I smile against her mouth, knowing I’ve won.

“Mmm.” I nip at her bottom lip. “Bathroom. Now.”

I keep her tucked against me as we move through the cabin.

The small space is barely big enough for two people, but I don’t give a fuck. I lock the door, and my hands are under her thighs, lifting her onto the narrow counter before she knows what’s happening.

“Hold on to me.”

I push her skirt up, bunching it around her waist. “Spread your legs,” I tell her.

She listens, parting her thighs to reveal the black lace of her underwear. I drag my thumb over the damp fabric and feel her shudder. “Fuck, Ivy. You’re already wet for me.”

“Nick…” she starts, but I cut her off, rubbing slow circles where she’s soaked through the lace.

“Answer me,” I say against her throat, teeth grazing her flesh.

“Yes,” she breathes, arching into my touch. “God, yes.”

I hook my fingers in her underwear and rip them at the seam, tossing them aside. She’s completely bare now, thighs trembling. “Look at that pretty pink pussy, all wet and open for me,” my voice coming out rough. 

I push two fingers into her without warning, feeling her clench around me.

“Fuck,” she gasps, letting her head fall back against the mirror.

“Look at me,” I command. Her eyes immediately find mine, pupils blown wide. “I want to see your face when you come.”

I fuck her with my fingers, curling to find that sweet spot. She’s panting, fingers white-knuckled, gripping the edge of the small counter, lips pressed firmly together, trying her hardest to stay quiet.

Leaning down to bite her earlobe, I say, “Don’t hold back. Let me hear what I do to you.”

“Please,” she whispers, grinding against my hand. “Nick, please, I need…”

“What do you need, Ivy?” I ask, merciless now. Purposely slowing my fingers to make her whine. “Say it.”

“I need you inside me,” she says, voice breaking. “I need your cock. Please, Nick.”

With one hand, I free myself from my trousers, the other gripping her hip hard enough to bruise. Without warning, I push into her, feeling her tense around me.

She wraps her legs around my waist, heels digging into my ass, pulling me deeper. “Fuck me, Nick. Hard.”

I do, setting a brutal pace, her tits bouncing with the force of it.

“Touch yourself, Ivy. I want to feel you come.”

Her fingers find her clit, and she tightens immediately. “I’m so close,” she gasps. “Nick, I’m…”

“Come for me,” I growl, pounding into her. “Now, Ivy. Give it to me.”

She breaks, calling out my name, her pussy clenching around me in waves that pull my own release from me. I bury my face in her neck, groaning as I spill into her.

We stay connected, her legs still wrapped around me, both of us breathing hard in the small space. I press my forehead to hers, feeling her heartbeat against my chest.

“Still scared of flying?” I ask, my voice rough.

She laughs, breathless, and kisses me slowly. Soft. “Shut up,” she murmurs against my mouth.

I smile against her lips. “I’ll take that as a no.”

IVY

Aurora is waiting by the elevator when the doors slide open silently. With all the security in here, there’s no doubt that an alert came through as soon as we stepped onto the elevator to make the ride up to the penthouse. “You’re here,” she says with a wide smile. Then she hugs me.

I wasn’t expecting that. My body goes rigid before something in me remembers. This is allowed now. People who care about you put their arms around you and hold on, and the correct response is not to look for the exit or count the seconds until it’s over.

I hug her back. She smells like vanilla and something floral. Her belly presses against mine, round with life, reminding me there’s more to existence than ugliness and death. She’s smiling wider than ever when she pulls back. Her eyes are bright and damp, and she’s completely unembarrassed by it.

“Don’t worry about Liam,” she whispers. “He’s pretending he’s fine, but he’s been pacing ever since he found out you two were on your way back.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything else,” Nick murmurs, chuckling. We walk further into the penthouse and find Liam waiting outside the kitchen. His arms are folded across his chest, and Aurora is completely right. He’s pretending to be fine. Meanwhile, his jaw is set in what I’m learning to recognize as the face he makes when he’s feeling too much and has decided the appropriate response is to feel nothing at all. It turns out we have more than our eye color in common.

“Hey,” I offer.

“Hey.” His voice is rough. He clears his throat, unfolds his arms, then folds them again. He then gives up completely and crosses the room in three strides, wrapping his arms around me in a hug that lifts me off the floor.

He’s quick to set me down, like he’s embarrassed. But he steps back, his eyes search my face eagerly. “You came back.”

“I did.”

“She came back because I abducted her,” Nick offers helpfully from behind me.

“He did use a syringe,” I confirm. “Again.”

Liam looks at Nick. Nick shrugs. Aurora shakes her head with the resigned expression of a woman who might not have married into this family of her own choice but decided to stick around, knowing exactly what was in store.

“Dinner’s ready,” she announces before steering us all toward the dining room and smoothly changing the subject.

The table is set beautifully. Plates, napkins, actual silverware. A bottle of red wine that probably costs more than I want to think about, already open and breathing. Aurora lights the taper candles running down the center of the table, and instantly the room is filled with a warm glow.

The food comes out in stages, presented by a woman named Hannah, who helps with the cooking and general upkeep of the penthouse. First, there’s a simple salad, then bread with olive oil. Then the entrée: bolognese. It fills the room with a smell so warm and familiar that I have to fight to take a breath, thanks to the pressure in my chest. I don’t remember it from before, when I was a kid. I remember it from the cabin; the night Nick and I cooked together. It turns out that night was important to me in ways I didn’t understand until now, with emotion sweeping over me and making me blink back the tears I’m not used to shedding.

“Liam told me this was important,” Aurora explains as she sets a platter of dressed pasta on the table, while Hannah sets out a bowl of extra sauce. “We tried to replicate it as best he could remember it, but if it’s terrible, you can blame him.”

It’s not terrible. It’s incredible. The pasta is perfectly cooked, and the sauce is thick and rich and layered with flavors that unfold one at a time as I chew. I close my eyes on the first bite, and when I open them, Nick is watching me with that look. The one I used to think was strategic and now understand is something else entirely.

“This is incredible,” I tell Hannah and Aurora. “Thank you.”

Aurora winks. “It was a lot of fun to make, really. And I’m glad you like it. I think the baby likes it a lot, too.” She pats her belly, laughing softly, then digs in again.

For a while, we just eat. The conversation stays small and easy. Aurora asks about Milan, and I tell her the parts I can actually talk about, the ones that don’t involve brothels and dead men and dog collars. I tell her about Lucia’s restaurant and the canal and the Duomo. She listens with the attentive, open interest of someone who genuinely wants to know.

Liam is quieter, watching me the way he does. He doesn’t say much, only eating steadily and grunting every once in a while. But there’s something in his face that wasn’t there before. Like he’s relaxing.

Nick’s knee finds mine under the table at some point. He doesn’t move it, and neither do I.

It’s over the second glass of wine that Liam brings it up. He’s direct, doesn’t beat around the bush. A man who’s used to running things, so he gets to the point because he doesn’t see the purpose in dancing around it.

“I want to talk about what comes next,” he announces, setting down his fork to look at me. “For you. For all of us.”

I dab at the corners of my mouth with my napkin before setting it back in my lap. “Okay.”

“You have a place here.” He says it simply, like it’s a known fact. “Not as a guest, not temporarily. This is your family, and you belong in it. Whatever happened before, whatever was taken from you—none of it changes what you are to me and have always been.”

The tightness in my chest is not unpleasant. Far from it.

“If you want to be part of what I’ve built,” he continues, “you have a spot. But not as an employee or as someone who takes orders.” He glances at Nick, then back at me. “As a partner. The way Nick is. You’d have a voice and a seat at the table. Equal say in how things are run. Your skills—” He stops, like he wants to choose his words carefully. “The things you know how to do. They’re an asset, but only if you want them to be. Nobody’s going to use you. Those days are over now.”

“Unless she wants to use them,” Nick points out. “In which case, she’s very good at it.”

“Not helpful,” Aurora murmurs into her water glass.

For a little while, all I can do is watch Liam. He’s a man who shares my face and my blood, and he’s offering me something I’ve never had. He isn’t handing me a role or a function, or a set of instructions. He’s giving me a place. A real one. One with my name on it, where I’d be valued not for what I can do, but for who I am.

The difference between that and what Vincenzo offered is so vast it almost doesn’t compute.

“I’ve never worked for myself before,” I say slowly. “Everything I’ve done has been under someone else’s direction. Someone else decided the target, the timeline, and the approach. I executed. That was the arrangement.”

“This wouldn’t be like that,” he tells me.

“I know.” I turn my wineglass on the table, watching the candlelight move through the red wine. “That’s what makes it scary.”

Aurora’s head tips to the side. “That’s how you know it matters.”

I look at her, this woman who married a man who blackmailed her into it and somehow turned that into something real and full of love. If anyone understands the gap between what you expect from life and what you actually get, it’s her.

“I want in,” I decide. “I want to be part of it. Whatever it looks like, whatever it takes. I’m in.”

Liam’s face does that thing again where he’s feeling too much and trying to feel nothing. His jaw works and his eyes go bright for a second before he blinks it away. “Good.” He nods firmly and picks up his fork again. “That’s good.”

Nick’s hand finds mine under the table, and he gives it a squeeze.

We finish dinner with wine and conversation that feels for the first time like the kind of thing a family does. Not a perfect family by any stretch. Not a family that hasn’t been broken and scattered and reassembled from mismatched pieces. But a family, just the same, held together by something stronger than shared memory. It’s shared intention. The decision to be here. To try.

After dessert—store-bought tiramisu, which Aurora apologizes for profusely while Liam reminds her she’s very pregnant and doesn’t need to apologize for anything—Nick pushes back from the table and gives me a look. “I have something to show you.”

“The last time a person said that to me, I wound up in a storage room in a restaurant in Milan with an old friend of mine.” I wink at Aurora, who hides her grin behind her napkin.

Nick rolls his eyes. “This is better than that. Trust me.”

He won’t tell me where we’re going, which would normally make me tense. I’m learning slowly to let some things be uncertain without assuming the worst. The city gives way to suburbs—green, quiet. Streets lined with trees. Houses set back from the road with actual yards, the kind of neighborhood where children ride bikes and people know their neighbors’ names.

Seemingly out of nowhere, he turns into a driveway, then stops the car. The house in front of us is modest by any standard Liam would recognize, but it’s beautiful. Two stories, white clapboard, with a wide front porch and a swing. There are mature trees in the yard. An oak on one side, a Japanese maple on the other. The windows are dark. It doesn’t look like anybody lives here.

Nick cuts the engine and sits there for a moment, looking at the house through the windshield. “I bought this place years ago,” he murmurs. “Before we found out you were alive. Before any of this.”

I look at him in shock.

“When we were kids, Laura and I used to talk about what kind of house we’d live in someday. She wanted a porch with a swing. A big yard and tall trees and a kitchen with a window over the sink so she could look outside while she washed the dishes.”

He pauses. Something moves through his expression that’s older than the weeks we’ve spent together. It goes all the way back. “I bought it in her memory. I told myself someday, when things settled down, I would live here. When the work was done. When I’d earned it.”

He looks at me. “I never moved in. It never felt right without her.”

I don’t speak. I’m not sure I can.

“I’m not asking you to be her,” he carefully explains. “I told you that on the jet, and I meant it. But this house was built around the idea of a life I wanted to share with someone, and you’re that someone. Whatever name you go by.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a key, then holds it out to me in his open palm.

I look at it. A simple brass key, nothing special. The kind that opens a million doors in a million houses. But it isn’t a million doors. It’s this door. This porch and this swing, this yard with the trees that throw shade on the windows and would look so pretty with snow on the bare branches.

I take the key, wrap my fingers around it, and feel not just what it is but everything it stands for before we get out of the car.

We go inside together. He lets me lead, which I appreciate, because I need to move through the space the way I move through every new space—carefully, on my own terms. The front door opens into a hallway with hardwood floors that creak softly under our feet. A living room to the left has a fireplace and built-in bookshelves. The dining room on the right is empty, waiting for the sort of dinner we just shared at Liam’s.

The kitchen is at the back of the house. It has a window over the sink. I stand there for a long time, looking through that window at the dark yard. The oak tree is a shadow against the sky. Somewhere in the neighborhood, a dog barks once and goes quiet.

The house is empty. No furniture or curtains; no evidence of a life being lived here. There’s nothing but potential and possibility. Like a blank page waiting for someone to write on it. For the first time in my life, the person holding the pen is me.

Nick is leaning against the doorframe behind me. Watching, waiting. He’s always been willing to wait, which I’m sure can’t be easy for a man like him. I don’t know if I fully appreciated it until now.

“It’s perfect,” I decide, and I mean it in a way that goes beyond the house itself. It’s perfect because he kept it. He bought a house for a ghost and held onto it for years and never moved in because he was waiting for something he couldn’t name. He’s handing me a key now and asking me to fill these rooms with him, not as the girl he lost but as the woman he found.

“With one condition,” I add.

I turn to face him, leaning back against the counter with my arms folded. His eyebrow lifts. “A condition?”

“Non-negotiable.”

“All right. Let’s hear it.”

“We need to get a dog.”

The surprise on his face lasts about half a second before it turns into something I don’t see from him nearly often enough: a full, real grin. It changes his whole face and makes him look, just for a second or two, like the boy from my dream. The one who met me on the dock.

“A dog,” he repeats.

“A big one. With a yard like this, it would be criminal not to.”

He pushes off the doorframe and crosses the kitchen until he’s standing in front of me. His hands settle on the counter on either side of me before he leans in close, his forehead almost touching mine. “We can get a dog.”

“A rescue.”

“A rescue,” he agrees.

“And I’m naming it.”

“I wouldn’t dare interfere.”

I look up at him, at those pale blue eyes that have seen the worst of me and the best of me and everything in between, and I feel something I don’t have a practiced response for. There’s no protocol here, no contingency plan. It’s just warmth that spreads outward from the center of my chest, filling the empty rooms of this house the way I intend to fill them for real.

“Thank you,” I whisper. Not just for the house. For the key. For the years he held onto something. For coming for me when I walked away, and for giving me space when I needed it.

He leans down to kiss me. Slow, unhurried, the way you kiss someone when you know there’s no rush. For the first time in either of our lives, there’s nowhere else to be.

When he pulls back, I rest my head against his chest and listen to his heartbeat. Steady and sure. “I have one more condition,” I murmur against his shirt.

“I thought it was non-negotiable. Singular.”

“I’m adding another one.”

“Of course you are.”

I pull back enough to look up at him. “You will never use that syringe on me again.”

He considers this, narrowing his eyes. “What if you walk away again?”

“Then you chase me like a normal person.”

This time, his grin is softer but just as real. “Deal.”

I take his hand and lead him through the empty house, room by room. As we walk, I start to see it. Not memories. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But something just as valuable. A future. Ours. Built from scratch in this beautiful, empty house, which we’ll fill together.

It’s the most ordinary thing I can imagine, and I’ve never wanted anything more.

EPILOGUE

NICK

Six months later

The golden retriever is eating a hamburger off the table.

I watch it happen in slow motion: the careful approach, the delicate lift of the head, the precise extraction of the patty from the bun. Then the shameless retreat across the yard with ketchup on her nose. By the time I open my mouth to say something, it’s over. She’s under the oak tree with her tail wagging, looking at me with an expression that says she knows exactly what she did and has no intention of apologizing for it.

“Bonnie stole another burger,” I call over my shoulder.

“Then you shouldn’t have left them unattended,” Ivy replies from the porch, where she’s sitting on the swing with a glass of lemonade and the chihuahua in her lap. The chihuahua—Clyde, because she thought she was hilarious, and I didn’t have the heart to argue with her—is asleep on his back with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. He weighs roughly six pounds and rules this house with an iron paw. Bonnie outweighs him by sixty pounds and defers to him in all matters. There was no hope of stopping at just one, and I didn’t have the heart to shut down Ivy’s dream.

This is my life now. Stolen hamburgers, a six-pound dictator, and a woman on a porch swing who can disassemble a rifle in under a minute and also makes the best cacio e pepe I’ve ever tasted.

I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

The yard is full of people. Liam is manning the grill with the focused intensity he brings to everything, wearing an apron Aurora bought him that says Kiss the Cook. He pretends to hate it, but he wears it every time.

Aurora is in a lawn chair with her feet up, watching their daughter sleep in the portable bassinet next to her. Lily is now three months old, has her mother’s blonde hair and her father’s green eyes, and she already has everyone in this yard wrapped around her tiny finger.

Ethan is here, too, leaning against the fence with a beer and his sunglasses on, looking like he just walked off the set of something. He’s talking to one of Liam’s guys about something that’s making both of them laugh. Every few minutes, he looks over at the bassinet with an expression I’ve never seen from him before. Something soft.

The house isn’t empty anymore. We furnished it over the course of a month, Ivy and I, arguing over just about every piece. She wanted something dark and minimal. I wanted something that actually looked like people lived here. We compromised, meaning she won most of the arguments, and I won the ones she let me win. The bookshelves in the living room are full. There are photos on the mantel—new ones, of us, because the old ones belonged to people we used to be, and we decided to start fresh.

The kitchen window over the sink looks out onto the yard. I stand at it every morning while I make coffee, watching the light change through the oak tree. Sometimes Ivy joins me. Other times she’s already outside, sitting on the porch with Clyde, drinking espresso she makes on the machine she shipped from Milan. She shipped a lot of things from Milan. The apartment is closed now, the passports destroyed, the wigs and the costumes gone.

She’s different now. She’s still sharp and guarded, still capable of a look that could cut glass. But the edges are softer. She laughs more. She lets people touch her without flinching. Sometimes she calls Liam just to talk. Last week I walked in on her teaching Aurora how to make tiramisu while Lily slept in a carrier strapped to Liam’s chest, and I stood in the doorway and watched and thought, this is what it was all for.

The memories haven’t come back. We don’t talk about it much. She still dreams sometimes—fragmented things, images without context, feelings without names. Once, she woke up and told me she’d dreamed about a dock and a lake and a boy with dark hair, and she said it in a voice that was half wonder and half grief. I held her, and I didn’t push, because pushing is how you lose her, and keeping her is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to be good at.

Maybe the memories will come. Maybe they won’t. Either way, we’re building new ones, and the new ones are enough.

I reach into the pocket of my jeans and feel the small velvet box I’ve been carrying for two weeks. Two weeks of waiting for the right moment, of talking myself into it and out of it and back into it again. I considered a restaurant. A bridge at sunset. Something grand, maybe, something worthy of her.

Then I looked at the yard and the dogs and the people I love eating food off a grill while a three-month-old sleeps through all of it, and I realized the right moment was never going to be a setting. It has to be a feeling. This one. Right now.

I walk across the yard to the porch. Ivy looks up at me, and whatever she sees on my face makes her set her lemonade down slowly. Clyde stirs in her lap before yawning and going back to sleep.

“What?” she asks.

I don’t kneel. She’d hate that. It’s too performative, too exposed. Instead, I sit on the swing beside her, close enough that our shoulders touch, and I pull the box out of my pocket.

The ring is simple. A single stone, nothing flashy. She’d hate flashy and probably throw flashy back in my face. This one is clean and elegant, and it caught the light in the jewelry store window the same way her eyes catch the light when she’s thinking about something she won’t say out loud.

She looks at the ring, then looks at me. Her lips part, but nothing comes out.

The yard has gone quiet. I don’t look, but I can feel them all watching. “I’m not going to make a speech,” I tell her. “You already know everything I’d say. You’ve heard it in every way I know how to say it.”

I hold the box steady, somehow. “So I’m just going to ask. Will you marry me?”

She looks at the ring for a long time. The porch swing creaks. “Yes,” she whispers.

I slide the ring onto her finger, and Clyde wakes up in time to lick both our hands. From somewhere nearby, Liam says, “It’s about damn time,” in a voice that isn’t as steady as he wants it to be.

Ivy leans into me. I put an arm around her and the chihuahua, and the porch swing sways. The yard is full of noise again—laughter, congratulations, while Bonnie steals a second hamburger now that everyone is distracted.

I look at the woman beside me and the ring on her finger. Here we are, in the life we built in a house I bought for a ghost. It’s now filled with dogs and family and the smell of charcoal and cut grass.

And it’s everything. The most ordinary thing in the world, but it’s everything that will ever matter.

Thank you for reading The Rook’s Obsession. For more dark mafia romance, check out Protect Me next!

FREE Book!!!

Download Paper Ring-A Dark Arranged Marriage Romance for Free!

ABOUT THE C. HALLMAN

C. Hallman is a USA Today Bestselling Author who wrote her debut novel in 2018 and has since published over 100 books in various romance subgenres. Her works have been on numerous bestseller lists and have been translated into 8 languages around the world.

Born and raised in Germany, Cassandra attended business school in her hometown before immigrating to America when she was only eighteen. At nineteen, she married her husband, who was active duty military at that time. Together, they traveled the country for years, before finally settling down. Now, she lives in the mountains of North Carolina with her husband, their three children, two dogs, and one hairless cat.

With a love for reading, that love slowly transpired into writing she put her fingers to the keyboard and started writing about the dark side of romance.