Chapter 19

VICTORIA

I had hoped for a day. Just one.

No calls buzzing in my pocket. No manila envelopes slid under the door. No shadows from my other life clawing at the edges of this fragile, new world I was building with her.

Just her.

Maybe we would have left the apartment. Taken a walk through the quiet parts of the city. Maybe we would have found a small café, a place where I could have let my guard down enough to let her hold my hand across the table. Or maybe we would have just stayed right here. Made another pot of coffee. Talked about nothing important. Let the silence stretch between us, not as a void, but as a space we were learning how to breathe in together.

But of course, the phone rings.

The specific, jarring tone tells me exactly who it is. No one else would dare call this line.

I glance at Avery, who is curled on the sofa with a book, and then step away into the kitchen, pressing the phone to my ear.

“Tell me.”

Darius doesn’t waste time with greetings.

“Target’s name is Warren Slate. Political fixer. He has a trail of bruised girls in his wake, and one is in the ICU this morning. Eighteen years old. Name’s Layla. Still unconscious. Her blood’s on his shoes.”

I close my eyes for a brief second, a familiar cold weight settling in my stomach.

“Why haven’t they picked him up?” I ask, though I already know the answer.

“Because his boss is a senator who’ll burn the entire precinct down before letting it leak. You’re close. You’re quiet. I need it done tonight.”

I nod, a silent, grim acceptance, even though he can’t see it. “Okay.”

He hangs up before I can say anything else, the line going dead in my ear.

I stay still for a long moment, my hand wrapped tightly around the phone.

“Another… job?” she asks softly from behind me. There’s no judgment in her tone, not even prying. She’s just asking. Acknowledging the part of my life that has just intruded.

I nod, finally turning to face her.

She steps closer, her brow furrowed in genuine curiosity. “How do you get them, anyway? I mean… it’s not like there’s a website or anything?”

The question is so innocent, so removed from the grim reality, that it makes me smirk despite the heavy turn the day has taken.

“No,” I say, my voice dry. “Nothing that… crude.” I glance at her, deciding how much to share. “It goes through intermediaries. Whisper networks. Victims’ families who have nowhere else to turn. Investigators who’ve hit brick walls. Journalists who stumble on something they shouldn’t and can’t print. Darius filters it all. He vets every piece of information, decides which cases are valid. And then, it ends up with me. Or with someone else in the network who is close enough to act.”

She blinks, processing this. Then her eyes focus on a specific word. “You said victims.”

“What?”

“You called them that. The ones you… the ones you kill. You didn’t say ‘targets’ just now. You said ‘victims’ families’.”

I tilt my head slightly, regarding her. She’s observant. I answer with complete honesty.

“Because that’s what they are. They aren’t just targets. They aren’t just names on a file. They’re the reason others can’t sleep at night. The reason someone like me has to exist.”

I pause, letting the weight of that settle.

“Warren Slate will never see a trial. He will never hear a judge say ‘guilty.’ He’ll walk away, again, and again, and again. Unless I stop him.”

She doesn’t respond right away. She just looks at me, her expression unreadable.

But when she does speak, her voice is quieter, more thoughtful. “Everything you say,” she murmurs, “everything you do… it’s not random, is it?”

I say nothing, letting her work it out.

“It’s all… calculated,” she goes on, her eyes searching mine. “Precise. Every word. Every look. Every moment you choose to speak or stay silent. It’s like you’re always ten moves ahead.”

I glance at her again. “Because I have to be.”

She nods slowly. Like she had already suspected, but now… now she truly understands the necessity of it.

And I can see it in her face – something that catches me off guard – admiration.

She admires the way I operate. The cold, brutal efficiency. The way I move through a world that has only ever shown me its worst, and use its own darkness to carve out a sliver of justice.

I should tell her I have to go. I should turn, walk to the bedroom, and begin the methodical ritual of preparing for the hunt.

But instead, I reach for her hand.

My fingers find hers, and I hold them. Not a dramatic gesture, just a simple, firm clasp. I hold on for just a beat longer than I meant to, a silent message in the space between our heartbeats.

×××

AVERY

She stands at the window, her phone now resting silently on the counter. The morning light catches the sharp line of her profile, and I know she’s already gone. Not physically, not yet, but mentally. I can see her slipping away from me, retreating into that colder, harder version of herself – the one who doesn’t flinch, the one who doesn’t second-guess, the one who becomes something almost mythic after dark.

The silence in the room feels heavy, like smoke after a fire. And I know, with a certainty that aches, that she’s about to leave.

Still, I let my eyes trace the lines of her body in this soft, early light. I want to memorize the contrast – the woman who just hours ago told me about her first cello lesson, her voice softer than I’d ever heard it, now shifting into the woman who is calmly, methodically planning to end a man’s life.

She turns to me, and the shift is complete. Her expression is neutral, focused.

“I won’t be back before dark,” she says, her voice even as she slips on her blazer. Her movements are efficient, practiced.

I nod, my throat tight. What do you say to that? What is the right thing to say when the woman you just shared your bed with, the woman you’re falling for, tells you she’s heading out to kill someone?

“Do you… ever hesitate?” I ask, the question leaving my lips before I can stop it. My voice is quiet. I’m not judging her. I just need to understand the inner workings of the person she becomes in these moments.

She pauses, her hand hovering over a drawer. Her eyes meet mine, and they are utterly steady, like dark water. There’s no offense taken, no surprise.

“If I did,” she replies, her tone matter-of-fact, “I wouldn’t be alive.”

The answer isn’t cruel. It’s just the truth. A simple, chilling statement of survival.

She finishes dressing, steps into her boots, and picks up her phone. She is a portrait of controlled readiness.

Then she surprises me.

“I want you to meet me at Lilith later,” she says. Her voice is still low, still difficult to read, but there’s something new woven beneath the surface – a thread of deliberate invitation. Of want.

I blink. “Tonight?”

She gives a single, firm nod. “After it’s done.”

“Okay,” I answer, the agreement coming before my brain can fully process the implications. “I’ll be there.”

She crosses the room and comes to stand before me, so close I can feel the heat from her body. Her hand comes up, her fingers brushing my cheek, her thumb ghosting over my bottom lip in that now-familiar gesture that never fails to send a current straight through me.

But this time, it’s different. This time, she leans in and kisses me. It’s not hungry or demanding. It’s slow. Soft. Warm. A kiss that feels like a promise, or maybe an anchor.

Then she pulls away.

And just like that, she’s gone. The door clicks shut behind her, a sound both soft and final.

I stand there for a long time, staring at the closed door. My body still hums from the feel of her lips, a warm, lingering echo. But my chest is full of something else, something heavier and more complex.

Anticipation.

Because I’ll see her tonight.

And I have no idea who will be waiting for me – the woman who kissed me softly in the morning light, or the myth that walks in the shadows.

×××

VICTORIA –

The backroom is exactly as I left it last time. The same faint smell of old wood and disinfectant. The same flickering fluorescent light overhead that Darius refuses to fix. He says it keeps people from lingering too long, and he’s probably right. A man with his resources chooses discomfort on purpose – that’s why I’ve always trusted him.

He’s already waiting, seated at the scarred wooden table, a folder spread open in front of him. He barely glances up as I enter.

“Thought you’d be here sooner,” he says, his voice low and graveled from decades of cigarettes and quiet conversations in rooms like this one.

“I had company,” I reply, my tone neutral as I pull off my leather gloves, finger by finger.

That makes him look up. His eyes, sharp and assessing, scan my face. There’s no judgment in his gaze — we’re both long past that. But there is a sudden, keen recognition. He knows me. He made me. And he sees the difference. He sees it in the way I’m holding my shoulders, not quite as rigid as usual. He sees it in the fact that I didn’t immediately demand the operational details or check my weapon. I haven’t even looked at the file yet.

“You good?” he asks. The question sounds casual, but from him, it’s loaded.

“Of course,” I answer, my voice flat.

He gives a slow nod, but I see the flicker of doubt in the way his thick fingers tap rhythmlessly on the corner of the folder.

“You sure this one doesn’t need finesse?” he probes, his eyes still fixed on me. “Could send Jason. He’s clean. He’s quick.”

“I want it,” I say, the words coming out sharper, more defensive, than I intended.

He raises his eyebrows slightly but doesn’t challenge me further. He just slides the folder across the table.

I open it. The face of Warren Slate stares back at me—a man in his early fifties, with the bland, confident features of someone who believes he’s untouchable. Political fixer. Power broker. The file details his particular brand of evil: a long, silent list of women, all left bruised and broken in his shadow. None of them loud enough to ever reach a courtroom. The most recent is a girl named Layla, eighteen, still unconscious in the ICU. The official report, already drafted, will say she fell down a flight of stairs.

I close the file. The information is seared into my mind.

“Location?” I ask, my voice all business now.

Darius watches me for a beat longer, as if waiting for another crack in my armor. “Midtown. He’s leaving a dinner fundraiser at eight. We’ll have eyes on him. You’ll have a three-minute window.”

“Clean?”

“Should be.” He pauses, and his next words are deliberate. “Unless you’re distracted.”

I go very still. The air in the small room tightens.

“I’m not distracted.”

Another long moment passes. Darius leans back in his creaking chair, his expression unreadable, his arms crossed loosely over his chest. He doesn’t press me. He doesn’t ask why there’s something softer around my edges tonight, why I’m slower to speak, why my eyes keep flicking to the phone in my pocket as if I’m expecting a message.

He just gives a single, slow nod.

And that’s enough.

“Three minutes,” he repeats. “No more.”

“I’ll be done in two.”

I turn, my gloves in hand, already moving toward the door, my mind shifting into the familiar, cold calculus of the hunt.

Just before I cross the threshold, his voice stops me, spoken almost too casually to the room at large.

“She yours, or are you just hoping she will be?”

I stop. Just for a fraction of a second, my step hitches.

Then I walk out without answering.

Because the truth is, I’m not sure I know. Yet.