Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Or maybe it’s the restlessness that’s been crawling under my skin all night, the need to do something instead of standing here marinating in my own guilt over Mia.
It’s been four days since I last saw her, since she left my penthouse with my fingerprints on her neck, and I’ve been doing nothing but wallowing in self-pity, torn between needing to see her and talk to her, but also giving her all the space she needs, because I certainly don’t deserve to be in her presence, not after what I did.
So this alert is certainly a good distraction.
I tap the watch. “Show me.”
The holographic display blooms to life, painting the air with satellite imagery and police scanner chatter. The warehouse in question is a dark rectangle at the end of a pier, and the thermal overlay shows heat signatures moving inside—some running, some stationary, some cooling rapidly.
Those people are dead. This isn’t your normal gang shoot-out, I can tell.
You should go.
The thought arrives without explanation, a gut-level certainty that cuts through the noise. I’ve learned to trust that instinct. It’s what has kept me alive in the past more times than I can count.
“Danny,” I say into the comm. “I’m heading out. There’s an altercation at Red Hook, gun fight I think. Something doesn’t feel right.”
His response is immediate, concerned. “You sure, boss? That’s pretty far outside your usual—”
“I’m sure. I’m going alone. Call if I need you.”
“Sure thing.”
I slide on my suit then head out onto the balcony. With a gentle push, gravity manipulated, I’m in the air, the city falling away beneath me.
I go invisible before I clear Midtown.
The warehouse is a war zone.
I hover above it, watching through walls that might as well be glass. The thermal signatures tell the story—clustered bodies, some still warm, others cooling, and there’s movement in the central space, figures running, fighting, dying.
And in the middle of it all, a single heat signature moving with a speed and precision that is much smaller than the rest.
Interesting.
A busted skylight gives me my entry point. I slip through the gap and land silently on a rotted support beam above the carnage, invisible, watching. The scene below is chaos—men shouting in Russian, gunfire echoing off metal walls, the iron stink of blood thick enough to taste.
And there, in the center of it, is—
My brain stutters.
Mia?
She’s wearing all black and carrying a fucking gun. And she’s fighting off two men at once with a brutal efficiency that rivals my own combat training.
What the fuck?
I watch her drive an elbow into one man’s throat, watch him stagger, watch her pull a knife from somewhere and bury it in his chest. No hesitation. No mercy. Just clean, professional-style violence that ends with his blood seeping out on the concrete while she’s already moving to the next threat.
This is not Mia.
This can’t be.
This can’t be the woman who laughs at the Muppets and moans over patty melts and looks at me like I’m someone, not something. This is not the journalist who asks the hard questions and takes careful notes and blushes when I catch her staring.
This is someone else entirely.
A killer.
She’s a trained fucking killer.
Like me.
She shoots a man in the thigh, then kneecap. He goes down screaming, a massive guy with a shaved head who looks vaguely familiar and is clearly the one in charge. Then she’s running, returning fire over her shoulder, moving through the warehouse like she’s done this a thousand times before.
Because she has.
She’s a fucking spy.
The realization lands in my chest like a fucking hand grenade. Every dinner, every interview, every soft smile and lingering touch? Oh, that was performance. Every confession she drew out of me, every vulnerability I showed her? Intelligence gathering. Every time she looked at me like I mattered, like I was more than what they made me—
Lies. All of it. All of it fucking lies!
Below me, Mia is losing ground. Too many of them, not enough of her. I watch her take down two more—a front kick, a palm strike, a knee to the groin followed by a skull against a crate—but they keep coming. They grab her. Force her to her knees. Press a gun to the back of her head.
The bald man limps toward her, pipe in hand, blood soaking his trouser leg. He’s saying something I can’t quite hear, gloating, savoring the moment.
Her shoulders are squared. Her chin is up. Even now, even like this, she’s not begging.
“Tell them I was still fighting.”
I hear that. Hear the steel in her voice. The defiance.
She’s going to die.
The thought cuts through everything else—the rage, the betrayal, the howling darkness that’s been building since I saw her pull that knife. She’s going to die, and part of me thinks good, let her, she deserves it for what she did to you, she’s a liar and—