“I’m going to survive,” I said finally, accepting my second drink from Hailey. “Same thing I always do. I’m going to play my role, feed Vance enough to keep him satisfied, avoid Drew until he goes back to Russia, and remember that feelings are liabilities in our world.”
“Except you’re already in too deep,” Barbara said softly. “With Drew, I mean. You don’t punch walls over someone who doesn’t matter.”
She wasn’t wrong. I’d spent three years maintaining perfect control, never letting anyone get close enough to crack my armor. Then Drew had walked into Rafael’s office with his calculating eyes and relentless observation, and he’d gotten under my skin in ways I couldn’t defend against.
He’d made me feel seen. Not just watched or surveilled, but actually seen—the real Cassandra buried under layers of performance and survival.
And then he’d kissed me like he was claiming something that belonged to him, only to walk away like it didn’t matter.
“Five more weeks,” I said, more to myself than to them. “He’ll be gone in five more weeks, and my life can go back to what passes for normal.”
Hailey and Barbara exchanged one of those looks that said they knew I was lying but loved me enough to let me pretend.
We drank in companionable silence after that, the music washing over us and the club’s chaos providing cover for our shared understanding that nothing was ever as simple as we wanted it to be.
My hand throbbed under its bandage. My lips still felt bruised from Drew’s mouth. My heart beat an unsteady rhythm that suggested it hadn’t gotten the memo about not catching feelings for the enemy.
But I was Cassandra Miller—survivor of orphanages and bar fights and three years of betraying the man who’d saved me from poverty. I’d survived worse than wanting someone I couldn’t have.
I’d survive this, too.
Chapter 5 – Drew
The club was packed tight with the kind of chaos that usually didn’t bother me. I’d learned early that noise could be useful—it masked conversations, made surveillance harder, turned the space into something anonymous and untraceable. But tonight, the bass line thudding through my ribs felt like a countdown I couldn’t stop.
I sat in our private booth with Kirill and Damir, watching the crowd move like a single organism pulsing with lust and alcohol and money. Kirill was on his third vodka cranberry—a disgusting choice that I’d never let him live down—while Damir slouched beside me with the kind of comfortable silence that only came from knowing someone your entire life.
“That tie,” Kirill said, jabbing a finger at Damir’s chest, “is a fucking crime against fashion. It looks like a dead fish threw up on your neck.”
Damir didn’t even glance down. “Your opinion means nothing to me when you’re wearing something that looks like it was designed in a Russian basement by someone who hates color.”
I smirked into my drink. This was normal. This was easy. Just three men talking shit about clothes and life and the general incompetence of everyone around us.
Then Damir’s eyes caught on something across the room. The shift was subtle—a slight tension in his jaw, a straightening of his spine, but I’d spent enough years watching my brother to recognize it. He set his drink down with deliberate care.
“I’ll be back,” he said, already moving.
“Where the fuck are you going?” I called after him, but he was already crossing the floor toward the bar.
That’s when I saw her.
Hailey. The bartender with the switchblade hidden somewhere I’d never bothered to figure out and the smile that said she’d fought her way up from nothing. She and Damir were talking like old friends, the kind of easy conversation that suggested this wasn’t their first encounter. She didn’t seem to be working tonight but was preparing drinks behind the bar anyway.
My brother knew people. Had connections and relationships and a life outside the confines of what I knew, which shouldn’t have surprised me but somehow did. We weren’t close in the way that mattered—hadn’t been since childhood. But watching him with Hailey, I realized how little I actually knew about him. Where he went when he wasn’t working. Who he trusted. What he wanted beyond the next mission and the next threat to neutralize.
I was still processing this small revelation when my eyes did what they’d been trained not to do since the moment I’d kissed her three hours earlier: They found Cassandra.
She sat in a booth with another woman, one with expensive taste in everything and the kind of polished confidence that screamed old money. Cassandra was between them, drink in hand, and even from this distance, I could see the tension in her shoulders. The way she was working too hard to seem fine.
The way she was trying not to look at me.
Kirill followed my gaze, and his lips curved into that familiar smirk that meant he was about to be insufferable. “Should I leave you two alone, or—”
“Don’t,” I cut him off, but it came out sharp enough that he held up his hands in mock surrender.
The music shifted, something with a darker edge, something that made the bass rattle deeper. Damir was still at the bar with Hailey, and across the room, Cassandra’s friendwith the expensive clothes was watching our booth with the kind of curiosity that usually meant trouble.
“That’s Barbara,” Kirill said, following my line of sight. “Richest girl in Chicago. Connected to half the city’s legitimate business world and probably the other half too. She’s been staring over here like she’s trying to solve a fucking puzzle.”
