“Curious about who?” a light voice says from behind.
We both pivot as Lucia glides into the room, the soft rustle of her jacket following each step toward Jason’s desk. She sets a paper bag onto the surface, and a warm, sweet scent curls into the air, immediately reminding me how hollow my stomach feels.
“Hey, Dante,” she says, her smile spreading slowly across her nude-colored lips—bright and deliberate. “How did it go?”
I can’t stop the heavy exhale that slips out the moment her question lands. She freezes, her eyes locking onto mine, wide, bright and instantly alert as she senses something is off.
Yeah. This isanotherreason why I say I’m not built for relationships. I never process things before they happen; I only realize the consequences after, when it’s too late to fix anything.
“Don’t mind him, Lucia,” Jason interjects smoothly, stepping in like a well-timed lifeline. “He’s just tired.”
“Oh. Well…” she trails off, tucking a strand of her dark hair behind her ear. She takes a small step closer, her sneakersthudding gently against the floor. “I brought cinnamon rolls. Thought you’d be tired after everything.”
That’s Lucia—always thoughtful. Always noticing the things no one else would. She brings me food, drinks, cigarettes—little comforts just because she thinks they might help. She does it without expectation, without pushing. She’s soft in a way that doesn’t weaken her.
She tends to hover in the background, quiet and unassuming, but when the job requires tracking down people who’d rather stay invisible, she becomes a force of nature. Lucia can slip into conversations, slide past defenses, and nestle herself into the blind spots people don’t even realize they have.
If it were up to me, I’d probably lose patience within minutes and get rid of anyone who so much as breathed suspiciously.
Jason and Lucia are what keep this whole thing from falling apart. Jason’s a genius at digging into the darkest corners of the internet, unearthing secrets no one wants found. Lucia, on the other hand, gets people to hand their secrets over willingly—before they even realize what they’ve done.
And I know she feels something for me. It’s deeper than work, always has been. Even after I made it perfectly clear that I’m not interested, she never stepped back. Never snapped. Never lashed out. She just kept giving me the same quiet, maddeningly infuriating responses, like a challenge I can’t quite refuse.
She kept insisting she wanted to fix me, as if she could see past all the layers I’ve built around myself. But the truth is, I never asked to be fixed.
It’s okay, Dante. I’m not forcing anything or prying. I’m just here. I like doing nice things for you. I can see you’re hiding, and I want to see what’s behind the curtain. I want to help you, to fix it, to make you happier.
Jason calls me a fucking idiot, and I get it. Lucia is brilliant, kind, captivating in that haunting, timeless way—like she walked straight out of a Poe poem. But we both know the truth. None of this is her problem. It’s mine.
“Thank you, Lucia,” I mutter, clipped and curt. With Estella, I could force a trace of softness into my tone, a hint of something almost human, but right now, not even that small effort surfaces.
I catch it every time—the subtle flicker in her eyes whenever I pull away, the way her expression stiffens, porcelain skin tightening as if she’s holding back a flood of unspoken emotion. She fights to keep it hidden, to mask the pull she feels, but it never escapes me.
Jason, ever the tension-slayer, clearly senses the awkwardness hanging in the air. He reaches into the paper bag and pulls out a cinnamon roll. “Still can’t believe a big, scary man like you likes these things,” he teases. “If I told anyone, they’d never believe me.”
I snatch the roll from his hand. “They’re delicious. And look who’s talking. Should I mention your obsession with strawberry donuts?”
He groans. “Okay, fine… You got me.”
A spark of mischief ignites within me, and for some inexplicable reason—probably the memory of every joke Estella has thrown my way—I feel the urge to return the favor. “A grown-ass man,” I begin, letting the words roll off my tongue with deliberate charm, “who downs gallons of pitch-black coffee but somehow sneaks in pink-glazed donuts on the side…”
“I’m going to kill you one day,” Jason cuts in, voice rising just enough to match his mock outrage. “And when I do, don’t act surprised.”
“Fair enough.”
He leans forward, his fingers drumming a steady rhythm against the thick stack of papers sprawled across the table—intel,timelines, targets, all neatly organized and ominous in their implication. “But for now,” he continues, his voice sharpening with gravity, “pull your head out of the clouds. Focus on the job, Dante.”
“I’m capable,” I declare without hesitation.
My gaze slides upward to the map hanging above the table, locking on a tangled web of red threads snaking between cities, names, and timelines, a chaotic masterpiece of everything we’ve uncovered so far. I take it in, letting the scope of it settle around me.
Iamcapable. And nothing—absolutely nothing—will go wrong this time, or any time in the future.
Seattle, USA
Usually, my work involves bigger figures: high-ranking politicians, bloated billionaires whose pockets nearly tear from the weight of their wealth. Today is different. And for the life of me, I can’t remember how many criminal lawyers I’ve killed already. I’ve cut so many lives short over the years that the count is long gone.
When I first started, I kept a journal—a meticulous ledger of every person I’d taken out. My twisted version ofjournaling therapy, as people like to brand it. I logged everything: theirnames, the names of their families, their childhoods, the grades they pulled in school, even the comments their teachers scribbled on old report cards. Every scrap of who they were, captured in ink.
