They’re so fucking predictable.
Good people—skilled, loyal, but emotionally? Transparent. Every feeling laid bare on the surface, waiting to be read. Somehow, that makes me feel even more alone.
“He was still a double agent, remember?” I say, my voice steady, tilting my head just enough to catch Jason’s eyes. His gaze hardens, narrowing like I’ve just spoken in a foreign tongue. “Who even knows what he told them about us?”
“Why are you talking like that?” he asks, suspicion edging into his tone, wrapping around every syllable. “I mean, yeah, he was a piece of shit for doing that, but he didn’t deserve to be fucking killed like that.”
Lucia steps in before the tension can thicken any further. “It’s just that a large part of Jason believes he could be givena second chance,” she says, her words slipping into the cracks between our words. She moves closer to him, her hand brushing his shoulder, thumb tracing small, nervous circles against the fabric of his shirt. “Honestly, I believed that too. I still do, for some reason.”
A part of me can understand that—purely strategic and detached. Maybe we could have given him another chance. Keep him locked down here in North Carolina, chained by surveillance, watched from every corner, every shadow.
But that plan would have gone nowhere.
To find anything about The Order, we’d need him to keep pretending, to stay in their good graces a little longer, to act like one of them.
But when they sent four assassins to end him, that was their message written in blood.
Ezra was done. Disposable. A pawn, one more piece swept off the board the second he stopped being useful.
And there are dozens like him.
We can’t afford to drown ourselves in regrets or poison our minds withwhat ifs. That kind of thinking doesn’t lead to answers. It just wastes time, and time is already slipping through our fingers.
“We need to lay low for now,” Jason states, staring at our wall of evidence. “Lucia and I will stay in contact with you while you wait for another mission.”
I nod once, outwardly calm, detached, almost serene. I bury my face in my hands, shoulders slumping, crafting the illusion of exhaustion, maybe even guilt. It’s a performance that must be precise.
I cannot let them see the shift inside me, the fractures tugging at my mind, the true reason my thoughts keep wandering elsewhere. Something has changed, subtle and seismic, like tectonic plates rearranging beneath my chest. Theobsession that once consumed every thought, every step, every carefully measured lie is no longer the core of me.
It still lingers, alive in the corners of my mind, burning quietly, keeping me awake at night, whispering names when the world goes silent. But now it is no longer the sole force driving me forward.
No matter how I push it back, Estella intrudes—an ethereal presence coursing through my veins, a name that hums beneath my skin, impossible to ignore. Perhaps that is what terrifies me most.
Something colder has taken root inside me, sharper and more calculated. It feels new, yet it carries a strange familiarity, like a version of myself that has been waiting in the dark for the right moment to wake.
Being with her loosens the tightness in my chest, though logic insists it should do the opposite. My mind, once crowded with suspicion and restless noise, quiets when she is near. I cannot pinpoint when that shift began, only that it grows stronger every time she steps into my orbit.
When I am with her, I feel everything she feels, a fresh, electric echo vibrating through my nerves. It is intoxicating—more powerful and more vivid than anything I have ever allowed myself to experience. The more I think about it, the stranger it becomes—a grown man unraveling over something he cannot name, something he cannot define no matter how hard he tries.
But none of it matters. What matters is the craving, the pull that drags me closer, the hunger demanding to be fed. And I already know exactly how I intend to satisfy it.
“It’s okay, Dante,” Lucia’s voice cuts through the haze, and I pull my hands away from my face, forcing the illusion of grief, of frustration, of something I hope she’ll believe, onto my expression. “We’re still working on it, and we won’t stop. Justice requires patience, remember?”
I purse my lips, hiding the shift in my thoughts. “I do. Thank you.”
Her face softens into a smile that blooms slowly, reaching her eyes with warmth and tenderness, fleeting yet undeniable. I let myself focus on it for a moment, the comfort brushing against the edges of my thoughts. But almost immediately, my mind rejects the gentleness and replaces it with Estella’s face. Her smile is sharp, deliberate, chilling in its precision—a curve that never reaches her eyes, never promises comfort.
That vision presses harder against my senses than the warmth Lucia offers. It feels more vivid, more real, more necessary—like a shadow I cannot turn away from, an imprint I cannot erase no matter how hard I try.
“We keep talking about the mission, but we avoid the most important part of it,” Lucia continues, and my eyes flick between her and Jason, unsure what she means. “How hard was it for you, Dante, to see him dead…”
It wasn’t hard. Not really. Relief washed over me when I put a bullet between his brows, the weight I hadn’t realized I was carrying finally lifting from my shoulders.
“Yeah… that was something,” I say, clearing my throat as the words feel foreign in my mouth. “We were working together for so long, and no matter what he did, he was part of our team,” I add through gritted teeth.
The lie tastes like acid, burning my tongue. A flicker of irritation sparks inside me, and I clamp down on it before it spreads.
“We’ll see what we can do for his mother and family, maybe try to relocate them somewhere. And at least we gave a chance to that man who was forced to work for them,” she adds, her words soft, almost forgiving, and I can’t tell if they’re meant to comfort me or hers.
