The kind of woman who walked into a room and changed the oxygen content just by existing.
We'd been in the same training cohort—hand-picked, vetted, tested within an inch of our lives. The program was classified. The mission was long-term. The commitment was forever.
And Victoria had been the best of us.
Sharp. Fast. Fearless in ways that made the rest of us look cautious.
We'd started sleeping together three weeks in.
Not because it was smart—it wasn't—but because the attraction was undeniable. Magnetic, like she said. Two bodies pulled together by something neither of us could name or control.
Training made it better.
We pushed each other. Competed. Fucked like we were trying to prove something neither of us could articulate.
And for a while, it worked.
But it was on our first real-world training mission—overseas, boots on the ground, live intel—that I started to see the cracks.
Behind the wire, Victoria kept it together. Flawless performance. Perfect execution.
Out in the field, though, something shifted.
She'd have these moments. Manic bursts of activity that came out of nowhere. Talking too fast. Moving too fast. Her eyes bright and fevered like she'd taken something she shouldn't have.
She'd cover it quickly. Laugh it off. Make a joke.
But I saw it.
And as one mission rolled into the next, as our affair continued in hotel rooms and safe houses across three continents, I knew the truth.
Victoria was hiding something.
I confronted her in Prague.
She laughed in my face.
Then dropped to her knees and tried to give me a blowjob.
I refused.
That's when the mask came off.
Glasses thrown. Profanities launched. She turned into someone else—someone I didn't recognize. A woman possessed.
I asked her to get help.
She laughed again. Harder this time. Crueler.
"Help?" she'd spat. "You think I need help? You're the one who's broken, Byron. You're the one who can't handle reality."
But I wasn't the one throwing things. I wasn't the one spiraling.
I was idealistic back then. Young. Married to the mission in a way that left no room for complications.
And Victoria was a complication.
She could ruin everything. Everything we'd been building. Everything we'd been chosen for.
