His eyes went wide. Not with surprise. He'd known this was coming the second I'd walked through his door. No, this was something else. Recognition, maybe. The understanding that all his choices had led here, to this roach-infested shithole in Riga, Latvia, to my hand on the grip, to the cold spreading through his chest like winter.
I held him there.
Kept the blade buried deep while I watched.
My father's voice cut through the moment, sharp and unwelcome—Make it quick, son. Clean kills are merciful kills.
I shoved the memory down hard, crushed it beneath the weight of everything I'd become since he'd left. Since he'd disappeared from Montana, from us, from his family.
Mercy wasn't on the menu tonight.
Draconi's mouth worked, trying to form words that would never come. Blood bubbled at the corner of his lips, dark and thick. His hands clutched at my forearm—weak, desperate, already losing their grip.
I leaned closer, let him see my face clearly in the dim yellow light from the bare bulb overhead.
"You got Benson killed," I said quietly. "He trusted you. He was a good man. Wife. Three kids. He was in Baku because I asked him to be. Because I told him the intel was solid. Because it was an easy deal."
Draconi's eyes flickered. Maybe guilt. Maybe just the synapses misfiring as his brain started shutting down.
"Wrong place, wrong time," I continued, voice flat. "All because you sold us out. So, yeah. I'm gonna stand here and watch you go, you fucking piece of shit."
The light in his eyes dimmed by degrees. Not all at once—never all at once. It was gradual, like someone turning down a lamp. First the clarity went. Then the fear. Then the recognition that he was still a person, that this was still happening.
By the end, there was nothing.
Just empty windows where a soul used to live.
I let him slip to the floor, the blade still buried in his chest. Left it there. Fuck him. Fuck anyone who came looking and tried to trace it back to me. The weapon was a common blade, a kitchen utensil, strong, sharp, untraceable, purchased at a market in Tallinn three days ago, specifically for this. If someone wanted to play detective, they could waste their time.
Draconi crumpled like a puppet with cut strings, his body folding in on itself, blood pooling beneath him and soaking into the ratty carpet that probably hadn't been cleaned since the Soviet Union collapsed.
I stood over him for another moment, searching for something—satisfaction, maybe, or closure, or the sense that Tony's death had been balanced out by this one.
Nothing came.
It never did.
Special Agent Vince Draconi. Decorated FBI. Traitor. Piece of shit. Dead.
He was the only thread I'd been able to pull from the tangled mess that had gotten Benson killed. The only name that surfaced when I'd spent two weeks digging through encrypted communications, bribes, offshore accounts, and favors traded in dark corners of the intelligence world.
I'd hoped there'd be more. Accomplices. A network. Someone else I could bleed for answers.
But Draconi had operated alone, selling information to the Chechen syndicate for cash and the promise of a cushy retirement somewhere warm. Selfish. Stupid. Lethal. Too bad he’d lose his deposit on that house in Cabo.
The mission had gone sideways because of him. Benson had walked into an ambush in a Baku warehouse that should've been empty. Instead, it was full of men with AKs and bad intentions, all because Draconi had whispered our movements into the wrong ears.
I'd still completed the job. Two syndicate lieutenants were rotting under three tons of garbage outside Baku, their bodies contributing to the landfill's methane production.
But Benson was still dead.
And now, so was Draconi.
I took one last look at the body, then turned and walked out.
The tenement was a relic—crumbling Soviet-era concrete, narrow hallways that smelled like cabbage and mildew, stairs with missing rails and graffiti in three languages. I movedthrough it like smoke, keeping to the shadows, ears tuned to every sound.
A baby cried somewhere above me. A television blared Russian news through a thin wall. Someone was arguing in Latvian, voices rising and falling in a rhythm I didn't need to understand to recognize.
