No one saw me.
I was good at that. Being invisible. That skill kept me alive.
The street outside was wet, slick with rain that had turned the cobblestones into mirrors reflecting the amber glow of streetlights. Riga at two in the morning was a ghost town. A few late-night drunks stumbled past, arm in arm, singing off-key. A stray dog nosed through an overturned trash bin. Somewhere distant, a siren wailed and faded.
I didn't see any of it.
Not really.
I saw vectors. Sight lines. Escape routes. The old Volga parked across the street with a man sleeping in the driver's seat—drunk or homeless or waiting for someone, it didn't matter. The alley to my left, too narrow for a vehicle, wide enough for a man. The rooftop access three buildings down.
My life was the mission. Had been for a long time. Since I was old enough to understand that the world was full of men like Draconi, and someone had to put them down.
I flagged a cab two blocks away, a battered Skoda with a driver who looked like he'd seen worse than me. I gave him an address in broken Russian—tourist district, a hotel I wasn't staying at—and settled into the backseat.
He didn't ask questions. Good.
I watched the side mirror, tracking headlights, counting vehicles, noting patterns. No one followed. No one cared. Just another fare in a city full of ghosts.
We passed the Freedom Monument, lit up against the night sky, a woman holding three stars aloft like hope meant something. We crossed the Daugava River, the water black and slow beneath us. The old town rolled by, medieval spires and gothic facades that tourists paid good money to photograph.
I saw none of it.
Just the mission. Always the mission.
I paid the driver in cash, added a tip that wouldn't be remembered, and walked three more blocks before catching another cab. Different route. Different destination. This one dropped me six blocks from the Airbnb flat I'd rented under a name that didn't exist.
I walked the rest.
The building was quieter than Draconi's tenement. Newer. Cleaner. The kind of place where young professionals lived and pretended Riga was the next Berlin. I took the stairs, avoiding the elevator and its cameras, my footsteps silent on the concrete.
Four flights up.
I paused at each landing, listening. Checking angles. Looking for anything out of place—a door cracked open, a shadow that didn't belong, the faint scent of cologne or sweat or gun oil.
Nothing.
The hallway on the fourth floor was empty. Three doors. Mine was at the end, number 409. I approached slowly, hand on the gun tucked against my spine, eyes scanning for tampering.
The lock was untouched. The piece of tape I'd placed at the bottom of the door was still there, unbroken. The dust I'd blown across the threshold was undisturbed.
I unlocked the door with my left hand, the Glock in my right, and stepped inside fast, sweeping the room in a practiced arc.
Empty.
The flat was small. Kitchenette to the left. Living room with a sofa and a window overlooking the street. Bedroom andbathroom to the right. Minimal furniture. No personality. Just the way I liked it.
I checked the window sensors first—still armed. Then the motion detector I'd hidden in the bookshelf. Active. The micro-camera aimed at the door. Recording. I scrubbed back through the feed on my phone. Nothing. No one had entered.
I checked the bedroom. Closet. Under the bed. Behind the shower curtain.
Clear.
Only then did I let myself relax. Barely.
I stripped off my jacket, the black thermal beneath it, the tactical pants still damp from the rain. Dropped them in a pile by the door. Down to my boxer briefs, I hit the floor and started counting.
One. Two. Three.
