Her gaze locked on me, half-smirk tugging at her lips—the silent question I already knew the answer to.
The house we squatted in wasn’t just abandoned; it was dead.
Nestled on the dusty outskirts of Athens, far from the golden lights of the Acropolis, its boarded windows hid the sun.
Electricity had long since given up, leaving us to the flicker of battery-powered lanterns.
Water trickled from a single rusty tap, the occasional drip echoing in the hollow rooms like a metronome counting down the days we’d survived.
We cooked over a camping stove, slept on thin bedrolls that pressed against the cold floor, and kept watch in endless rotations.
Every creak of floorboard, every whistle of wind through cracks, felt like a reminder that we were the last living souls here—ghosts haunting a tomb built for the dead.
Amy tilted her head, lips quirking into that smirk that I hated and loved all at once. “You’re doing that thing again,” she said. “Brooding so hard I can hear the gears grinding in your skull.”
I set the empty mug on the floor with a soft clink. “I’m not brooding,” I said, though even I could feel the edge of it in my voice. “I’m calculating odds. Risk assessment.”
“Same difference,” she said, leaning forward over the chair’s backrest, elbows dug into the warped wood.
Her eyes narrowed, sharp as flint. “Still worried?”
“Not for me,” I said, meeting her gaze squarely. “I’ve made my peace with this job a long time ago. I love it—the rush, the purpose... taking monsters off the board. But you...” I let the words hang, heavy as the stale air around us. “You never wanted this. You’re only here because of him. Because of whatever deal you made with that bastard.”
Her half-smile faltered, fading into something fragile.
She glanced toward the cracked window where weak gray light filtered through the dust and grime, illuminating the sharp planes of her face. “Dad didn’t give me much choice, Rus. You know that.”
I exhaled slowly, tension in my shoulders knotting like barbed wire.
My fingers brushed against the crate beneath me, splinters digging in as I tried to stay grounded. “I know,” I said, voice quieter, rougher. “But surviving this... surviving him... surviving us... you’re stronger than you realize.”
She let the words sink in, then tilted her head, meeting my gaze again.
Her eyes were dark, reflecting the world we were trapped in—dirty, gray, and merciless. “Maybe,” she whispered, voice almost lost in the wind rattling the shutters. “Or maybe I’m just stubborn like you. Stupid, like you.”
I let a small, bitter laugh escape, one that didn’t reach my eyes.
Our father—Colonel Viktor Baranov, retired CIA legend and eternal patriot—had built his entire identity on service.
The Agency wasn’t just his career; it was his religion. Loyalty, sacrifice, secrecy—those were the commandments he’d raised us on.
When I enlisted at eighteen, he’d shaken my hand like I was a fellow officer instead of his son, pride shining in his eyes.
When Amy tried to choose a different life—college, normalcy, something that didn’t end in blood—he’d smiled, nodded... and quietly dismantled her future.
He pulled strings.
He leveraged favors owed to him from decades of dirty wars and quiet victories. He maneuvered her into the Agency with the kind of precision that had made him legendary.
One last operation, he’d promised her.Then you’re free.
A lie wrapped in a contract, stamped with government ink and impossible to escape.
I hated him for it.
Not with the hot anger of youth, but with something colder and more permanent.
The kind of hatred that settled in your chest and never left. I would hate him until the day one of us was in the ground—and even then, I wasn’t sure it would fade.
