The connection cuts. Climbing into the lead vehicle, I start the engine and pull away from the burning monastery. Smoke obscures the rearview mirror, but I don't need to see the destruction to remember it. The bodies in the courtyard. The shattered equipment in the great hall. The inferno consuming decades of criminal records.
Nocturne did all that alone. Walked into a nest of vipers, stole their secrets, and burned their history. Then she ranstraight to a registered safe house where she had to know we'd find her. Why?
The question follows me down the mountain road as we race toward the extraction point. An operative with her skills could vanish completely. She has the training, the contacts, the resources. She could disappear into the European underground and never surface again. Instead, she went to a safe house—a known location that could be a trap, a desperate gambit, or a plea.
But for the first time on a mission, I'm not certain what I'll do when I find my target.
Because doubt—even a sliver of it—is deadly.
3
MARISSA
Monaco, Interpol Safe House Villa Above Monte Carlo
Light from the east wing window spills across the courtyard like an invitation.
My phone vibrates against my thigh. The encrypted message flashes across the screen:Archer Hayes is coming for you. He won't be alone.
Stepping back from the glass, I watch the darkness beyond the villa's perimeter. The warning came from a contact who monitors cross-border tactical movements—the kind of intelligence broker who tracks high-value targets and operatives for clients willing to pay. Hayes is Cerberus's precision instrument—the one they send when failure isn't an option and questions aren't welcome.
He won't be alone. That means a tactical team, support assets, extraction protocols. The kind of methodical approach they use when the target is skilled enough to be dangerous. I suppose I should be flattered by that.
My ribs ache where the vest caught the round in the courtyard at the Silent Canticle. My arm throbs where the bullet grazed through my jacket, the makeshift bandage already soaking through. Adrenaline carried me down the mountain and through the drive to Monaco, but it's crashing now, leaving exhaustion that makes my hands shake when I'm not concentrating.
The flash drive sits on the desk behind me, small and unassuming, containing five years of evidence that could bring down the Iron Choir's entire European network—and prove the Cardinal has been orchestrating them from within Interpol.
If anyone will listen. If anyone believes me. If I survive the night.
I could run. The villa has exits Hayes doesn't know about, escape routes I've memorized over months of establishing this location as a fallback position. Disappearing is what I'm trained for, what I've practiced since my first deep cover assignment.
The networks I've built over five years run deep—safe houses scattered across Europe, contacts who owe me favors, identities that exist only in encrypted files. The Iron Choir wants me dead. Interpol has branded me a traitor. Cerberus is hunting me as a target. None of them know where all my bolt holes are, which contacts remain loyal, or how thoroughly I've prepared for the day everything collapsed.
But running means abandoning the flash drive's intelligence. Running means Amelie Laurent becomes leverage in the Iron Choir's hands while her father dismantles Interpol from within to keep her alive. Running means that child dies, and I become exactly what they're accusing me of being—a ghost who cared more about survival than the mission.
The crystal bracelets press cool against my wrist. The smooth stone grounds me the way it has since Prague, since before I became Nocturne. Marissa Vale wore these bracelets. Tonight Ineed to be both personas at once—the deep cover operative who survived the Iron Choir's inner circle and the woman who still remembers why she started this mission.
Movement at the perimeter. Hayes appears like a shadow detaching from darkness, moving through the gate with controlled precision. His weapon stays holstered. The villa's security cameras captured his approach, catalogued his tactical assessment, recorded the moment he removed his magazine and pocketed it before triggering the gate release. Trust from a man sent to kill me, even if it's tactical rather than genuine.
He's alone. Either the warning was wrong about backup, or he chose to come solo. He's questioning the orders, questioning the narrative, questioning whether the target he's been sent to eliminate deserves execution without conversation.
The flash drive sits on the desk. Small. Unassuming. Flash drive in hand, I step into the light spilling from the east wing window. Let him see me. Let him see that I'm not running, not hiding, not playing the part of someone who's guilty. The Glock sits on the desk behind me, loaded but not chambered. Taking it means escalating. Leaving it means vulnerability. The gun stays where it is.
Footsteps echo in the courtyard, then inside the villa. He moves through the ground floor, clearing corners and sightlines despite the unloaded weapon still holstered at his side. Stairs creak under careful weight. He's coming up, approaching the east wing where light betrays my position.
My breath steadies despite the pain radiating through my injured arm and bruised ribs. Pain is information. Fear is a tool. I've survived in the Iron Choir's organization by controlling both, by never letting them see weakness or hesitation. Tonight I need that same control, that same ability to project certainty even when everything inside me screams to run.
"Nocturne." His voice carries through the hallway, low and controlled. "I know you're here. I know you're armed. This doesn't have to end badly."
Another step forward brings me into the doorway before he enters. Flash drive visible in my raised hand, the other empty and open. "You want to kill me? Fine. But read this first."
Archer Hayes steps into the light. His face is harder than his file photo suggested, all sharp angles and controlled intensity. Dark eyes assess me, cataloguing every detail—the blood seeping through my sleeve, the careful way I hold my ribs, the exhaustion I can't quite hide. Calculating threat level. Probability of deception.
Our eyes lock. Exhaustion mirrors exhaustion. He looks as worn down as I feel, ground down by missions that never quite end. The weight of compromises made, the knife's edge between duty and morality—it's there in the tension around his eyes, the set of his jaw.
His weapon stays holstered. His stance shifts—shoulders dropping half an inch, weight settling differently. Not lowering his guard, but the rigid certainty eases. "Start talking."
Relief floods through me so fast it makes my knees weak, but I don't let it show. This isn't safety. This is a temporary stay of execution, conditional on convincing him I'm worth more alive than dead. Lowering my hands slowly, the flash drive remains visible. "Everything the Iron Choir is planning is on this drive. Names, locations, operations. Including the planned kidnapping of Amelie Laurent—Interpol Deputy Director's daughter. Six years old. They move on her in days."
