Viper ran the outcomes in his head with brutal clarity.
If Miles fired, John would die. If Miles shifted, the opening would be there. If Titus tried to move—
Viper pressed firmer between Titus’s shoulders without looking back. A silent stop.
The room held its breath.
Then something shifted.
Not noise. Not chaos.
Negative space.
Viper caught it in the corner of his vision—the absence of sound where sound should have been, a subtle displacement along the far wall. A presence that hadn’t been there a heartbeat ago.
Boston. Thank fuck.
He trusted his people—and Boston may have been young, but he was one of the fastest assassins Viper had ever met.
Boston slid along the wall like vapor.
Low. Slender. Barely more than a shadow slipping through shadow. His movement was so smooth it barely registered as motion at all. The knife was already in his hand—not drawn, not raised. Simply there, an extension of intent rather than muscle.
Rip froze. Rigid.
Miles never looked back.
His attention stayed locked on Viper. On the guns. On the man who refused to give him fear, retreat, or negotiation.
Boston rose up and struck from behind.
One arm locked around Miles’s shoulders, tight and absolute, cutting off air and sound in the same instant. The blade flashed once—clean, precise, devastating. It opened Miles’s throat from ear to ear with surgical finality.
Blood hit the floor in a heavy splash.
The gun slipped from dead fingers and clattered uselessly across tile.
Miles collapsed in a boneless heap, his grip loosening as gravity took over. John stumbled free, choking and gasping, barely upright, hands scrabbling at his own chest as if to confirm he was still alive.
Boston was already gone.
The shadow swallowed him whole, leaving no trace but the body cooling on the floor.
Rip charged hot on the boy’s tail.
Silence followed.
Not stunned. Not shocked.
Controlled.
Viper released Titus just long enough to ease him to his feet.
He caught Titus by the back of the head, fingers firm in his hair, forcing him to stay still while his eyes swept the wound. Blood soaked through fabric, dark and spreading, but it wasn’t pulsing. Not arterial. Not catastrophic.
“How bad?” Viper asked quietly.
“I’m upright,” Titus said, breath tight but steady. “But I probably need to get looked at.”
