From the upper deck, I could see the lights of Monaco’s harbor spreading like scattered diamonds.Somewhere in that maze of streets and luxury hotels, my old life waited—a handler to contact, reports to file, questions to answer.I could already hear Matthews’ voice, sharp with controlled anger: You compromised an active operation for a civilian relationship.Do you understand the security implications?
But standing there in the moonlight, watching Adrien sleep through the open cabin windows, I understood something else entirely.I understood why people left this work.Why they chose complicated, messy, unpredictable human connections over the clean lines of duty and protocol.
I understood, too, why my parents had never called when they were working.Not because they didn’t care—because they did.Because they knew what the job costs.Because they’d made the same bargain, and they’d raised us to believe the price was worth it.
But what if we’d all been wrong?
My fingers found the railing, gripping the cold metal as I fought against the pull of possibility.The chill sank into my palms, grounding me, reminding me what was real.Two days ago, the answer would have been clear.Now it felt like standing on a fault line.
A sound from below made me freeze—the soft creak of a floorboard.Adrien was awake.
“Sophie?”His voice carried through the cabin, rough with sleep, threaded with confusion.
My hand tightened on the railing until my knuckles ached.If I answered, I’d never leave.
I closed my eyes, memorizing how my false name sounded like the truth in his mouth.By tomorrow, Sophie Dubois would cease to exist, just another identity dissolved back into the ether of classified files and forgotten operations.But for this moment, she was real.
The marina was quiet at this hour, most boats dark and still.I could slip away now, vanish into the night the way I’d been trained to do.By sunrise, I’d be nothing more than another dream Adrien would eventually convince himself had been too perfect to be real.
Or I could stay.
Love and duty balanced like a blade on my tongue.One cut either way, and I’d bleed for it.
The decision crystallized with brutal clarity.I had to leave, and there could be no goodbye.I couldn’t trust myself not to waver if he asked me to stay, or to give him some way of finding me, some way of keeping in touch.
I knew what was expected of me: clean exits, no emotional entanglements, no loose ends that could compromise future operations.The woman who’d shared stories about her family and played piano onboard a yacht in the pre-dawn light was a side of me that I couldn’t allow to exist.She was the kind of vulnerability that got people killed in my line of work.
My bare feet made no sound on the plank connecting the ship to the marina, though each step felt like walking through quicksand, my body fighting what my training demanded.
On the dock, I paused only long enough to slip on my heels.The click of expensive leather against weathered wood echoed too loudly in the pre-dawn quiet.
Behind me, I heard a door slam open, footsteps on the deck.His voice, louder now, edged with something that might have been panic: “Sophie!Sophie, where are you?”
I ran.Actually ran, like an amateur, like someone with something to lose.Designer heels clicking against wet dock, dress riding up my thighs, lungs burning with something that wasn’t just exertion—running from the only man who’d ever made me want to stay.
I didn’t look back.Couldn’t.Because I knew that if I saw the yacht one more time—saw the porthole that looked into the cabin where we’d made love until we were both breathless and undone—I might lose my nerve entirely.
By the time the sun heated Monaco’s harbor, I was gone.By the time I reached the airport, Sophie Dubois was filed away and forgotten, just another alias in an intelligence career.
I made my choice when I deboarded the yacht.The same choice I always made.But for the first time in my career, as the aircraft lifted into the sky, I wondered if I’d made a mistake.
His lips graze my shoulder, and I come back to Paris, to the man beside me, to the fact that the day could take everything.I curl closer anyway—choosing him in the only way that matters: while I still can.
ChapterTwenty-Nine
Brie
“This is a kill box, Brie.Everything about this reads trap.”Hudson’s voice threads through my earpiece like static over wire—too calm, too precise—the kind of tone men use when the math already says loss.
I force a light smile as Adrien glances back at me from the café counter where he’s ordering croissants and lattes.Morning light fractures through the window, gilding the air around him—civilian softness disguising a man bred for control.
“Quinn pulled the plans for the Montmartre.No clean approach—she’ll see you coming.There’s a dozen entry points.”Too many doors.Too many unknowns waiting behind them.
Every entrance is an exit.I’d expect nothing less from a woman who’s spent decades perfecting disappearance.
“The property was once tied to the Hermès family,” I murmur.Old money clings to those walls like perfume that never washes out.“She’s rented it—and she’s connected enough to do it with almost no notice.She’ll want discretion.”
“If you’re implying she won’t fire inside, you’re forgetting suppressors,” Hudson says.“She can do what she wants and move bodies through the alley.We don’t have coverage in place.Push to this afternoon and I can layer support.”
