The Suburban slides; the first burst sparks off the rear glass and dies there because money and paranoia bought us good laminate. Oksana answers with two measured shots that are music and geometry, front tire, then the rider’s nerve. Bike One pinwheels into a parked van.
I pop the sunroof and rise just enough to clear the edge, bracing on my elbow, eyes already drawing the line I need through the mess. The second bike arcs left to flank. I rake the sedan’s grille and lights; plastic becomes shrapnel, the driver flinches, the horn screams. We punch the right turn like we own the block.
"West two blocks," I say. "Then cut south to the market."
Oksana is already on the phone and gives orders in clean and clipped words. "Two tails. One crippled. One active. Create noise south of us, now."
Sasha's—one of her top men I met after we left the hospital—reply is a rumble, "Noise delivered."
We hit the market as the world opens into color: stalls, tarps, buckets of flowers, a woman yelling about mangos like they can save your soul. The active bike tries to thread the chaos. Bad plan. Oksana wounds the engine with a single shot; the rider wobbles, chooses life, and bails.
The sedan is stubborn. He chases us into a narrow side street lined with walls that’ve seen worse. The driver commits to us; he accelerates, thinking weight wins.
"Seatbelts," I order, and the driver smiles, a thin littleI-was-hoping-you’d-say thatsmile.
We brake-turn into a service alley and the sedan overshoots by three car lengths, tries to reverse, and discovers he’s not the only man who paid for this city. Ettoro'spickup kisses his rear quarter with a crunch; he spins, and the passenger window explodes outward. A man rises with a pistol, and Oksana erases the man’s interest in being here.
Silence lands in pieces. Dogs bark. Someone yells about the price of eggs.
We don’t wait for applause.
"Hotel," I say again, and this time Oksana nods.
On the way back, I palm the thumb drive like it’s live. My brain is already unpacking what Nico meant for me to find on it: keys nested in keys, a brother's word priming the lock, the shape of a ledger that can drown men. The ring on my finger bites when I clench. I let it.
In the elevator, Oksana leans against the mirror, taming her wild hair, eyes bright. She looks me over like she’s choosing which trouble to touch first, the drive, or me.
"Breakfast," she says.
"Thumb drive," I counter.
She pushes off the glass, slides her palm over my chest, and rests it there like a claim. "Both, Marito. We eat while you open the box that's supposed to burn down a country."
The doors slide open on our floor.
"After you, Zhena," I say.
The sounds of gunshots still echo in my head, the heat of the ambush still lives in my skin, and under all of it is one clean truth: we’re not running anymore. We’re hunting with paperwork and a ring.
Time to see what our enemies wrote in ink they thought would never dry.
This isthe way to start a day.
Hot sex under hot water. A covert pickup at a bank that smells like old money. A street turning into a shooting gallery, and my husband and I walking out of it with our prize.
Now Pandora’s Box waits for us to open it in a cheap hotel room, and I’m with the man I… love?
Do I? I suppose I do. I married him, didn’t I?
The corridor hums with air-conditioning and bad carpet decisions. I’m still tasting cordite and soap; my pulse is a strange, satisfied drum. Stephano—my marito—slides the keycard, and the green light blinks its blessing. We smile at each other. Yeah, I'm definitely falling for this man with his arrogant charm and self-assured swagger.
The door swings open.
I see it before he does. A gun. Not just a gun, a hand that knows guns, holding it, aimed at Stephano’s sternum. A voice I recognize from a dozen clipped briefings. "Your dad says hi," Gianluigi Bocelli announces, as dramatic as an opera ghost.
The dramatics cost him the element of surprise.
I don’t think. I shove Stephano hard enough to bruise, step into the muzzle, and pivot. Stephano uses the momentum to free his own gun; his weapon clears leather like it’s been waiting for this second all his life. Two shots ring out. One goes into the wall beside me, the other into Gianluigi's upper shoulder, near the joint. He doesn't get a chance to fire again before his now useless hand lets go of the metal; wood splinters against my cheek like sleet. Gianluigi stumbles back over the hotel chair and hits the floor, cursing in Italian that would make a priest blush.
