I'd been collecting intelligence for over a year under the assumption that nobody was watching me collect it. That assumption had just become a question. New faces meant new eyes. New authority meant new scrutiny. And if this man was who I thought he was—someone higher in the chain, someone with the power to audit Viktor's operation—then the comfortable invisibility I'd enjoyed behind this piano might have an expiration date I couldn't see coming.
For the first time, the archive in my head felt less like a weapon and more like a bomb strapped to my chest.
Something was coming.
The smart thing would be to run. Take the archive and disappear. Find a quiet town, a safe life, a world that didn't smell like blood and gun oil and the cologne of men who killed as casually as they ordered dinner.
I flexed my fingers over the keys.
But I wasn't going to run.
I'd learned the shape of this cage. Every bar. Every lock. Every blind spot the guards didn't know they had.
Running was what they'd expect from the blind girl who knew too many secrets.
I was done being what they expected.
CHAPTER 12
MILO
Iwas fucked.
I was so, so fucked.
Three showers later and I could still smell her. Her scent soaked into my skin like a stain I couldn't scrub out. Not that I'd tried that hard.
Today I woke in my own bed—sterile designer sheets, an empty loft, a view of a city I'd never really seen—and the hollowness of it hit different. Wrong. My apartment felt like a waiting room. A place between destinations.
Her apartment felt like home.
That's when I knew.
The Italians called at noon. Cleanup job in San Marcos. Good money, easy work. "Two hours there, two hours back. You available?"
"Sorry. I'm booked. You'll have to call someone else."
"No one else is as good as you."
"Can I put that on my resumé?"
He wasn't amused. He hung up.
I wasn't booked. And I was currently sitting in my car outside The Silver Table, watching the dinner crowd filter in, cataloging every man who glanced at the entrance. Making sure none of them looked too long. Stayed too close. Or thought about following a pretty blind woman home.
The last guy who'd had that idea was currently dissolving in a barrel of lye in a storage unit off I-35.
You're dead, boy.
My father's voice. But it was quieter now. Drowned out by the memory of Raven gasping my name, her nails carving marks down my back, her body clenching around mine while she came apart beneath me.
Yeah, Dad. I know.
The smart play was to walk away. Put distance between us before Viktor noticed. Before the compromise became fatal.
I wiped the condensation from the window so my view wasn't obstructed.
So. Fucked.
