Her eyes find mine. Wide at first. Scanning me, reading me the way she reads everything. Taking in the blood, the vest, the cracked plate, the rifle, the bodies in the hallway behind me.
Then her hand drops. The chair leg clatters to the concrete floor.
"Who hit you?" The words come out before I can stop them. Quiet. Calm. I don't recognize my own voice.
"It doesn't matter."
"It matters to me. Who hit you?"
"One of the extraction team. Lorenzo said his name was Luca."
Luca. I file the name into the place where I keep debts. It sits beside the names of the men who killed my sister, beside the face of the man who betrayed Aurelio eight years ago, beside every outstanding balance I've yet to collect. That folder never empties. It only grows.
"Are you hurt?" I ask. "Besides the face."
"Wrists are raw. Nothing serious." She holds them up. The marks are angry, inflamed, but the skin isn't broken. "I'm okay."
I look at her. She looks at me. The hallway behind me is a graveyard. The building below us is silent except for the distant sound of Emilio clearing the last room on the ground floor. I'm standing in front of the woman I defied Aurelio for, the woman I slaughtered my way through three floors to reach, and my hands are shaking.
"I found you, love, you’re safe." I say.
She crosses the room in three steps.
Her hands grab the front of my vest, fisting the Kevlar, pulling herself against me. Her face presses into my chest, and I feel herbreath, hot and ragged, soaking through the tactical fabric. She doesn't cry. Doesn't speak. holds on like I'm the only solid thing in a world that keeps trying to pull the ground out from under her.
My arms close around her. The rifle digs into her back and I shift it aside, pulling the sling over my head and letting the weapon hang from one hand while the other wraps around her shoulders. My hand finds the back of her neck. That spot. The one that fits my palm like it was designed for it. I grip her there, firm, possessive, my thumb pressing into the muscle, and I press my mouth against the top of her head.
"I found you," I say again. Quieter. Into her hair.
"I know." Her voice is muffled against my vest. Small and steady and certain. "I knew you would."
Ten seconds. I give us ten seconds. Then I pull back.
"We need to move. Can you run?"
"Yes."
"Stay behind me. Don't stop for anything. If someone comes at us, get behind the nearest wall and stay down."
She nods. No argument. No questions. She trusts me with her life, and that is a boulder of responsibility on my shoulders, beside the rifle and the vest and the bodies I'm leaving behind.
I take her hand. Lace my fingers through hers and grip hard. She grips back harder.
We move.
Down the corridor, past the bodies, past the shell casings scattered across the grating like brass seeds. She doesn't look down. Her eyes stay forward, locked on the stairwell, her bare feet silent on the metal floor. She's cold. I can feel it in her fingers, in the tremors running through her hand. I want to stop and wrap my jacket around her, but stopping means dying, so we keep moving.
The stairwell. Second floor. Claudio is waiting at the bottom, covering the hallway. He sees Alexandra and nods once. That's it. No words, no reassurance. acknowledgment that the mission objective is secure and we're getting out.
Ground floor. The common area where we started. The bodies are where we left them. The coffee cup is still shattered on the floor. Alexandra's hand tightens in mine as we pass through, but she doesn't slow down.
The storage area. The service door. The night air hits us like cold water, sharp and clean after the gun smoke and blood inside. Alexandra gasps, pulling it into her lungs, and I feel her squeeze my hand.
Emilio is at the corner of the building, rifle up, scanning the street. He sees us and lowers the weapon.
"She good?" he asks.
"She's good," I say.
