The weight of it.
Heavy enough to crush lungs.
I let myself fall back against the wall, chains scraping, head tipping toward the damp brick. The cold soaks through the back of my skull, grounding me and shaking me loose all at once. The flashback rushes in before I can stop it. Not a memory. A lifeline. Something warm to cling to while the dark presses in.
Jon’s voice is sharp, unforgiving.
“No. Again. Elbow tight. You’ll shatter your wrist if you shoot like that under pressure.”
I reset my stance, boots kicking dust over spent shells. The smell of gunpowder hangs thick in the air, stinging my nose and tongue. We’re alone at the range, the sun barely cresting the trees behind us. The sky is a washed-out gray-blue, the kind of light that makes everything look washed clean, even when it isn’t. No one else dares come here this early. Not when he’s like this.
Not when he’s furious.
“You wanna play soldier? Then act like one.” His hand comes up, wraps around my waist, and hauls me into position. It’s not gentle. It never is when he’s trying to keep me alive. His chest brushes my back, solid heat and tension all wrapped in worn leather and restraint. I can feel the steady rise and fall of his breathing against my spine, the coiled energy in him like a loaded spring. “I should’ve stopped this before it started,” he mutters near my ear. His breath ghosts over my cheek, warm and angry.
“You didn’t,” I shoot back, lining up my sights, pretending my heart isn’t trying to kick through my ribs. The target blurs for a second, then sharpens again as I blink. I refuse to look at him. If I do, I’ll forget how to aim.
“I should have.”
There’s pain in his voice. Not just anger—regret. Like he’s already lost something.
Like I’m already gone.
His hand slides up, fingers curling around my wrist, correcting my grip, thumb pressing into the tendon until I adjust the angle exactly the way he wants. “You don’t belong here, Delilah.”
“I do.”
The words come out softer than I mean them to, more plea than declaration.
He exhales through his nose, the sound hardened at the edges. “You don’t see it now, but this job eats people. Chews through them from the inside. You think you’re tough, but I’ve buried tougher.”
I fire the round. It hits center mass. Dead center. The paper jerks, flutters, then swings back into place with a lazy sway.
He doesn’t compliment me.
“Just go back,” he says quietly, the fight leaving his voice, leaving something rougher behind. “Before it gets bad.”
“I’m already in,” I whisper. I don’t know if I mean the job or him. Maybe both. “You can’t pull me out now.”
He flinches—barely—but I feel it. In the way his hand leaves my waist, in the fraction of space he puts between our bodies. In the silence that follows, in the distance he suddenly creates between us like a wall dropping.
He doesn’t speak again, not even when I fire three more rounds clean through the heart. Each shot lands where it should. Each one feels a little less satisfying.
Back in the dark, I press my eyes shut, the echo of gunfire ringing louder than the Russian threats. The phantom warmth of his chest at my back lingers like a cruel joke.
He told me not to do this.
Told me it would break me.
Told me to run, but I stayed.
And now I’m paying for it in blood and silence.
They know who I am, which means I’m not a prisoner.
I’m bait.
The truth of it lands like a blade, slow and clean, slicing through the last of my hope. They didn’t grab me for leverage. This isn’t a scare tactic. They knew who I was from the start. My name, my bloodline, my training. They took me so Greenport would come. So he would come.
