Training snaps into place, bodies moving as one. I’ve got my weapon in my hand before my pulse even spikes, Delilah mirroring me, stance perfect, eyes hard, ready. We’re already repositioning, already calculating angles, already preparing tomove. My body knows the drill before my mouth does. Hers does too. Which is exactly the problem.
The doors fly open.
“Surprise!”
The word crashes into us like a physical blow.
Laughter spills out, followed by music swelling louder, and then Delilah’s parents appear, her mother beaming, her father pushing a massive cake forward with a grin that falters the second his eyes land on us.
On our stance.
On the guns.
On the way Delilah hasn’t even fully lowered hers yet.
The room erupts into confusion—voices overlapping, someone shouting, someone else laughing nervously, trying to smooth it over like it’s a joke gone wrong. A server nearly drops a tray. Someone’s aunt lets out a scandalized gasp. Half the retirees go rigid on instinct, old training flashing through old bones, while the civilians just stare.
Her father’s face drains of color.
“Delilah,” he says slowly, and there’s a new note in his voice now. Not anger. Not fear.
Recognition.
My pulse spikes hard.
“Everyone just relax,” I say, stepping forward, forcing my tone into command even as my eyes keep sweeping the room. “It’s a misunderstanding. Let’s take a breath—”
But the pieces are already clicking into place for him. I can see it happening, each detail lining up with brutal clarity—the stance, the weapon, the reflex, the way she didn’t hesitate for even a second. The way I didn’t either. The noise around us is growing louder, messier. Curious eyes. Stiff silence. Too many witnesses. Too many angles.
Exactly the kind of chaos Mikhail would use as cover.
My hand tightens around my weapon.
Too many people.
Too much emotion.
Too perfect an opening.
And all I can think is—
If this goes sideways, it won’t be because Mikhail planned it.
It’ll be because we handed it to him.
Chapter 22
Delilah Barrinheart
The pendant is cold against my skin.
I know exactly what it means before my fingers even close around it, before the room and the noise and the shouting finish snapping back into focus. My mind drags me somewhere else first—back to dust and heat and the smell of cordite baked into my clothes.
We were pinned down behind a burned-out transport, comms dead, sky bleeding orange as the sun went down. Jon had pressed the marker into my palm with blood on his knuckles and told me,If this goes bad, you run. You don’t look back.I remember thinking how unfair it was that he sounded so calm when everything else was chaos, how I wanted to scream at him that I wasn’t leaving him there. That if he stayed, I stayed. That some promises matter more than strategy.
We didn’t. We survived.Barely.
The symbol on the pendant was our proof. That we made it out when we shouldn’t have. That there are some endings you earn with blood and stubbornness and luck you can never ask for twice.
