There would be time for the difficult things—the paperwork, the officials, the questions. The phone calls I was already dreading. The parts of Rose’s life that would need to be cataloged, explained, possibly defended.
But not yet.
First, I wanted to see her Paris the way she must have seen it when she wasn’t running or hiding—only choosing. The cafés she lingered in. The streets she walked without a deadline pressing at her back. The places that had made her stay longer than planned, come back again, keep secrets she hadn’t known how to name.
Hopeful things first, I decided.
Let the city show me who she’d been here before I asked it how she’d died.
4
KANE
The cut wasn't deep.
I sat on the edge of my bathroom sink, tilting my face toward the mirror, examining the split along my cheekbone where Dmitri's first punch had landed. Clean edges. No jagged tearing. It would close on its own in a few days, leave a thin line that would fade into the collection I'd stopped cataloging years ago.
I dabbed antiseptic along the wound, the sting bright and clarifying.
I'd learned to tend my own injuries at St. Paul's. The infirmary had been reserved for breaks and concussions—things that might interfere with training. Everything else, you handled yourself. Bleeding taught you about bodies. Yours and everyone else's. Where skin was thickest. How much pressure bone could take before it gave. The difference between pain that stopped you and pain that just reminded you were still alive.
This was the second kind.
I pressed gauze against the cut and taped it down, movements efficient and practiced. My reflection stared back—swollen cheek, bruised ribs visible when I shifted, knuckles raw and split.
Evidence.
I reached for my shirt when the knock came.
Three sharp raps.
I froze.
There shouldn't be a knock.
I paid my landlord monthly, online. No maid service. No deliveries. No one had this address.
Which left one option.
Them.
Adrenaline sharpened everything. I moved silently across the apartment, bare feet soundless on tile, and pulled open the kitchen drawer where I kept a pistol. No need to check. It was ready to fire.
The knock came again.
Louder. More insistent.
I approached the door from the side, angling myself for cover. My finger rested against the trigger guard.
Two options: open the door and put two in their chest, or go out the back window and disappear into Bangkok's maze.
I was weighing which would be faster when a voice came through the door.
"How do you spot a kid from St. Paul's?"
I stopped breathing.
That voice.
