One duffel. Clothes, cash, three weapons I could travel with, documents I kept in a fireproof box under the bathroom sink. Everything else was replaceable.
Never own anything you couldn't leave behind in under ten minutes.
Bangkok would still be here if I needed it. The city didn't care whether I stayed or left. It would absorb my absence the same way it absorbed my presence—without comment, without judgment.
That's what I loved about it.
I stood in the doorway, bag over my shoulder, taking one last look. Bare walls. Minimal furniture. The kind of place that held no memories because memories meant attachment.
The kind of place a weapon lived.
I closed the door and didn't look back.
The address led me to a private airfield thirty minutes outside the city—low buildings, minimal security.
A man in a dark suit waited by a sleek jet, engines already warming.
He looked at me. I looked at him.
"Mr. Black?"
I nodded.
"This way."
No questions. No paperwork. No security screening.
Just a gesture toward the stairs.
I climbed.
The interior was obscene—leather seats, polished wood, enough space for twelve though I was apparently the only passenger. A bottle of expensive whiskey sat on a side table with a note:For the flight. —C
I dropped my bag and sank into a seat by the window.
The engines roared. The jet began to move.
I watched Bangkok shrink beneath me—neon lights blurring into patterns, streets becoming tributaries, the whole chaotic beautiful mess compressing into something small enough to hold in memory.
Then we climbed above the clouds, and it disappeared.
I poured three fingers of Connor's whiskey and leaned back.
Paris.
The Sanctuary.
I request sanctuary.
It sounded like something out of a movie.
But Connor had been serious. And Connor didn't joke about survival.
I took a slow sip, letting the burn settle.
Whatever waited in Paris, I'd handle it the same way I handled everything else: assess the threat, kill anyone who got in my way, survive.
I'd been doing it since I was sixteen years old.
