He’s about six-foot-three and kills people without his pulse rising,my brain reminds me.You arrange flowers. You worry about symmetrical arches. You are not equipped for this.
“I don’t care,” I hiss through my teeth. The sound is fierce in the quiet room. “I am not dying here.”
I run into the bathroom and scan the vanity.
The soap.
It’s an expensive Aesop bottle—heavy in the hand, amber, but not glass. Thick polymer made to look like it, the kind you can’t shatter into a blade. It fits in my palm like a stone.
It’s laughable. A plastic bottle against a living weapon. It won’t stop him, but it’s solid enough to hurt.
I march back into the room and sit in the velvet armchair facing the door, the bottle clutched in my lap.
I will wait.
Eventually, the monster has to come back. Eventually, he has to open that door. He has to bring me food, or water, or demand his ransom.
And when he does, I won’t be the frozen girl in the museum. I won’t be the perfect daughter, terrified of a wilted petal.
I will be the storm he didn’t see coming.
6
CASSIAN
I am a ghost in my own house.
My boots sink into the plush wool runner, making almost no sound as I pause outside the heavy oak door.
In my left hand, I hold the file folder I took from Elias—the blueprints marked with red Xs. In my right, hanging loose by my thigh, is a tactical knife. I don’t intend to use it to cut skin—it’s leverage. It has to be visible.
I touch the earpiece hidden in my left canal.
“Status?” My voice is barely a vibration, but the bone-conduction mic picks it up.
“Camera shows her in the chair facing the door,” Varro’s voice crackles in my ear. “She hasn’t moved in twenty minutes. Biometrics indicate an elevated heart rate. One-ten.”
“Weapon?”
“She’s holding... something. Looks like a bottle. Maybe the soap from the bathroom.”
I almost smile.Almost.
A plastic bottle.
It’s pathetic, but it’s active. A passive victim would be curled up under the bed. A professional would be dismantling the ACvent. This girl, this “florist”, is sitting in a chair facing the entrance, waiting to take a swing at a Don.
It confirms my suspicion. Civilians hide or scream. They don’t wait.
“Kill the feed,” I command. “From here, I handle it.”
“Copy.”
I take a breath, letting the cold, analytical part of my brain take the wheel.
If she’s with Volkov, she’ll have a way to communicate. A wire taped to her chest. A micro-tracker embedded in her clothes. Or ink. The Syndicate brands their property.
I need to see her skin.
