I look at Cast over Penny's shoulder. He's watching us with an expression I can't quite read—something between amusement and that same softness from earlier.
"Dinner sounds perfect," I tell Penny, setting her down. "Lead the way."
She grabs my hand with complete confidence and pulls me toward the door. "We're having pasta! And garlic bread! And Mama made that chocolate cake you like!"
I let myself be pulled from the office, from the conversation, from the weight of decisions I'm not quite ready to make. Let this seven-year-old with her unconditional love and simple solutions lead me toward something as basic and necessary as dinner.
Behind me, I hear Cast's voice, low and certain: "Fight, Valentina. Don't give up."
I squeeze Penny's hand and follow her down the hall.
Tomorrow I'll figure out how to fight for what I lost.
Tonight, I'll eat pasta and let a child remind me that sometimes the simplest comforts are the ones that keep you alive.
17
ISAIAH
The Vipers cameout of nowhere.
One second I'm doing a routine pickup from one of our protection clients on the east side, the next I'm ducking behind a dumpster while bullets chew through brick and metal like they're made of paper. Three of them—professionals, not the usual street thugs we deal with—moving with coordinated precision that speaks to military training or something close to it.
The Vipers have been slithering across the city for weeks now, taking territory we don't have the manpower to defend, hitting our operations with intelligence that's too good to be coincidence. Someone's feeding them information. Someone always is. But tonight they got bold, tried to take me out while I was alone and exposed.
They almost succeeded.
I make it back to the safe house at just past midnight, adrenaline crash hitting me the second I kill the truck's engine. My side is on fire—not a direct hit, thank God, just a graze that tore throughmy jacket and shirt and left a burning track across my ribs. But it's bleeding steadily, soaking through the makeshift pressure bandage I made from my t-shirt, and I can feel the exhaustion pulling at me like gravity.
The front door opens before I reach it. Asher, already awake or maybe never asleep, takes one look at me and his expression hardens into that tactical assessment mode he shifts into when things are bad.
"How many?" he asks, stepping aside to let me in.
"Three. Vipers." I make it to the kitchen, brace myself against the counter. "Professional setup. They were waiting for me."
"Fuck." He's already moving, grabbing the first aid kit from under the sink, a bottle of vodka from the cabinet. "Sit."
I lower myself onto one of the kitchen chairs, hissing as the movement pulls at the wound. Strip off my jacket and what's left of my shirt, both ruined, both going in the trash. The graze is ugly—four inches long, deep enough to need attention but not deep enough to require a hospital. We've both dealt with worse.
Asher sets the vodka bottle on the table in front of me. "Drink."
I take a long pull straight from the bottle—whiskey, not vodka, because even in crisis I have standards—and let the burn anchor me while Asher opens the first aid kit with practiced efficiency.
"This is going to hurt," he warns, uncapping the vodka.
"Just do it."
He pours. The vodka hits the wound and I bite back a curse, my hand white-knuckling the edge of the table. The pain is brightand immediate, cutting through the adrenaline fog, sharpening everything to a crystalline clarity I don't particularly want.
"Tell me what happened," Asher says, voice level as he works. Cleaning the wound with methodical precision, checking for debris, for anything that might cause infection later.
"Routine pickup turned ambush. They knew exactly when I'd be there, exactly which route I'd take." I take another drink. "They're getting better intel than we're giving them credit for."
"Or someone's giving it to them." Asher's jaw tightens. "The leak's getting worse."
"Yeah." I watch him work, grateful for something to focus on that isn't the slow-motion disaster our lives have become. "I almost didn't make it out. One of them had me pinned behind a car, the other two flanking. If a patrol car hadn't come around the corner—" I stop. "I got lucky."
"Luck runs out." Asher reaches for the gauze, starts wrapping with the same efficiency he does everything. "We can't keep operating like this. Undermanned, under-resourced, with Xavier drunk in his room and Valentina—" He stops.
