Today is enough.
Artem
CURTIS HAS BEEN PROMOTED.
I did it forty-eight hours ago, between the body bag and the marriage certificate, because the boy earned it and because I needed someone on the hospitality deck I could trust with the knowledge that every person on this ship, every waiter, every engineer, every spa therapist, every smiling crew member pouring champagne for guests who think they're on a luxury cruise, is mine. Has always been mine. The Cerulean Royale doesn't carry passengers. It carries an operation, and the only person aboard who was ever exactly what she appeared to be was a twenty-year-old masseuse from Nice who folded towels on Deck 7 and thought the heated floors were the most incredible thing she'd ever seen.
Curtis took the promotion with a grin and an olive stolen off the nearest plate. He didn't ask questions. He glanced at me, at Star, at the ring on her finger, and nodded once.
Now he's weaving through billionaires and their wives with a tray of canapés and the expression of a boy who has been handed the keys to a kingdom and plans to enjoy every second.
MILA'S PYRE BURNS ATmidnight.
It was written in her will: a file buried in her laptop between encrypted intelligence reports and eleven years of operationallogs. Two lines:No burial. Burn me. Scatter the ashes in open water.
We built it on the lower service deck, where the hull meets the waterline and the sound of the sea is louder than the engines. Andrei stacked the wood. He builds things when he doesn't know what to feel.
Star stood beside me. I told her she didn't have to. She came anyway, in her flat shoes and her uniform and the gold band on her finger, and she didn't look away.
The fire caught. Rose. Turned the dark service deck orange and gold. The wood crackled and the sparks flew upward and out through the open hull doors toward the black water.
I thought about who Mila had been before me. Before the military and the intelligence work and the gallery cover. There had been a girl, once. A girl who chose this life for reasons I never asked about because asking would have made her a person instead of an asset.
That was my failure. One of several.
The ashes went over the rail at one AM. Star dropped a single white rose with them. She didn't explain. She didn't need to.
"WE GOT A NAME."
Anton, on the upper deck. The guests have gone to their cabins. The deck is empty except for us: four brothers in the Mediterranean wind, the harbour lights of Monaco scattered below.
"Out of Mila's laptop." His usual grin is gone. His face is all sharp angles and focus, the charm stripped back, the operative underneath. "Took me six hours to crack the secondary encryption. She had a contact log buried three layers deep."
He looks at each of us. Andrei, arms crossed. Alexei, champagne untouched. Me.
"None of us is going to like it."
Silence. The wind off the water. The hum of the ship.
Andrei unfolds his arms. Plants his hands on the railing.
"Tomorrow." His voice carries the finality of a man who knows when a room has reached its limit. "We talk about it tomorrow. Tonight, we give our newlyweds their privacy."
He turns. Star is standing in the doorway to the deck, half-lit by the corridor behind her, her hair loose, her flat shoes, the gold band catching the light.
Andrei crosses to her. He's a head taller and twice as broad, and she tips her face up to look at him and doesn't step back.
One hand on her shoulder. The gesture is careful, calibrated: a man who breaks things for a living and has learned to be gentle with the things worth keeping.
"????? ?????????? ? ?????, ?????????."
Welcome to the family, little sister.
Star's eyes fill. She blinks fast, the crybaby-bride battle, fought and barely won, and nods once.
Andrei squeezes her shoulder and walks away.
I cross to her. Take her hand. Her fingers lace through mine.
