Leather jacket. Tight jeans. Boots that look expensive enough to start a fight and sturdy enough to end it. She moves with the calculated confidence of someone who’s owned this ground before and left bodies on it.
At first, I think she’s a distraction, maybe hired by Delgado to keep my attention while something slips out the back. But then she steps into the dock light and tilts her chin up. My stomach drops to the floor.
Alex.
No. Not Alex.
Her.
The woman before me has Alex's eyes. The same molten brown, the same fire burning behind the suspicion. She looks like someone who’s been swallowing grief and gasoline for years and has finally decided to breathe fire. Four years I've been dreading this moment, and here it is, wrapped in leather and fury. My throat locks up.
“Who the hell…?” one of the men mutters.
“I’ve got it,” I cut him off. “Stay sharp.”
She spots me and zeroes in like a missile. The guards shift, but I wave them down. Something in her stride tells me that if I don’t deal with her, she’ll handle it badly.
When she gets close enough, her perfume hits like a bullet. Leather, smoke, and something faintly sweet beneath, like sugar just starting to burn.
"Are you Carter Bishop?" Her voice cuts through the salt air like a blade.
"Depends who's asking."
She plants her boots on the concrete, hip cocked, every inch of her body spelling challenge. "Victoria Slade, but most people call me Rebel."
Of course they do.
My stomach drops through the pavement. I knew this was coming. The second I saw A. Slade Logistics flagged in the Vulture accounts, I knew she'd find her way to me eventually. Alex's sister."My twin's gonna change the world, Bishop. She's got numbers in her blood and fire in her belly."
He was right. She's terrifying, and I deserve every second of it.
"You're Alex's sister," I say, keeping my voice neutral even though my throat wants to close.
"Was." The word is sharp enough to draw blood. "He's been dead for four years. But you already knew that."
The shipping manifests blur in my peripheral vision. The whole reason I'm here, tracking the Vulture pipeline through this port, suddenly feels like a trap snapping shut around my neck.
"Yeah," I manage. "I knew."
She steps closer, eyes narrowing. "Funny thing. Your name keeps popping up in places it shouldn't. Places tied to my brother's old business. Places connected to money that smells dirty."
"That's what I do. I follow money."
"Then you and I have something in common." She pulls out her phone, and I know what's on the screen before she shows it to me. A. Slade Logistics. The ghostaccount the Vultures resurrected. "Someone's been using my brother's name to move money. According to my research, you were the last person to see him alive."
The concrete beneath my boots is crumbling. "Rebel."
"Don't." She holds up a hand. "Don't 'Rebel' me like we're friends. Just tell me the truth. Were you there the night he died?"
Every instinct screams at me to lie, to walk away, to disappear like I've been doing for four years. But those eyes, Alex's eyes, won't let me.
"Yeah," I say quietly. "I was there."
Her breath catches, just for a second. Then her jaw sets harder. "How?"
"I was..." The words stick like broken glass in my throat. "I was working an operation, tracking Cartel weapons through civilian logistics. Alex was helping me."
"Helping you." She repeats it slowly, tasting the words like poison. "My brother was helping you with what, exactly?"
