Continue reading to find out what happens next.

6 - 15

The smoke from the claymore blast drifted slowly toward the high vaulted ceiling of the portrait gallery, mingling with the scent of burnt gunpowder and singed velvet. Cassian Thorne stood three paces away from Elena, his Beretta still leveled at a relaxed, ready angle, his dark eyes boring into her with an intensity that could crack stone. Marcus and Dante flanked him, their weapons lowered, their expressions a mix of stunned disbelief and grudging respect.

Elena didn't flinch. She lowered her Glock slightly, letting the tactical light rest against her thigh, and met Cassian’s gaze with the cold, unblinking composure of a veteran who had stood before firing squads and survived.

"You can put the gun away, Mr. Thorne," Elena said evenly, her voice stripped of every trace of the timid domestic accent she had maintained for eight months. "If I wanted you dead, you would have expired in your sleep three months ago when I brought you your morning Turkish coffee with a precise dose of tasteless digitalis instead of cardamom."

Marcus bristled, raising his weapon half an inch. "Boss, she's threatening you—"

"Shut up, Marcus," Cassian cut him off, never breaking eye contact with Elena. A faint, humorless smirk played across his lips. "Digitalis. Is that right? You had eight months to poison the king of the West Coast cartel, and instead you decided to dust my display cabinets and polish my silver?"

"Poisoning a man like you is amateur work," Elena replied sharply. "It leaves a paper trail, triggers internal succession wars, and attracts federal toxicology audits. I don't do amateur work."

"No," Cassian murmured, stepping closer, his piercing gaze scanning the shrapnel scars faintly visible along the edge of her collarbone where her maid’s uniform collar had torn during the blast. "Amateurs don't deploy M18A1 claymores with improvised tripwire overrides inside a Victorian mansion. Amateurs don't clear corners with CQC combat rolls. Who trained you, Elena? FSB? Mossad? Or are you a graduate of some black-site black-ops program the Pentagon pretended never existed?"

Elena let out a short, cold breath that sounded almost like a laugh. "The Pentagon likes to pretend a lot of things, Mr. Thorne. Most of them involve young women they parachuted into Grozny and Chechnya during the winter of 2011 with expired passports, no extraction codes, and orders to disrupt insurgent supply lines until the local warlords caught up with them."

The gallery fell dead silent. The name Chechnya hung in the air like a ghost.

Dante Silva frowned, shaking his head. "Wait... the Grozny extraction disaster? That was a ghost story in the intelligence community. A rogue CIA-backed black-ops cell wiped out by Chechen rebel forces. Everyone involved was listed as KIA."

"Most of them were," Elena said quietly, her emerald eyes darkening with the distant memory of burning snow and tracer rounds cutting through the freezing night. "I was the lucky one. I caught a piece of shrapnel in my shoulder, crawled three miles through a drainage ditch into a Red Cross transport truck, burned my military dossier in a Baku incinerator, and spent the next ten years running from contract hunters who wanted to tie up loose ends."

Cassian studied her face, cataloging every line of tension, every hardened edge of survival etched into her features. He had spent his entire life buying people—buying their loyalty, their silence, their fear, and their blood. But looking at Elena Rostova, he realized with stark clarity that she wasn't a commodity you could purchase with bearer bonds or threaten with violence. She was a weapon that had simply been left in his armory, disguised as a broom.

"So," Cassian said softly, breaking the silence. "You came to Blackwood Manor to hide."

"I came to Blackwood Manor because an estate belonging to an untouchable West Coast cartel boss is the last place federal investigators or Russian hit squads would ever think to look for a ghost," Elena corrected. "Your security was an absolute joke, your servants gossip too much, and your coffee beans were subpar. But the rent was cheap, and the uniform made me invisible. Until Viktor Volkov decided to crash your party."

Before Cassian could respond, a sudden, violent burst of static crackled from the tactical radio clipped to the belt of a fallen mercenary lying near the gallery threshold.

A harsh, raspy voice boomed through the speaker in heavily accented English: "Thorne! Can you hear me, you American bastard? Your outer perimeter is ash. Your guards are feeding the crows. You can surrender your ledgers and your shipping terminals right now, or I personally burn Blackwood Manor down to the foundations with you inside it!"