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“I know you’re trying to get to the table. But you need something of value to get in. You want them to listen? Bring them something they’ve been looking for since last spring.”
A pause. He was sharp. But I would expect no less.
“What are you offering?”
“Maxine Andrade.”
The silence turned heavy. He knew the name. Everyone in that world did. Brando Gatti’s missing sister-in-law. The one who vanished off the face of the earth. Rumor said she was dead. Others claimed she was sold. The truth? She had been passed from monster to monster, ending up under Kadri’s watchful eyes like a prized possession.
“She’s still alive?” Igor asked, barely masking his interest.
“She’s under Kadri,” I confirmed. “Still breathing. Still salvageable.”
It was a dirty word—salvageable—but men like Igor understood it. He didn’t ask how I knew. He didn’t question my motives. He was a businessman, not a bleeding heart.
“What do you want in return?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Just get her out.”
And just like that, the deal was in motion. Within days, Kadri gave her up. No fight. No resistance. Just a quiet transfer, like he was unloading something that no longer amused him. Maybe he was tired of the game. Maybe he wanted to see what happened next. Or maybe—deep down—he suspected she had already been compromised.
Igor paid a sum that would have made most traffickers salivate. And Kadri handed her over like she had never mattered at all. I watched it happen from the shadows. I couldn’t get close without blowing my cover. So I stood at the edge of a warehouse rooftop, rain slicking my coat, watching as the car doors closed around her.
Maxine.
She looked like she didn’t know what day it was. She wasn’t sure if this was another trick. Another trap.
Her hair was tangled. Her face pale. But she was breathing. She was upright. And she was out.
I should have been relieved. But instead, something inside me shredded.
I didn’t go to her. I didn’t let her see me. Because what the fuck would I have said?
“Hi. I’m Saxon North. I pretended to fuck you while I was undercover and now I’m obsessed with keeping you alive.”
No. This was the end of the road for us. It had to be. At least, that’s what I told myself. A day later, I got new orders. Back to Ukraine. Recon.
The cell I had embedded in two years ago had resurfaced, and my superiors wanted someone on the ground who spoke the language and could disappear like a ghost.
Funny. That was all I had been lately. So I went. I boarded the plane. I buried Devon Walsh and the wreckage he left behind. I let them believe Maxine Andrade was no longer my concern.
But on the nights when the wind howled against broken buildings, when the weight of war pressed down and I couldn’t remember whose side I was really on anymore, I saw her face. I saw the way she had looked at me when I touched her.
The way she still reached back for me.
The way I had felt that she wasn’t ready to give up.
And I wondered if letting her go made me a hero.
Or just another fucking coward.
Sleep wasthe only place I saw her after that. When the guns went quiet. When the static cleared. When the darkness stopped humming and my mind slipped free of duty, I fell into her. And that night? She was waiting for me.
The room was soft. Dimly lit. Washed in the kind of gold you only found in dreams.
The air smelled like warm skin and sweetness—like rainright before it fell. Everything about the space was gentle. The opposite of what we had come from.
She was lying in bed, the sheets tangled around her hips, bare shoulders glowing in the soft light. Her hair was longer here. Less brittle. It curled around her face like it used to, the way it looked before they stripped the shine from her.