Page 2 of Code Name: Hunter (Club Opus Noir #2)

LOGAN

L ondon, England

Four Years Ago ? —

After Operation Persephone

It’s raining. Of course it is. London rain isn’t a drizzle—it’s a slow, cold invasion that seeps through wool and skin until it settles in your bones. London always knows how to look like it’s mourning.

I haven’t slept in thirty-six hours, and I’ve spent the last eight staring down a review panel that doesn’t bother to ask how it really went down in Prague. They’ve already decided what they want to believe.

Every time I shut my eyes, I see Wolfe’s silhouette swallowed by fire, feel the heat, hear Vivian screaming over the sound of the blast. She dies in that moment, too—or so the file says. KIA. Presumed unrecoverable.

I know better. No body, no kill. But that doesn’t make me sleep any easier. And if she is alive, then either she’s running from the same ghosts… or she’s part of the reason they’re chasing me.

Vivian Black is dead. Adam Wolfe is dead—at least that’s what they say.

But ghosts don’t always stay buried. And I’m what’s left—the scapegoat MI-6 needs, the ash that doesn’t burn clean.

They pinned the failure of Operation Persephone on me before the bodies were cold.

No medal, no mourning—just silence and suspicion.

The type of wreckage that doesn’t make the reports but stains every breath afterwards.

I write their deaths a hundred different ways in my head. In none of them do I save them. In every version, I'm either too slow, too blind, or too damn arrogant. And that’s the part they don’t put in the file—that I lived. That I keep living. And every breath since has tasted like ash.

MI-6 sticks me behind a desk. Standard procedure, they call it.

Psychological decompression. Debriefing.

Decontamination. I call it what it is—containment.

Keep the damaged asset on ice until someone decides if he’s still useful or just too expensive to bury.

Like a broken weapon — too valuable to scrap, too dangerous to keep loaded.

They want me contained because I don’t break the way they expect.

I don’t shout. I don’t shake. I control.

Tight. Focused. Deadly. They think they’re watching for a crack.

They don’t realize I already rebuilt myself as a blade.

So, I wait. Play the good soldier. Nod at the right times, fill out the endless forms with hands that won’t stop shaking.

I type out my sanitized version of hell in black ink on government letterhead.

And when they ask for the truth, I give them the version that won’t get me killed—swallow it down like broken glass: sharp, bitter, and impossible to forget.

I’m not surprised when Fitzwallace shows up at the American Bar at the Savoy. I’ve been nursing a Scotch long enough to earn a second glance from the bartender and a quiet nod from the piano man. The place hums with soft jazz and sharper secrets—velvet walls and whisky-aged air.

I should have expected him sooner. Fitz, like any apex predator, never misses the scent of blood. And I'm covered in it. He doesn’t just collect survivors. He cultivates weapons. Broken ones. Sharp ones. The kind that obey orders with no need to be asked out loud.

The American Bar is a cathedral to men who make history in shadows—and expect the rest of us to clean up after them.

It’s a monument to whispers, back-room deals, and the legacy that never stains a public record.

I’ve met killers more honest than the men who drink here.

This place is where the whiskey’s always older than your regrets.

One of them once called me a monster with manners.

Vivian used to say it differently...”You walk like you own the leash.

” I never asked if she meant that as a warning or an invitation.

It strikes me as ironic that neither Fitz nor I is American.

Three-piece suit, coat draped over one arm, umbrella folded and still dripping onto the black-and-white tiles, leaving small puddles that reflect the low amber light.

He looks like a man who’s just come from dinner with a prime minister, not going to a clandestine meeting with a disgraced intelligence officer.

“Mind if I join you?” he asks, his voice as smooth and practiced as the tailored lines of his suit—like the question was rehearsed, like the answer never really mattered.

“Only if you’re buying,” I mutter, not quite smiling. The words come out dry, laced with just enough venom to remind him I know exactly what kind of game he’s playing.

Fitzwallace chuckles and sits down. The server comes over; Fitz orders a Scotch and tells her to bring the bottle and leave it. He pours two fingers into a crystal tumbler like this is some kind of social call.

He’s not MI-6. But he knows where the bodies are buried—and probably helped put a few of them there.

Fitzwallace shows up like a reminder of choices you didn’t know you’d made until they’re already shaping your path.

The kind that circle back when you’re standing at a crossroads, bleeding and half-mad, wondering if you’ve got enough left in you to go darker. Except that you know you already have.

“Ye look like shite,” he says cheerfully.

I swirl the Scotch in my glass, watching the light bend through it instead of meeting his eyes. “You’re not here for the pleasantries,” I say, deadpan, like the punchline to a joke no one wants to tell out loud.

“No,” he agrees. “Though I find them refreshing now and again.”

We sit in silence for a moment. Rain taps against the windows like a metronome—steady, insistent, a sound that measures the time between hard truths and harder choices.

It fills the space between us, not awkward, but weighted.

A pause in a conversation built on blood and burned bridges.

I watch the beads of water slide down the glass, each one tracing a path like the lives we’ve left behind.

Fitz doesn’t rush. He never does. He lets the quiet spool out until it almost feels intentional, like he’s waiting to see if I’ll crack under it.

He finally leans in, swirling the Scotch before continuing. “I heard about Operation Persephone.”

I glance up sharply. “From whom?”

“The rule is, no body, no confirmation. Just a burned alley and a lot of smoke. You sure they're dead?”

I look at him. “You read the report. What do you think?”

He just smiles and sips his whiskey, gaze slipping past me like the question never landed. His dodge is what says more than a thousand words—deliberate, practiced, and infuriating. That smile answers nothing—which means it answers everything.

“You know it was a setup,” I say, the words flat and heavy. Not a question—just the thing no one else has had the balls to say aloud since it all went to hell.

“I know you think it was,” he says evenly. “And I also know you’re still standing, which makes you more useful than anyone else associated with it.” He gives me that look—the one that always makes you feel you’ve just failed a test you didn’t know you were taking.

“You, Black, and Wolfe—tight unit, hell of a reputation. Losing a team like that? MI-6 might write it off as collateral, but we both know it guts you from the inside out.” Her name hits harder than Wolfe’s.

It always does. Wolfe was the anchor. Vivian was the edge.

The part of me that knew better still chased her, anyway.

My jaw locks. “You’re here for a reason, Fitz?”

“My business is expanding. I'm looking for private contractors.”

There it is. Not subtle. But clear. The line that sounds like a courtesy but lands like a proposition. Fitz offers nothing without intent—every word is a lure, every pause a test. This isn’t just an invitation. It’s a line drawn in blood, and he’s watching to see if I’ll cross it.

“Is that what we’re calling it now?” I ask. “A private contractor?”

“Call it what you like. But the world’s changed. Government agencies aren’t what they were. Loyalty’s a currency, and most of them are bankrupt.”

I lean back. “That’s what this is? A recruitment?”

Fitz turns his head to the side. “Call it an opportunity.”

I study him. Fitzwallace doesn’t deal in chit-chat or pleasantries. If he’s here, if he’s circling something this deliberately, it means there’s weight behind his words—something with teeth and reach. He doesn’t talk in circles unless he’s dragging you toward a center that eats men whole.

“What kind of opportunity?”

He leans forward, eyes hard now. “The kind that gets you the answers you need. The answers you want. We both know the alphabet agencies are compromised. MI-6, CIA, AISE, DGSE—it doesn’t matter what flag’s on the building anymore.

They’re all playing the same corrupt game, just with different jerseys.

You want back in the field? I’ve got something cleaner. Smaller. Surgical.”

“Cerberus,” I say quietly. The name lands in my mouth like old iron—bitter, cold, familiar.

For a beat, I’m back in the debrief room with the lights too bright, the questions too sharp.

Back in the wreckage of Prague. Cerberus isn’t just a codename—it’s the last door you walk through when you’ve got nothing left to lose.

Or when you want to make sure the next bastard who crosses you doesn’t walk out.

He doesn’t nod. Doesn’t deny it either.

“Why me?”

“Because you’re angry,” Fitz says. “Because you’re better when you’ve got blood on your hands and a target in your sights. And because you’re not finished.”

He’s not wrong. I feel the truth of it in the tightness between my shoulders, in the way I haven’t really slept since Prague.

I don’t flinch—but something inside me sharpens.

He knows exactly where to press. And the bastard’s smiling like he knows I won’t walk away.

“And because you haven’t stopped asking the question no one else dares speak aloud. ”

I say nothing.