Page 3 of Code Name: Hunter (Club Opus Noir #2)
“You want the truth?” he asks. “Come work for me. You’ll get it.
But be warned—once you see how deep the rot goes, you don’t get to unsee it.
” He finishes his drink and stands, shrugging into his coat.
“When you’re ready. You know how to find me.
” He pauses in the doorway. “Let me know, but don’t take too long.
Phantoms don’t wait forever.” I should be thinking about intelligence leaks and enemy networks.
But all I can see is the way she looked back at me that night in Prague—defiant, feral, beautiful.
I buried her once. I don’t know if I can do it again. And Fitz knows it.
The words hang there, soft but heavy. A warning.
A dare. He walks away, slow and certain, like a man who already sees the chain tightening—like he knows the hook’s in, and I’ve already started bleeding.
And maybe it is. Because long after he’s gone, I’m still sitting there, staring into the dregs of my drink, thinking about ghosts—mine, his, and the ones that are about to wake up.
I used to think I could keep her in a box in my mind—labeled, locked, and buried.
But ghosts don’t stay buried. And Vivian Black?
She never belonged in a box. Not in my mind. Not in my hands.
I don’t say yes to his proposal, but I don’t say no either.
Monte Carlo, Monaco
Present Day
Monte Carlo is a liar. Even the air here smells expensive—citrus oil from polished marble, tobacco curling from private lounges, and a faint metallic tang from the coin-counting rooms behind the walls.
All glitter, no gold. Every inch of this place sells the fantasy: high stakes, high society, high heels that click like gunfire on marble.
But beneath the tuxedos and silk gowns, behind the champagne flutes and high-dollar poker chips, this city hums with something darker.
Secrets. Leverage. Blood money dressed in a tux.
I’ve walked these halls too long to be fooled by the surface anymore.
Cerberus has eyes everywhere. Even here, in the gilded rot of the casino, Crown & Scepter, where the chandelier sparkles like a crown and every man thinks he’s king. And me? I’m the monster just out of sight, waiting to take it all away.
"Logan, the target’s moving," comes the voice in my ear.
I shake my head. I'm second-in-command of Cerberus here in Monaco.
Nick is off-grid, sailing with Cherise in the Mediterranean, finally breathing clean air.
But here in Monte Carlo, the ghosts never sleep.
And tonight, I'm not just chasing betrayal—I'm following whispers that feel more like warnings.
There's a signature in the static, a pulse in the shadows. A name I haven’t heard in years, embedded in a dead drop received earlier today meant for no one but me.
Someone long thought dead and buried. Someone with unfinished business.
A phantom... with teeth. And this time, it's biting back.
Someone inside Cerberus intercepted a ripple across three black channels. A coded transmission, with a signature embedded so deep in the data stream it took two hours and a sophisticated AI program to decrypt it. The signature matches someone who was supposed to be dead. Nocturne... Vivian Black.
At least that's what all reports—official and not-so-official—say. Could it be someone else? Someone worse? And if that file is right, then what we're dealing with isn't just betrayal. It's a resurrection.
Not just of the woman long thought dead in Prague, but of everything we buried with her. The truth. The lies. The blood on our hands. Whatever this is, whatever game someone is playing now, it started the night she vanished—and tonight, it begins again.
I adjust the cuff of my black suit jacket and pivot toward the baccarat table where a man in a thousand-dollar waistcoat is losing ten grand like it's pocket change. He's not my concern. But the brunette who just slipped into the booth behind him? She is.
For a moment my breath catches, and I swear my heart stops.
I nearly say her name aloud—Vivian—but the word catches behind my teeth like a blade.
Too dangerous. Too soon. Too late. Elegant, dangerous, and deliberate.
She has a beauty that doesn’t just turn heads—it turns tides.
Her presence is like a loaded weapon dressed in silk, quiet but never safe.
Seeing her now is like spotting a match held just above gasoline—impossibly bright, undeniably volatile, and difficult to look away from.
The name tastes like smoke and ash in my mouth. Vivian Black—Nocturne—former MI-6 asset, shadow operative, and the only woman who ever got under my skin without shedding a drop of blood. She was an expert in infiltration, seduction, and disinformation—deadly with a whisper and lethal with a lie.
Officially, she’s dead. Unofficially? She’s sitting fifteen feet from me in a backless black dress, legs crossed like a queen, and sipping scotch like it’s the only thing keeping her anchored to this reality.
Her presence doesn’t just stir my memory—it ignites something deeper.
My pulse hitches. My spine locks. And just for a second, I smell her perfume—jasmine and smoke, like it clung to her skin and the wreckage she always left behind.
I hear the echo of her laugh from Istanbul, feel the press of her fingers on my jaw in that alley in Prague, right before it all went to hell.
She's not just an apparition. She's my apparition. And now she's breathing again.
That old injury she left behind—Prague, a bridge, a betrayal stitched with a touch—starts aching like it never healed.
She’s a phantom I thought we’d buried alongside Wolfe.
But now she’s back, not just alive, but charged with intent.
And the dossier in her possession? It doesn’t just have the power to burn those high up in the government and intelligence fields.
It could fracture alliances across borders, pit agencies against their own, ignite the type of war that doesn’t make headlines—just casualties.
Somehow, she’s at the center of it all again. Just like last time. Only this time, I’m not unarmed.
She shouldn’t be here, but she is. Alive.
Dangerous. And looking straight at me with a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes—a smile that feels like a cipher, hiding something jagged beneath the surface.
Her eyes scan the room behind me, as if tracking more than threats.
A message, maybe. A warning. Or bait for a trap I haven’t seen yet.
I clock the exits, the security mirrors, the dealer’s tell when a whale hits the table max.
My right hand brushes the edge of my jacket, reassured by the weight holstered beneath.
I move toward her without thinking, my shoes silent against the velvet carpet.
Each step calculated. Controlled. I’ve interrogated warlords with less adrenaline in my veins.
She doesn’t flinch as I slide into the seat opposite her.
Neither of us speak and I let the silence stretch between us.
"You’re supposed to be dead," I say finally.
“I get that a lot,” she responds, raising her glass to her lips.
I lean in close, my voice a low warning. "What do you want?"
She turns her head, lips inches from mine. “The dossier for my life." Her gaze doesn’t waver, but her left hand traces the rim of her glass, slow and deliberate, like she’s measuring my reaction.
I lean back, eyes narrowing slightly. "We're going to need more than what you've sent," I say finally, voice low and clipped. "We need proof that doesn’t just light a spark—it sets the night on fire. If you want me to stick my neck out for you—if you expect me to take this to Fitz before we piss off every alphabet agency on the continent—I need to know what kind of war you’re really starting.
.. and whether you expect me to fight it with you, or against you. "