Page 115 of Filthy Little Fix

"Just that."

We return to the car in silence. I throw the backpack on the seat. Now I have a home backpack, an old laptop, and a fern. The mortal remains of Leo Hays.

Luca gets in the car and signals the driver. This time, we take the expressway north.

The journey is silent. Luca and the other guard don't speak. I don't speak. I just watch the landscape transform into trees and, eventually, tall stone walls.

We stop in front of a wrought iron gate, with no identification. A small, discreet camera turns toward us. The gate opens without anyone needing to say a word. We enter a vast, isolated property, surrounded by dense forest. At the end of a gravel path, a modern house, almost a fortress of glass, concrete, and steel, projects from the landscape like a monument to wealth and isolation.

Definitely not the hotel where they kept me until now.

The car stops under a porte-cochere. Luca gets out and opens my door. "We've arrived."

I step out, still holding my things. The air here is clean, cold. I don't see any guards.

"This is your new residence. And your new workplace," Luca says, guiding me inside.

It's a mausoleum with Wi-Fi. The interior is spacious and cold. Black marble on the floor, polished concrete on the walls. The furniture looks like modern art.

Luca guides me down a long corridor and stops in front of a door that looks like a bank vault. It opens with a fingerprint scanner.

"Mr. Volkov has provided everything you might need."

Of course it was Dante.

It's a fucking bunker. An isolated, hermetic suite. King-size bed in one corner, a metallic kitchen with a stainless steel refrigerator, a five-star hotel bathroom. The windows are floor-to-ceiling armored glass. View of the forest. Beautiful. Silent. No exit. Every detail is exactly where he wanted it.

It's suffocating. But he's the one who brought me here. And it's impossible to hate what he touches.

At the other end of the room is the real reason I'm here: a monstrous workstation. Three curved 49-inch monitors, a custom mechanical keyboard with chrome keys, and a server rack with glass panels and blinking lights.

"Mr. Volkov presumed you'd prefer to set up your own system. But this one is already operational," Luca says, pointing to a state-of-the-art laptop, resting between the monitors like a war jewel. "Dedicated fiber. Triple firewall. Nothing goes in or out without the boss's approval."

The boss's.

I walk to the desk. I don't touch any of it. I leave my beat-up laptop next to the titanium monster Dante thought I deserved. The contrast is pathetic. This is what he wanted. I leave the fernat the edge of the desk, facing the window. The only two objects that survived my previous life. Tiny. Ridiculous. But still alive.

Perfectly placed in the center of the desk, next to the keyboard, is a single black envelope, on heavy cardstock. Written on it in elegant, precise silver calligraphy:Nyx.

Luca watches me open the envelope. Inside, a single sheet. A memo:Malakov Asset Neutralization. I can hear Svetlana's voice in my head dictating all the guidelines and rules listed in mechanical black ink. Intelligence extraction, psychological warfare, leaking, disposal. It's my first work order.

I lower the paper. I face Luca, who is still standing near the door, tense, waiting to see if any instructions will come. I give him one.

"I need Sal," I say. "Have new hands grown on him yet?"

Luca ignores my wisecrack. "I don't have authorization to move the prisoner. I need to confirm with the boss."

"Then confirm."

My insubordination clearly annoys him, but the order came from me, the new whatever-I-am. He pulls his phone from his suit pocket and types a message, no doubt to Dante.

"Mr. Dmitry also instructed me to collect your service contract," he says, peeking at me before returning to his phone.

I look at the envelope, then at him. Contract. The paper with numbers. I left it exactly where I found it in that hotel room.

"I didn't sign."

Luca stops typing. "Pardon?"