Page 8

This morning ritual had become as familiar to me as my own.

Wednesday meant chamomile tea, not coffee.

He'd add a squeeze of honey, the expensive Manuka kind, and take exactly three sips before starting his plant inspection.

Today he'd water the spider plant and trim the pothos.

Tomorrow would be orchid day. His routines had become my religion.

I'd been studying him for weeks, memorizing every detail for a kill that never came.

Now those same details would serve a different purpose: keeping him alive.

I knew his schedule, his habits, the rhythm of his days.

I knew which window didn't lock properly, which floorboard creaked outside his bedroom, which neighbor might notice a stranger.

Knowledge meant for death was now repurposed for survival.

My hands trembled slightly, something that had never happened on a job. Cold sweat trickled down my spine. The thought of Vincent's life ending, of those gentle hands never touching another plant, of those perceptive eyes never seeing another patient... it hollowed me out from sternum to spine .

Here he was, getting ready for another day of helping people, and here I was, watching through crosshairs with a man who wanted him dead.

The wrongness raked claws down my throat, leaving it raw and bleeding. This wasn't just another contract. This was Vincent. The man who'd seen more of the real me in one hour than anyone had in decades.

"Perfect timing," Hector murmured, adjusting position. "Clean shot through the kitchen window. Take it."

"Too exposed," I argued, mind racing. "Better to wait until he moves to the living room. Less chance of being seen from the street."

Vincent moved to his plants, bending to examine a drooping fern leaf. His morning ritual began,

"He's perfectly positioned," Hector insisted. "Take the shot, Luka."

"We wait," I repeated firmly. "I'm the lead on this contract."

"Not anymore. Prometheus reassigned primary authority to me when you failed to execute for three weeks. I'm being courteous letting you pull the trigger at all."

I kept my scope on Vincent, watching him mist his plants, completely unaware two killers debated his immediate future from across the street.

"If we do this, we do it my way," I said, desperately playing for time. "Clean. Professional. No collateral damage."

Through my scope, I watched Vincent smile that gentle smile that crinkled his eyes. The one I'd seen up close yesterday.

"Look at you, getting hard for some fucking therapist," Hector spat, disgust dripping from every word. "All these years and you're still that pathetic little boy crying for your dead family. Can't even pull a trigger anymore. Get out of my way before I put you down too. "

"No," I said, not moving. "You're not authorized to execute my contract."

My jaw locked, teeth grinding. This wasn't just about orders or protocol.

For the first time in my career, I didn't want a contract fulfilled.

I wanted Vincent to live. I wanted him to continue talking to his plants, running in the park, helping broken people piece themselves back together.

I wanted him to exist in a world I inhabited, even if just from a distance.

My heart hammered so violently my molars vibrated, blood roaring in my ears like distant artillery. Everything narrowed—vision, breathing, options.

"Actually, I am." I heard rather than saw Hector shift his weapon. "As of 0200 this morning, the contract was officially transferred to my supervision. Your role has been reduced to observer status."

He was going to take my contract. Kill Vincent. Take away the one person who'd truly seen me.

Vincent moved in the kitchen, reaching for a mug from a high shelf.

"You couldn't save your sister," Hector said, voice flat. "You won't save him either. Some people are meant to die, Luka."

The mention of Ana flipped a switch.

No thought. No hesitation. Pure animal reflex.

I drove my shoulder into Hector's ribs hard enough to crack bone.

His rifle discharged wildly as we crashed against the rooftop HVAC unit, rusted metal edges tearing into my shoulder blade while dawn-heated gravel scraped my palms raw.

The scope shattered against his face, opening his cheek to the bone.

Blood sprayed across my vision, hot and metallic.

Hector recovered, training overriding pain. His knee found my sternum, driving out air. His elbow connected with my temple, stars exploding behind my eyelids .

But I wasn't fighting with technique. I was fighting with twenty-six years of compressed rage.

I caught his follow-up strike, twisted his wrist past breaking. The wet snap of bone echoed. A grunt. No scream. Hector never screamed. I drove my forehead into his nose, cartilage disintegrating under impact. My teeth found his ear, ripping through flesh.

His fist pounded my kidney. Once. Twice. Pain registered distantly, irrelevantly. He drove stiffened fingers toward my throat in a killing blow. I caught his hand, bent his fingers back until tendons popped like rubber bands.

He twisted, experience compensating for injury, and suddenly I was underneath, his weight crushing, forearm pressing my windpipe. Blood from his ruined face dripped onto mine. He bared his teeth.

"I made you," he snarled through blood-stained teeth. "I can unmake you."

Oxygen faded. Vision tunneled. Weight unbearable.

Then my fingers found the dagger in my belt. The blade punched between ribs, tissue parting as easily as water. I twisted sharply, angling up toward the heart exactly as Jane drilled into me. Hector's body locked rigid, eyes ballooning as steel found home.

No clever words. No final exchange. Just the wet, sucking sound as I twisted deeper. Blood cascaded over my knuckles, hot and copper-slick. I drove harder, tissue tearing, organs rupturing. His eyes locked with mine full of shock, rage, something almost like pride as I worked the knife deeper.

I shoved him off, rolled on top, drove the knife in again. And again. Each strike precise despite the frenzy. Each one finding vital points. Liver, kidney, lung. My training was so deeply ingrained I couldn't miss if I tried.

His body convulsed beneath me. Blood bubbled from his mouth, from the six, no, seven wounds I'd opened. His hands stopped fighting, clutching reflexively at nothing.

I straddled his chest, watching light fade from his eyes. No satisfaction. No regret. Just absolute certainty of a predator who'd eliminated a threat.

When it was over, I sat covered in blood. My broken nose leaked steadily. My ribs screamed where he'd connected, and a big slash across them burned and bled. But I registered nothing except my steady heartbeat and warm stickiness drying tacky on my skin.

Then it hit me.

Holy fuck. Holy. Fucking. Fuck.

I'd just killed Hector. Prometheus's right hand. My creator.

A violent tremor ripped through my body, starting at my fingertips and spreading upward like an electrical surge. My vision blurred. Lungs seized. What the fuck had I just done? What the actual fuck?

This shouldn't have been possible. Twenty-six years of conditioning, of brutal training designed specifically to prevent this exact scenario. Ferrymen didn't turn on their superiors. Ever. The pain response alone should have stopped me. The implanted triggers, the psychological barriers.

I scrambled away from the body, my back hitting the HVAC unit. Breathing came in ragged gasps as I stared at my bloody hands. They didn't feel like my hands anymore. It felt like I was piloting a body that had suddenly gone rogue.

The Pantheon had a name for this: cascade failure. When an asset's programming collapsed entirely. I'd seen it happen once, in Madrid. They'd put that agent down like a rabid dog.

I pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes, expecting the headache to start. The blinding pain that always came when I even considered defiance. The pain that had dropped me to my knees in Taipei when I'd hesitated on a contract.

But nothing came. Just silence and the weight of what I'd done.

Vincent. This was about Vincent.

My breathing slowed. The shaking in my hands subsided. Somehow, impossibly, I'd broken through decades of conditioning for a man I barely knew.

The feral thing that had taken over receded slowly, leaving me staring at my handiwork. The rifle had discharged during our struggle, shot going wide, shattering a window two floors below Vincent's apartment. That would draw attention soon.

I wiped prints from my rifle, leaving it behind. Hector's death would buy me hours at most before Prometheus realized something was wrong. I needed to move fast.

Across the street, Vincent's silhouette appeared at his window, likely drawn by gunshot. He was peering out cautiously, phone in hand. Probably calling 9-1-1.

Fuck.

Staring at Hector's cooling corpse stirred nothing in me except awareness of my steady pulse and the warm stickiness drying tacky on my skin.

Another day, another body. Except this one had been a long time coming.

His death wasn't just about settling old scores, though years of abuse had certainly fueled my rage.

No, I'd killed him because he was going to kill Vincent, and that was something I couldn't allow.

When had protecting Vincent become more important than my own survival?

When had this man I'd been assigned to kill become the one thing I couldn't bear to lose?

The realization slammed into me with bruising force: I'd never have another therapy session with Vincent if I didn't act now.

Never experience that moment when his professional mask slipped and genuine curiosity shone through.

Never find out if the connection I'd felt in his office was real or just another manipulation technique.

All the words we might exchange, all the moments where he might actually understand the broken thing inside me would be gone forever if I didn't reach him in time.

What would I even say? Sorry for stalking you for three weeks. I killed my trainer instead of you. Want to go on the run together? Somehow, I didn't think his therapy training covered that scenario.

But I had to try. For the first time in twenty-six years, I'd found someone who looked at the weapon and saw the wounded child underneath. And that was worth dying for.

I removed the penny from my pocket—Vincent's death contract—and placed it in Hector's cold hand, curling his fingers around it. A final fuck-you to The Pantheon. The ferryman had his soul after all, just not the one they'd paid for.

"One penny, one passage," I whispered. "Contract fulfilled."

Twenty minutes. That's all I had to get to Vincent before police swarmed the area, before The Pantheon realized Hector was offline, before another ferryman was dispatched. Twenty minutes to convince a man I'd been stalking for three weeks to trust me with his life.

I stripped off my blood-soaked jacket, used it to wipe most of the gore from my face and hands. Nothing I could do about the broken nose or rising bruises. I'd have to work with what I had.

Moving toward the stairwell, I felt strangely light. For the first time since I was six years old, I'd made a choice entirely my own. Not what The Pantheon wanted. Not what training dictated. My choice.

I shook it off. My existential crisis could wait. Vincent was my immediate concern. I'd have seconds to convince him before he slammed the door in my face or called for help.

Yeah, that would go over well .

I was a dead man walking. The moment Prometheus discovered what I'd done, every ferryman in North America would hunt me. But for these precious minutes, I was free.

And I knew exactly where I was going.