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STEFI

I ’m having the best dream.

I’m living in Venice with my husband Joao, our son Christopher, and our black cat, Mimi. It’s Christmas morning, and I’ve just woken up to the delicious aroma of chocolate wafting through the house, and when I go downstairs, Joao greets me with a kiss and a steaming cup of coffee.

Then, a shrill ring cuts through the haze.

For a disorienting moment, I don’t know what’s happening, and then my alarm rings again. I roll over in bed and look at the cheap clock on the bedside table. Eight minutes after nine. Oh crap, I slept in. I should have logged into the company website eight minutes ago, and I didn’t. My supervisor, Lynda, doesn’t need an excuse to bitch at me, but now she has a perfect one.

I throw back the covers and make myself get up. I stumble my way into the kitchen and make some coffee. I need the caffeine to shake the black mood that I’m in. I dream of Joao often, and it always hurts, but it’s not often that our son appears in my dreams. It’s almost like my mind’s drawn a curtain over his death to protect me from my grief.

Once the coffee is done brewing, I pour myself a cup and start to take a sip when my phone beeps with a news alert. I glance at it, and my system floods with shock at the headline that flashes on my screen.

‘Henrik Bach, Austrian businessman and philanthropist, killed in tragic road accident.’

No. It can’t be. I feverishly pull up the website of the news station that broke the story and skim the details. According to the reporter on the scene, sometime between three and four a.m. this morning, Henrik Bach was driving home to his estate just outside Vienna when he fell asleep at the wheel, swerved off the road, and collided with a tree.

Death was instantaneous.

My stomach churning with disbelief, I read the brief story again, slower this time.

For seven years, I’ve dreamed of killing Bach. For seven years, my goal of putting a bullet between his eyes has been the only thing that’s kept me going.

I haven’t let myself live, and I haven’t let myself feel. Not since Joao.

Three months is the longest I’ve ever stayed in one place. I live a solitary life, moving from city to city to avoid detection.

All because of my former captor.

And now he’s dead. In a car accident, of all the fucking things. Fate has a cruel sense of humor. If there’s ever been anyone who doesn’t deserve a quick death, it’s Henrik Bach.

My hand trembles, causing coffee to spill to the floor. Before I can clean up the mess, one of my burner phones rings. I hurry into my bedroom to pick it up. “Marcus,” I say, keeping my voice level with effort. “What’s up?”

Marcus O’Shea is the only person who has this number. He’s a former assassin who now functions as an intermediary between contract killers and the people looking to hire them. Marcus is useful, but I don’t trust him enough to give him my real name. He only knows me as Nina Lalami, a former soldier who occasionally acts as a contract killer to supplement the money she earns as a data analyst.

“Nina,” Marcus booms. “A contract just went up. I thought you might be interested in the target.”

“Who?”

“Varek Zaworski.”

Zaworski. I hear that name, and fresh memories sweep me under.

A group of teenagers huddled near a cliff. Zaworski strides up to us with a self-satisfied smirk on his face and throws a large black bag on the ground. Henrik speaks, his voice as cold as ice. “Open it,” he says, pointing his gun at me. My fingers shake as I undo the drawstrings. I already know who I’m going to find in the bag: my friend Michaela, who wanted away from Bach so badly that she was willing to risk death for her freedom.

I already know how this is going to end. We all do.

She’s still alive. Her forehead is bleeding from a cut, her lips are split, and she’s badly bruised, and when she sees us, fear fills her face. “Please,” she begs, tears welling up in her eyes. “Please have mercy.”

Bach doesn’t respond to her. “Don’t turn away,” he orders us. “I want you to watch. All of you. I want you to see what happens if you try to leave.”

And then he shoots her in the head. I’m still kneeling next to Michaela, close enough that I can see the exact moment she realizes she’s going to die. Close enough that her blood splatters on my face, wet and coppery and so, so warm.

“Good job finding her, Varek. Take care of the body, will you?”

“Nina,” Marcus O’Shea says, his voice on the phone dragging me back to the present. “Are you interested?”

Seven years ago, when I clawed myself out of a psychiatric ward in Istanbul, I made a promise.

I wouldn’t let myself rest until I dismantled every last bit of Bach’s sick, twisted network.

The people who found orphans for him to train as assassins.

The people who financed his operation.

The people who hired him knowing full well how he acquired us.

I vowed that I would go after every single one of them.

Bach is dead, but it changes nothing. I still have targets on my list who are very much alive. Targets like Zaworski, who carelessly kicked Michaela’s lifeless body over a cliff.

“Yes,” I respond, my voice hard. “I want the job.”