Page 7 of The Vagabond

SAXON - ONE YEAR AGO

K adri ghosted me.

Just like that.

One week, I was at his table, sipping aged scotch with a bomb ticking under my breath, playing Devon Walsh like I was born for it. The next, my calls went unanswered, my burner numbers disconnected, and his men wouldn’t meet my eyes.

Which meant one thing. He must have suspected something.

There was no clear path to reach Maxine.

No clean rescue plan. No open door. Just walls—thick, unscalable, and laced with every failure I had ever made.

But I had promised her. I had told her I’d get her out.

Sworn it to her like it was scripture. And I didn’t break promises.

Not to people who mattered. Not to people I had bled for in silence.

Especially not to her. Because I owed her more than a rescue. I owed her everything.

For the months she spent chained to a monster while I played the part of one.

For the nights I left her in that gilded prison with cameras watching and her dignity unraveling.

For every whispered lie I fed her, and every truth I buried beneath the weight of the mission.

And maybe—fuck, maybe—it was more than just debt.

Maybe it was penance. Because I didn’t save my sister.

I had been too late for Sienna. But Maxine?

She was still out there. Still fighting.

And if there was even the smallest chance I could rewrite the ending this time— if I could drag her out of the fire before it swallowed her whole—then maybe I’d finally stop hearing my sister’s voice when I closed my eyes.

Maybe saving Maxine was the only way I could save myself.

I needed an in. A new play. And I knew exactly where to go.

Igor Aslanov. Russian blood. Cold money. A ruthless man who didn’t just have connections—he owned them. He was a man you didn’t cross unless you had a death wish—or a damn good insurance policy. And he had been sniffing around the Gattis for months, trying to buy favor.

I had put out feelers and intercepted chatter from his people. He was desperate for an in with the family, but the Gattis didn’t respond to desperation. They did, however, respond to leverage. And I had some for him.

I called him under the Devon alias—encrypted line, clean number.

He answered on the third ring, his voice low and flat, like a man who trusted no one.

“Who is this?”

“I’ve got something you want,” I said. “And something the Gattis want even more.”

Silence.

Then, “Go on.”

“I know you’re trying to get to the table. But you need something of value to get in. You want them to listen? Bring them something they’ve been looking for since last spring.”

A pause. He was sharp. But I would expect no less.

“What are you offering?”

“Maxine Andrade. ”

The silence turned heavy. He knew the name.

Everyone in that world did. Brando Gatti’s missing sister-in-law.

The one who vanished off the face of the earth.

Rumor said she was dead. Others claimed she was sold.

The truth? She had been passed from monster to monster, ending up under Kadri’s watchful eyes like a prized possession.

“She’s still alive?” Igor asked, barely masking his interest.

“She’s under Kadri,” I confirmed. “Still breathing. Still salvageable.”

It was a dirty word—salvageable—but men like Igor understood it. He didn’t ask how I knew. He didn’t question my motives. He was a businessman, not a bleeding heart.

“What do you want in return?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just get her out.”

And just like that, the deal was in motion.

Within days, Kadri gave her up. No fight.

No resistance. Just a quiet transfer, like he was unloading something that no longer amused him.

Maybe he was tired of the game. Maybe he wanted to see what happened next.

Or maybe—deep down—he suspected she had already been compromised.

Igor paid a sum that would have made most traffickers salivate.

And Kadri handed her over like she had never mattered at all.

I watched it happen from the shadows. I couldn’t get close without blowing my cover.

So I stood at the edge of a warehouse rooftop, rain slicking my coat, watching as the car doors closed around her.

Maxine.

She looked like she didn’t know what day it was. She wasn’t sure if this was another trick. Another trap.

Her hair was tangled. Her face pale. But she was breathing. She was upright. And she was out.

I should have been relieved. But instead, something inside me shredded .

I didn’t go to her. I didn’t let her see me. Because what the fuck would I have said?

“Hi. I’m Saxon North. I pretended to fuck you while I was undercover and now I’m obsessed with keeping you alive.”

No. This was the end of the road for us. It had to be. At least, that’s what I told myself. A day later, I got new orders. Back to Ukraine. Recon.

The cell I had embedded in two years ago had resurfaced, and my superiors wanted someone on the ground who spoke the language and could disappear like a ghost.

Funny. That was all I had been lately. So I went. I boarded the plane. I buried Devon Walsh and the wreckage he left behind. I let them believe Maxine Andrade was no longer my concern.

But on the nights when the wind howled against broken buildings, when the weight of war pressed down and I couldn’t remember whose side I was really on anymore, I saw her face. I saw the way she had looked at me when I touched her.

The way she still reached back for me.

The way I had felt that she wasn’t ready to give up.

And I wondered if letting her go made me a hero.

Or just another fucking coward.

Sleep was the only place I saw her after that. When the guns went quiet. When the static cleared. When the darkness stopped humming and my mind slipped free of duty, I fell into her. And that night? She was waiting for me.

The room was soft. Dimly lit. Washed in the kind of gold you only found in dreams.

The air smelled like warm skin and sweetness—like rain right before it fell. Everything about the space was gentle. The opposite of what we had come from.

She was lying in bed, the sheets tangled around her hips, bare shoulders glowing in the soft light. Her hair was longer here. Less brittle. It curled around her face like it used to, the way it looked before they stripped the shine from her.

Her eyes found me. And the world stilled.

There were no monsters outside the door. No cameras. No pretending. Just her. Just us.

She smiled. God, she smiled—and it gutted me. That rare kind of smile that reached all the way to her eyes, like she had never known what it felt like to be owned.

“You found me,” she said, her voice like silk across skin.

“I never stopped looking.”

I crawled into bed beside her, careful. Like if I moved too fast, she would disappear.

Like maybe this was one of those cruel dreams that ended too soon, and I was clinging to every detail before I woke.

She touched my face. Fingertips brushing my jaw, my cheek. Her thumb skimmed my lower lip like she was relearning it. Like she was claiming it. And I let her. Because in this place, in this breath of a world, she was mine.

I pressed my forehead to hers, and we just breathed—her hands curled into my T-shirt, my fingers grazing the bare skin of her spine. I could feel the ridges of her body, soft and warm and real beneath my touch.

“I missed you," she murmured.

I closed my eyes.

“I'm still missing you,” I confessed.

Then her mouth was on mine—slow, deep, familiar. Her lips parted for me like she was made to. Like she had never kissed anyone else. And I kissed her like she was the only clean thing I had ever touched .

Clothes fell away, piece by piece. Quietly. Like secrets neither of us needed to keep anymore. Her body slid against mine, soft curves and heat and everything I had tried so hard to forget.

I buried my face in her neck. Breathed her in. My name slipped from her lips like a prayer, and I lost myself inside her. We moved together, slow and unhurried, like time didn’t exist here. Like we had been doing this forever and this was always our ending.

Her hands framed my face as I rocked into her, her eyes locked on mine. She had no shame or fear. It was just Maxine. Whole. Unbroken. Free.

“Don’t wake up yet,” she whispered.

But I could feel it already. The shift. The pull. The edges of the dream unraveling.

“No,” I whispered back. “Not yet.”

Her fingers tightened.

I kissed her again. Harder this time. Like I could stay if I just held her tight enough. Like maybe if I buried myself deep enough in her warmth, I wouldn’t have to let go.

But the sheets dissolved. The light faded. Her breath pulled away from mine and evaporated like smoke.

I woke up with her name stuck in my throat, like I had choked on it in the night and never quite swallowed it down. My heart was still racing. My cock was hard. My hands ached with the phantom memory of her skin. But she wasn’t there.

Just the cracked ceiling of a safehouse somewhere in war-torn Ukraine, the smell of gunpowder and smoke in the air, and the low static of the comms radio whispering into the dark.

I rolled over, pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, and breathed through the ache.

It didn’t work. Because even then, I could still taste her.

It had been months. And still—still—she was the first thought in my head every morning.

The last one every night. The itch under my skin that wouldn’t go away no matter how much blood I shed or whiskey I drowned in.

Maxine fucking Andrade.

I tried to tell myself it had been the mission.

That the obsession was a side effect of proximity, of adrenaline, of guilt.

But I knew better. It wasn’t guilt. It was possession.

I had her. In my arms. In my bed. In my goddamn soul.

And I let her go. I told myself it was safer that way.

That Igor Aslanov had more power to protect her than I ever would.

That stepping back meant giving her a real chance at freedom.

But the truth? The truth was I had walked away because I was scared. Scared I’d ruin her. Scared I’d burn down the entire operation, get us both killed, just because I couldn’t stop wanting her.

Now I was halfway across the world, pretending to give a shit about briefings and satellite feeds while every cell in my body screamed for a girl I wasn’t supposed to want.

She had been broken when I found her. Shattered porcelain. And now? Now I couldn’t even check in on her. I couldn’t know if she was safe. If she was eating. Sleeping. Healing. If her nightmares had stopped. If she hated me for leaving.

I wanted to know. I needed to know.

But that would mean crossing lines I couldn’t uncross. Digging into Gatti territory. Risking the Bureau’s wrath. Risking hers.

I tried to bury myself in the work. Intel. Recon. Surveillance. I told myself the mission mattered. That there were lives at stake. That I was doing something noble. But nothing felt noble anymore. Not since her. Now everything was gray. Bleached of meaning.

God, I would have given anything to hear her laugh. Just once. Even if it was at me.

I lit a cigarette with shaking hands and stepped outside into the icy dawn. Smoke curled from my mouth as I stared at nothing, as the cold bit into my bones and tried to wake me up. It didn’t. Because I was still dreaming of her.

And I knew—I knew —that no matter where she was now, I was going to find her again. Because I would tear through every shadow, break every chain, and rip the stars from the sky before I let it end like this.