CASSIAN

The dock was a narrow finger of rotted wood and cold concrete stretching out into the black maw of the harbor.

Behind Emilio, the water lapped rhythmically against the pilings, a dark, hungry sound.

Beyond that, the yacht sat idling, its white hull ghostly under the flickering pier lights, its engines thrumming with the promise of an escape that was no longer possible.

Emilio had run out of directions. He stood at the very edge, the fur trim of his coat fluttering in the salt breeze, looking less like a prince of the underworld and more like the cornered prey he was.

"What do you want?" Emilio’s voice was thin, reedy. The bargaining had begun. It was his only natural defense. "Money? Is that it? Whatever the number is—I can double it. I can—"

"What money, Emilio?" I asked. My voice was flat, a dead thing. "Reid drained everything you have while we were having our conversation in the basement. Every account. Every off-shore channel. Your father’s inheritance. The Vincenti legacy. It’s all gone. It’s digital ash."

I took a step forward, the wood of the dock groaning under my boots. "You’re still doing that," I said quietly. "Even now. Even with the water at your back. Spoiled to the very end. You think the world is a vending machine where you can just insert enough zeros to make your problems go away."

The color left Emilio’s face so fast it was as if a plug had been pulled.

He turned a specific shade of white, the color of bone, of surrender, of someone who has just understood the full, crushing scope of their loss. He wasn’t just losing his life; he had lost the only thing that made him feel powerful.

I didn’t watch him for satisfaction. I was beyond that. The rage that had burned in me for four years wasn’t hot anymore.

It had gone through the fire and come out the other side as something cold and sharp.

It was the cold that comes after a thousand nights of patience, finally released into a singular, unwavering purpose.

I saw the calculation happen. It was visible in the way his eyes flickered to the side, searching for a ghost of a chance.

His hand began to move, slowly, creeping toward the weapon tucked into the small of his back. Emilio had apparently decided that a dead man has nothing left to lose.

There it is, I thought. Pretending he forgot he had it. Or pretending he’d given up.

He was too slow. He had always been too slow.

I didn’t think about the shot; I just took it. The crack of my suppressed weapon was a dull snap in the open air.

The bullet found the meat of his hand, and the gun he was reaching for skittered away across the dock floor, vanishing into the shadows.

Emilio’s scream was real. It was a high, jagged sound that cut through the wind. He collapsed onto his knees, clutching his mangled hand to his chest.

The blood was his now. It spilled over his expensive coat, dark and staining in the moonlight.

Even then, on his knees and bleeding, he kept bargaining. It was a reflex, a sickness.

"I can—" he wheezed, his face twisted in agony. "I’ll give you, whatever you—"

I crouched in front of him, the barrel of my gun level with his eyes. My voice was quieter now, which I knew was worse for him.

A quiet voice means the decision has already been made.

"Four years ago," I said, the words like stones dropping into a well. "It was Marceli . Wasn’t it? Marceli Lorenzo. He sold us out."

Emilio looked at me. I could see the lies forming behind his eyes, the instinct to redirect, to manipulate, to play one more card.

But then he looked at my face. He saw that I wasn’t the man he had captured. I wasn’t even the man who had been in prison. I was the end of the line. The lies dissolved.

"Yes," he finally gasped. The weight of the truth seemed to break his ribs. "It was Marceli . He told my father where you were. Where both of you were. In exchange for access to our eastern trading route."

I listened. The confirmation sat in me like something I had already known, a dark shape in a room that had finally been illuminated.

It was one thing to suspect; it was another to hear the price. A trading route. Julian’s life had been traded for a line on a shipping manifest.

Emilio’s remaining bravado was leaking out with his blood. "Marceli has been helping me too," he added, desperate to be useful.

"Since you came back. Advising me on how to take you down. He was the one who told me how to set the trap at the warehouse. How to take you alive."

I let out a short, dry scoff. "Take me alive."

"You, you walked into it," Emilio stammered, confused by my tone. "We captured you. We had you."

"Did you?" I asked. The question was simple, yet I saw the realization arrive on his face, slowly at first, then all at once like a tidal wave.

"The only thing I banked on, Emilio, was your pride and your stupidity. If you had simply ordered your men to finish me the second you surrounded us, the plan would have failed. I’d be dead. You’d win. But you needed to see it. You always needed to prove a point. You needed to watch me understand that I’d lost. You needed to be there when I broke."

I paused, leaning in closer. "I was counting on you being exactly who you’ve always been. A man who values the performance of power more than the reality of it. You brought me to the one place I needed to be: right in front of you."

Emilio went a shade whiter than bone. The full scope of the play landed. He hadn’t been the hunter. He had been the lure I used to catch myself, just so I could get close enough to finish him.