"This blade belonged to my grandfather. His father. His father's father." I turn it in my hand, letting the low light catch the edge. "In my culture, there is a way to die with honor. Seppuku. You take responsibility for your failures. You atone."
I set the tanto on the carpet beside his hand. The handle toward him.
"You have the opportunity to die like a man. Take it."
His fingers twitch. His eyes find the blade, then find me. The calculation flickers behind his eyes—the desperate search for any way out that does not involve accepting responsibility for what he has done.
"Please—" The word bubbles through blood. "I have money—my father—"
"Your father cannot save you."
"I'll disappear—never contact them again—"
"You had that chance. You chose custody papers instead."
His hand moves toward the blade. Hovers. Shakes.
Then falls away.
"I can't—please—I can't—"
Coward. Even at the end. Even with one path to dignity offered, he cannot take it.
"Then I will do it for you."
I pick up the tanto. His eyes go wide—real terror now, the animal recognition that death has arrived.
"This is mercy," I tell him. "Faster than you deserve. You should have stayed in Salvencia."
The blade opens his throat in one clean motion. Blood sprays warm across my hand.
Adrian's body jerks once. Twice. Then goes still.
I kneel there for a moment. Blood pooling on expensive carpet. The minibar cycles on—fourteen minutes, forty-three seconds, indifferent to what has happened in this room.
I wipe the blade on his shirt. Sheathe it.
Earpiece back in. "Cleanup."
"Reaper's thirty out." Vanessa. No questions.
"Copy."
I stand. Do not wash my hands. Do not wipe the blood from my face. She should see this. All of it.
The service elevator takes me down to the parking garage. Concrete and fluorescent lights, empty spaces marked with white paint. My Fireblade waits where I left it—graphite gray with red accents, helmet hanging from the handlebar.
Adrian's blood dries on my hands. On my face. On my grandfather's blade, now cleaned and sheathed inside my jacket.
The engine catches on the first try. I pull into the night.
Toward her.
twenty-six
Angelina
Footsteps in the hallway. Wrong rhythm, too quick, too light. One of the other operatives. Not him. My nails have carved crescents into my palms.