Nico nods.
I think about Finn's hand. The ring finger. The pliers I saw on the table in the back room, the ones someone used on my brother's hand while he was conscious and restrained. I think about the man on the floor, who has a face and a wound and probably a name. I think about the baby I'm carrying and the world I'm bringing it into and the distance between the woman who walked into Elysium thirty-two days ago and the woman standing here giving a death order with a voice that doesn't waver.
I wait for horror. For the moral recoil. For the part of me that read ethics textbooks in college and believes in due process and the sanctity of human life.
What comes instead is clarity. Cold. Bright. Absolute. This is the world. Not the one I wanted. The one I chose. I can be avictim in it or a participant. I can flinch from the cost or pay it and keep moving.
I choose participant. I've been choosing it since the night I knocked on a door and walked into a killer's bedroom and said,"I'm here because I want to be here."
Nico draws the Glock. The soldier's eyes go wide. A single shot. The echo bounces off the concrete and rings in the high ceiling and fades. I don't flinch.
It's quiet.
My hand moves to my stomach.. I don't realize I'm doing it until my palm is flat against the Kevlar, pressing, the way I've pressed every night since the test. Protecting. Even here. Even now. Even standing over a body in a warehouse at 2am with gunpowder in my lungs and my husband's weapon still smoking.
The contradiction should split me in half. It doesn't. The death I ordered and the life I'm protecting exist in the same breath because this is the world and I live in it with my eyes open.
Nico is watching me. His gaze drops to my hand on my stomach. For one second his expression shifts. A question forming. A connection almost made.
Then comms crackle. Lex confirming perimeter secure. The moment passes.
"Viktor's gone," Nico says. "But we have his fallback location. His supply lines. Three moles." He pauses. "He knew we were coming, Siobhan. Left an hour before. Someone inside warned him."
The question hangs. Who? The intelligence maps on the board. The photographs. The precision of Viktor's preparation. Someone with access. Someone trusted.
I think about Elena. About lunch. About the way she looked at me coming out of a restaurant bathroom. About her questions at dinner weeks ago, the ones about security protocols thatNico answered without thinking. About the empty chair at the Elysium event.
I don't say her name. Not yet. Not without proof.
"We'll find them."
Nico nods. Holsters the Glock. "Let's get your brother to a hospital."
We walk out of the building together. The February air hits like a wall. Finn is in the extraction vehicle, Declan beside him, the medic working on his hand.
Cormac's voice on the comms:“En route, ETA twelve minutes. The harbor is quiet now. The operation is over.”
Viktor escaped. Someone warned him. Finn is alive but nine-fingered and broken. Three moles identified. A fallback location secured for the next phase.
And the woman walking out of this warehouse is carrying three things: a gun, a secret, and the knowledge that she ordered a man's death tonight and feels no horror.
Only clarity.
Chapter 29
Nico
Elena's Mask
* * *
Three days after the raid.
Finn is recovering at a safe house in Cambridge under Declan's watch. Mobile. Stubborn. Already calling his missing finger a "discount" and asking when he can work again. The O'Briens heal the way they bleed: loudly and without permission.
Viktor is in the wind. The fallback location the soldier gave us was empty when Stavros hit it twelve hours after the harbor raid. Cleaned. Wiped. Not a fingerprint, not a shell casing. Viktor had time to evacuate because Viktor knew.
That's what keeps me pacing my office at 4 am: the pattern. Not the individual events but the pattern underneath them. The safe house attack that nearly killed my mother — they knew which house, which guard rotation, which four-second window in the camera coverage. The knife at Elysium: Sergei Volkov knew Siobhan would be at the bar, knew her security detail had stepped away. The raid: Viktor left an hour before the breach. The intelligence maps at the harbor facility showed operationaldetails that required more than surveillance. Shipping routes. Meeting schedules. My wife's daily routine.