Afternoon. My phone rings. Restricted number.
"How you holding up?"
Cormac. The sound of my oldest brother's voice cracks open the thing inside my chest that four days of silence had sealed shut.
"I'm fine."
"You're a shit liar. Always have been."
I laugh. It hurts. "Takes one to know one."
"Listen to me." His voice drops. Lower. Careful. The register Cormac uses when he's delivering information that matters and he won't waste a word. "Things are moving. I can't say more on this line. But whatever happens in the next forty-eight hours, be ready."
"Ready for what?"
"Just be ready. And Siobhan, keep that gun close."
He hangs up. I stare at the phone. Cormac knows something. The alliance is preparing. Whatever offensive they've been planning against Viktor is accelerating.
I check the Beretta. Fourteen rounds. Move it from the nightstand to under my pillow.
Night. 2am. I wake to a sound I recognize.
Gunfire. Not distant. On the property. Rapid bursts, suppressed but audible through the glass. Then silence. The wrong kind. The kind that follows a fight that's already been decided.
I'm on my feet before the echo fades. Jeans. Sweater. Beretta from under the pillow. I rack the slide in the dark. Fourteen rounds. Move to the door. Press my ear against the wood. Listen.
Footsteps. Multiple. Not the measured tread of the contractors. Heavier. Faster. Men clearing rooms.
My door bursts open. I raise the Beretta. Center mass. Finger on the trigger.
Viktor Reznikov stands in the doorway. Behind him: four men, tactical gear, weapons trained on me. The contractors are nowhere visible. The silence already told me what happened to them.
He's younger than the voice on the phone suggested. Late twenties. Sharp features, cold eyes, a mouth that smiles easily and means nothing. The pleasantness is the worst part of him.
"Mrs. Konstantinos." The smile widens. "Your husband hides you well. But not well enough."
"How did you find me?"
"Your husband's childhood friend was very helpful. Even after she was caught, the information she'd already shared was sufficient. Security protocols. Communication patterns. Elena provided the template." He shrugs. "My men followed the car. We filled in the details."
Elena. Even caught. Even confronted. The damage she did before the discovery outliving the discovery itself. A template of betrayal that keeps producing results.
I calculate. Fourteen rounds. Five men in the doorway. I might drop two, maybe three before the return fire finds me. Three-fifths of a chance.
I think about the baby. The grain of rice. Twenty-four days old. Doesn't know its mother is calculating kill ratios with a gun aimed at the men who will end them both.
"Shoot me and my men kill you," Viktor says. "Or come with me alive."
Alive means time. Time means Nico.
"If I come, you leave the remaining staff alive."
Viktor studies me. Something crosses his face — surprise, maybe respect. A woman negotiating terms with four guns aimed at her chest.
"Agreed."
I lower the Beretta. Set it on the bed. The weight of it leaving my hand is the weight of agency being set down, not surrendered. I'm choosing survival. Choosing to trust that the man who sent me away will come to bring me home.