FAZER LOGINShe walked away.I stood in the hallway and watched the door to Maya's room close and I did not go after her. There was nothing to say in that moment that would have helped. The fear in her eyes before. The kind of fear that builds when you have watched someone promise you something more than once and the situation around you has kept getting worse regardless.She was beginning to doubt me.I pushed the door open quietly. She was sitting on the edge of Maya's bed, her back to me, her hand resting on Maya's arm. Maya was asleep. Elena did not turn around when I came in but her shoulders tightened slightly, which told me she knew I was there.I stepped inside and stopped a few feet behind her."Elena."She did not turn."Look at me," I said.She turned slowly. Her eyes were tired and guarded and the fear in them was not the sharp kind. It was the settled kind. The kind that had taken up residence and was not in a hurry to leave.I kept my voice low and even. "Everything I am doing
The flat was too quiet.That was the thing about silence after something loud. It did not feel like peace. It felt like the space between one thing ending and the next thing starting, and you sit in it and waited and the waiting was its own kind of weight.I was on the edge of Maya's bed with my hand resting on her back. She had fallen back to sleep after the crash, eventually, after I had held her and told her it was nothing and kept my voice level until her breathing slowed again. She was asleep now but lightly, the way you sleep when your body is tired but some part of you is still listening.I kept my hand on her back and listened to the flat.Nothing from the hallway or from outside. The street below the window was quiet. I had checked it twice in the last twenty minutes, standing to the side of the curtain the way Dominic had shown me, not front and centre where I could be seen. Both times, nothing. Just the wet pavement and the lamp post and the ordinary stillness of a str
I stood over the guard and looked at him properly.He was conscious, which was something. His eyes were tracking and he had managed to sit up slightly with his back against the wall while we waited for someone to come. The cut above his eye had slowed. His breathing was still careful, the kind that meant every inhale hurt, but it was steadier than it had been two minutes ago.I looked away from him and studied the ground around the service entrance.The bin on its side. The scatter pattern of what had fallen out of it. The scuff marks in the wet surface near the door, the kind left by feet moving fast.The door itself, the angle it was hanging at, the way the handle had been forced.I turned and looked at the alley. Then the rear wall. Then the narrow gap between this building and the one beside it, dark and tight, easily wide enough for a person to move through quickly.I took it all in and held it."It is not random," I said quietly. Not to Adrian specifically. Just putting it out
The car was gone but the feeling it left behind was not.I stood by the door with my arms crossed and my eyes on the street below through the window and I turned it over. The way it had pulled away. Unhurried, indicator on at the corner, no attempt to accelerate or disappear quickly. Just a smooth, easy departure, like a driver heading home after a long shift.That was the part that would not sit right.Dominic was near the window, one shoulder against the wall, his eyes on the street. He had been standing like that for several minutes, quiet and still."It does not make sense," I turned to look at him. "You show up, you sit outside a building for hours, and then you just leave. They made no approach or attempt to come inside, nothing." I looked at him. "Why come at all?"Dominic did not turn from the window. "It is a warning," he shrugged. "They want us nervous. They want us watching the front of the building and thinking about the car and what it means."I looked at him for a mom
Sleep would not come.I had tried. I had sat in the chair beside Maya's bed with my eyes closed and my hands in my lap and waited for my body to give in. It did not. Every time the flat settled or the street outside made a sound, something in me snapped back to attention and the tiredness retreated and I was sitting there wide awake again with the events of the evening replaying in no particular order.After the third attempt I stopped trying.I sat and watched Maya instead. She was on her side, one hand tucked under her cheek, breathing steadily. The small lamp on the bedside table was on its lowest setting, just enough light to see by. I watched her chest rise and fall and kept my breathing slow and even."You are safe," I told her quietly. "I am right here."She did not stir.I stayed like that for a while. Then I stood up carefully, moved around the bed without making a sound, and walked to the window.The street below was the same as it had been hours ago. Wet pavement, the l
I stepped into the back bedroom and pulled the door halfway closed behind me.My man picked up on the first ring."I need names," I ordered sternly although my voice was low. "Sophia is not running this alone. She has backing, organised backing, and I want to know exactly who is behind it. Every contact she has made in the last six months. Every meeting, every transaction, every number she has called more than once." I moved to the far side of the room, away from the door. "I do not want a general picture. I want names. Specific, confirmed names. And I want them before she makes her next move.""That could take a few days," he said."You have got until tomorrow night."A pause. "Understood.""And keep it contained," I added. "Nobody outside our circle knows we are looking. If Sophia finds out we are tracking her contacts, she pulls them back and we lose the thread." I waited for the confirmation. "Good."I ended the call and stood in the quiet of the room for a moment.Sophia had peo
I heard her footsteps the moment she turned and ran.I did not move straight away. I stood where I was, in the centre of the room, and listened to the sound of her moving quickly down the corridor. She had seen everything.I looked down at the man on the floor, then at the gun still in my hand. I
I kept walking.My legs were moving faster than I was telling them to and my hands were still shaking and I could not get the image out of my head. Dominic standing there with a gun in his hand and then a man dropping and the silence afterward.I pressed my back against the corridor wall and stoppe
The venue was exactly the kind of place that made you stand a little straighter when you walked into it.There were high ceilings, warm lighting, round tables dressed in white linen, and the steady hum of important conversations happening in every corner of the room. Men and women in formal wear m
The apartment is small. I'm grateful we managed to find an apartment at such short notice, but it's a little small for three people, too small for the life we're living, too small for the secrets pressing against the walls like they might burst through at any moment.However, it's clean, it's near







