LOGINAce's PovThe rooftop was cold and the city was just starting to get light at the edges and I stood at the railing and held my mother's letter and read it again.I folded the letter and put it in my jacket pocket.The hit was ordered by their father. They were nineteen. They did not know about me. Those were the facts and I had gone over them six times since coming up here, they had not changed.What Nikolai had done was carry the knowledge of those facts for four months without telling me and that was the part I was sitting with.I heard the roof door.I did not turn around."We said we would give you time," Ivan said, "but you have been up here for two hours and I cannot verify your body temperature from inside."I almost laughed. "I am not cold.""You are visibly cold," he said. "Nikolai would have said the same thing but he sent me because he thought you would be less likely to tell me to go away.""He was right," I said.Ivan came and stood beside me at the railing.Nikolai came
Nikolai's PovHe walked past both of us.I watched Ace walk into the bedroom, his movements stiff with anger and betrayal. I had to fix this. I had to make him understand. I followed him in, closing the door softly behind me."Ace," I started, my voice rough. "Lie on the bed. Please."He looked at me, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. After a long moment, he complied, stretching out on his back in the center of the king-sized mattress. He didn't look relaxed. He looked like he was waiting for an execution.I crawled onto the bed, hovering over him. I needed to show him everything, not just with words but with my body. I leaned down, my tongue tracing a path from the small mole under his left eye. I felt him flinch slightly but he didn't pull away.My tongue moved down his temple, across his jawline, and down the column of his throat. I cou
Ivan's PovCastro was in the penthouse when we got there.He was sitting in one of the main chairs with his hands visible and the lights on and he looked at us the way men look when they have already decided how something ends."Nephews," he said.Nikolai said nothing. I said nothing."You were always going to find me," Castro said and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. "I did not come here to hide. I came here because this is where it ends. The penthouse, the family building, the city your father built." He spread his hands. "It felt appropriate.""You had inside help," Nikolai said. "In the facility.""I did," Castro said. "People are loyal to whoever pays them properly.""We know who it was," I said. "They are already handled."Something moved in Castro's face but he kep
Ace's PovThe maps were spread across the main table and I was looking at them like I actually knew what I was doing and the strange part was that I did.Four months ago I would not have been able to read a floor plan. Now I was pointing at entry corridors and telling Rem's guys which angles left the most exposure and they were listening."The east wing access is the problem," I said and tapped the section with two fingers. "Castro knows that building. He spent three years running operations out of the fourth floor so he is going to use what he already knows and go up instead of across."Rem looked at me and then at the map. "You are saying he will take the stairs.""I am saying he will not use any route that Nikolai or Ivan would expect from him because he knows they know him." I kept my finger on the map."So he does the thing that looks
Nikolai's PovThe evidence package was detailed.Rem sent it within the hour. The police had video from the secondary building exterior, eyewitness accounts from two Rossi men who had survived the east side breach and identified Ace by description, and a digital trail that connected Ace to the building that had been used as a staging ground.None of it was fabricated. Most of it was accurate. The interpretation being applied to it was wrong.I sat at the desk in the secondary building and went through it and built the counter case.Ivan sat across from me and worked his side of it. He had contacts inside the department that I did not have and he used them carefully over the course of the day.By evening we had the shape of the alternative.A man named Castor Reyes. Midlevel Rossi operator who had been in the area durin
Ace's PovThe fever broke sometime in the early hours and I did not fully know it had broken until I woke up and the ceiling was sharp instead of soft.I lay still for a moment and took stock.I turned and both of them were there.Nikolai was in the chair and Ivan was on the bench against the wall and both of them were asleep. Nikolai sitting upright with his hands loose in his lap. Ivan sideways with his head against the wall and the sling visible.I looked at them for a while.I thought about everything that had brought us to this specific room. The professor's office and running.The murder scene and the twins standing over a body. Seven weeks of managing exits and the rooftop and the mugs. Sergei and the doubt and the closed doors. Darnell in a sitting room. Ivan going down twice. Nikolai coming back covered in blo
Ivan's PovIt happened at breakfast again.Nikolai was reading something on his phone and Ace reached across the counter for the coffee pot without asking and Nikolai moved his mug out of the way automatically, without looking up, like he had already know
Ace's PovOn the eighth day Ivan handed me a phone across the breakfast table."One hour," he said. "Monitored. Do not try anything creative."I looked at it. Basic model. Nothing on it except a calling function. I picked it up and sa
Ace's PovI did not plan to tell Ivan about it. It just came out.We were on the rooftop that afternoon, the usual hour, and I was looking at the street below and thinking about the encounter in the shop and how strange it had been to hear a familiar name
Sergei's PovThe clothing run happened on a Thursday.I had been watching the building for eleven days and the clothing run was only the second supervised outing I had seen. Three men on him. A driver and two others who walked close and kept their eyes mo







