Chapter 2

The sky on Tuesday morning was the color of a bruised lung.

Valerie sat motionless on the rusted steel beam of an abandoned shipping warehouse, a hundred feet above the cracked pavement of the industrial canal district. Her heavy-caliber sniper rifle was anchored on a sandbag, its barrel aiming down like an iron finger pointing at the crossroads below. Through the high-powered optics of her scope, the world was cast in a cold, electronic green.

She breathed in for four seconds, held it for four, and exhaled. Her pulse was a flat, icy sixty beats per minute. The woman from the lounge—Alia—was tucked away in a locked compartment of her mind. Right now, Valerie was only a firing mechanism. A weapon waiting for its cue.

Her earpiece crackled with static. "Phantom One, the package has entered the kill zone," her handler’s synthesized voice reported. "Three-car convoy. Black armored SUVs. Target is in the middle vehicle. Eliminate the asset and vanish."

"Copy," Valerie whispered, her finger coming to rest against the cold curve of the trigger.

Through the crosshairs, she watched the lead SUV round the corner. It was followed closely by the primary vehicle, its heavily tinted ballistic glass reflecting the gloomy sky. Valerie adjusted for the crosswind blowing off the harbor. She needed just one shot. The specialized tungsten-tipped rounds in her chamber were designed to punch through armor plating like cardboard.

She waited for the middle SUV to hit the designated marker on the asphalt—a faded yellow line.

Three. Two. One.

Valerie squeezed the trigger.

The rifle bucked against her shoulder with a muffled, deafening thud. A microsecond later, the tungsten round tore through the engine block of the middle SUV. A violent explosion of white smoke and sparks erupted under the hood. The vehicle violently skidded, its tires shrieking against the concrete as it slammed sideways into a concrete barrier, completely blocking the narrow street.

Before the trailing security vehicles could deploy their guards, Valerie chambered a second round and fired again. The driver-side window shattered into an opaque spiderweb of fractures.

"Target immobilized," Valerie grunted, switching her rifle to a compact, suppressed submachine gun. She threw a rappelling line over the rafter and swung down into the fog of smoke below. Her boots hit the ground with a soft thud.

The ambush was going perfectly. The security guards from the lead car were pinning themselves behind their open doors, firing blindly into the upper levels of the warehouse, completely missing her descent. Valerie slid through the haze, a ghost in tactical black, approaching the rear door of the compromised SUV.

She pulled a high-yield breaching charge from her vest, slapping it onto the armored door's hinges. Three, two—

The door violently blew outward before she could detonate it.

A figure vaulted from the smoke, hitting Valerie at full speed. The sheer force of the impact drove the breath from Valerie's lungs as she was slammed hard against the concrete barrier. Her submachine gun skittered across the asphalt, out of reach.

Valerie scrambled to her feet, her hand instinctively flying to the ceramic blade hidden in her sleeve. But her attacker was already moving. It wasn't a standard, bulky syndicate bodyguard. This person was fast, fluid, and lethal—wearing sleek, flexible Kevlar armor and a matte-black tactical helmet that obscured their face.

A heavy, leather-clad boot kicked outward, catching Valerie in the ribs. Valerie grunted, twisting her body to deflect the force, and lunged forward with her blade. The attacker caught Valerie’s wrist in a brutal, vice-like grip, twisting it downward while simultaneously driving a knee toward Valerie’s abdomen.

They locked together, a chaotic tangle of limbs, shifting and spinning through the thick white smoke of the burning engine. They were perfectly matched. Every time Valerie attempted a lethal pressure-point strike, the attacker anticipated and blocked it. Every time the attacker tried to throw Valerie over their shoulder, Valerie shifted her center of gravity to slip the hold.

"Who sent you?" a voice hissed from behind the tactical helmet.

Valerie's heart stopped. The blood in her veins turned to absolute ice.

The voice was distorted by the helmet's internal comms microphone, but the cadence, the sharp, authoritative hiss—it was a voice she had listened to across a dimly lit table for three weeks.

No. It's impossible.

Desperate to see, Valerie dropped low, sweeping her leg to throw the attacker off balance. As they both tumbled to the wet asphalt, Valerie reached up with all her strength, fingers clawing at the locking mechanism of the tactical helmet. With a sharp wrenching motion, she tore the helmet free and threw it aside.

Dark hair spilled out across the gravel.

Alessia Moretti gasped for air, her chest heaving as she pinned Valerie to the ground, a hidden combat knife drawn and pressed directly against Valerie's throat.

But Alessia didn't press down. Her hand froze. Her wide, brilliant eyes locked onto the face beneath the tactical hood Valerie wore.

Valerie reached up, slowly pulling down the fabric covering her nose and mouth.

The industrial canal was silent save for the crackle of the burning car engine. The smoke swirled around them like a funeral shroud.

Alessia stared down at her executioner. Her lips parted, the cold, ruthless mask of the Iron Queen completely shattering into a look of raw, agonizing betrayal.

"Val?" Alessia whispered, her voice trembling, the knife shaking against Valerie's skin. "You... you're the phantom?"

Valerie looked up at the woman she had held in her arms just forty-eight hours ago. The woman she had promised to see next week. The woman she had genuinely fallen in love with.

"Alia..." Valerie choked out, the name tasting like ash in her mouth. "You're the Moretti Queen."

Before either of them could pull away, a deafening spray of automatic gunfire tore through the warehouse walls behind them. The concrete barrier above their heads erupted into a shower of dangerous stone shrapnel.

This wasn't Valerie’s backup. And it wasn't the Moretti guard.

Through the haze, a line of blacked-out vans screeched to a halt, and men carrying heavy military rifles began advancing, firing indiscriminately at both of them. The rival syndicates had double-crossed the contract. They wanted both the Queen and the Assassin dead in the dirt.