Chapter 22
LOGAN
Monte Carlo is a liar.
All glitter, no gold. Every inch of this place sells the fantasy: high stakes, high society, high heels that click like gunfire on marble. But beneath the tuxedos and silk gowns, behind the champagne flutes and poker chips, this city hums with something darker. Secrets. Leverage. Blood money dressed in a tux. I’ve walked these halls too long to be fooled by the surface anymore.
Cerberus has eyes everywhere. Even here, in the gilded rot of the casino, Crown & Scepter, where the chandelier sparkles like a crown and every man thinks he’s king. And me? I’m the blade waiting just out of sight.
"Logan, the target’s moving," comes the voice in my ear.
I shake my head. I'm the second-in-command of Cerberus here in Monaco. Nick is off grid, sailing with Cherise in the Mediterranean, finally breathing clean air. But here in Monte Carlo, the ghosts never sleep. And tonight, I'm not just chasing betrayal—I'm following whispers that feel more like warnings. There's a signature in the static, a pulse in the shadows. A name I haven’t heard in years, embedded in a dead drop meant for no one, but me. Someone long thought buried. Someone with unfinished business. A ghost... with teeth. And this time, it's biting back.
Someone inside Cerberus intercepted a ripple across three black channels. A coded transmission, a signature embedded so deep in the data stream it took two hours and a sophisticated AI program to decrypt it. The signature matches someone who was supposed to be dead. Vivian.
At least that's what all reports—official and not-so-official—say. Could it be someone else? Someone worse? And if that file is right, then what we're dealing with isn't just betrayal. It's resurrection.
Not just of the woman long thought dead in Prague, but everything we buried with her. The truth. The lies. The blood on our hands. Whatever this is, whatever game someone is playing now, it started the night she vanished—and tonight, it begins again.
I adjust the cuff of my black suit jacket and pivot toward the baccarat table where a man in a thousand-dollar waistcoat is losing ten grand like it's pocket change. He's not my concern. But the brunette who just slipped into the booth behind him?
She is. For a moment my breath catches and I swear my heart stops. Vivian.
The name tastes like smoke and ash in my mouth. Vivian Black—former MI-6 asset, ghost operative, and the only woman who ever got under my skin without shedding a drop of blood. She was an expert in infiltration, seduction, and disinformation—deadly with a whisper and lethal with a lie. Officially, she’s dead. Unofficially? She’s sitting fifteen feet from me in a backless black dress, legs crossed like a queen and sipping scotch like it’s the only thing keeping her anchored to this reality.
Her presence doesn’t just stir memory—it ignites something deeper. My pulse hitches. My spine locks. That old injury she left behind—Prague, a bridge, a betrayal stitched with a kiss—starts aching like it never healed. She’s a phantom I thought we’d buried alongside Adam. But now she’s back, not just alive, but charged with intent. And the dossier in her purse? It doesn’t just have the power to burn those high up in the government and intelligence fields. It could fracture alliances across borders, pit agencies against their own, ignite the kind of war that doesn’t make headlines—just casualties.
Somehow, she’s at the center of it all again. Just like last time. Only this time, I’m not unarmed.
She shouldn’t be here, but she is. Alive. Dangerous. And looking straight at me with a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes—a smile that feels like a cipher, hiding something jagged beneath the surface. Her eyes scan the room behind me, as if tracking more than threats. A message, maybe. A warning. Or bait for a trap I haven’t seen yet.
I move toward her without thinking, my shoes silent against the velvet carpet. Each step calculated. Controlled. I’ve interrogated warlords with less adrenaline in my veins. She doesn’t flinch as I slide into the seat beside her. Doesn’t speak.
I let the silence stretch.
"You’re supposed to be dead," I say finally.
“I get that a lot,” she responds, raising her glass.
I lean in close, my voice a low warning. "What do you want?"
She turns her head, lips inches from mine. "A deal."
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