Chapter 36 Chris
Chris
Tatiana picks a parking structure in Burbank. Fourth level, corner spot with clear sightlines to the elevator and stairwell.
She’s leaning against a black Mercedes when I arrive, arms crossed, watching me pull in. Her hair is down, makeup perfect, leather jacket that screams money. Playing the part Vera Volkov expects to see.
Out of county lockup two days and she looks like she owns the world.
I kill the engine, get out. She doesn’t move from her spot against the car, just watches me approach with those sharp, assessing eyes.
“Christopher,” she says.
“Tatiana.”
She studies me for a long moment, taking in whatever I’m not hiding well enough. Then she pulls out her phone, taps something, slides it across the hood of the Mercedes toward me.
I recognize the encryption app, punch in my access code. A file blooms open.
Names. Connections. Money trails threading through shell companies and offshore accounts.
Vera Volkov’s name on paperwork—probably signing whatever her father puts in front of her.
Her father’s fingerprints all over the actual operation.
And threaded through it all—confirmation of what we suspected but couldn’t prove.
“That hit I mentioned Friday.” Tatiana’s voice drops. “On Amador and Flores. It’s confirmed. Active contract.”
My hands go still on the phone.
“How active?”
“Money’s already moved, people are positioning. It’s not just Serbian. There’s Yakuza involvement—old grudge about an art collection. It’s not a matter of if, it’s who gets there first.”
My stomach drops. I know exactly what “art collection” she means. Spent five years looking at those frames on Vicente’s walls, the elaborately tattooed skin stretched and mounted. The Haruki-kai’s oyabun, flayed and displayed as a warning.
She pauses. “I’ll learn more as I stay close to Vera. If I hear anything about method or specific players, you’ll know.”
There’s a real threat converging on Vicente and Arturo right now, and Nina’s walking into their compound on Thursday.
“The name Rafael Marcano,” I say. “Has it come up?”
She considers. “I’ve heard it. But not connected to the contract. He’s circling, yes, but seems separate. Different agenda.” Her eyes narrow slightly. “Why? You think he’s involved?”
“We’re tracking him. Thought he might be the threat.”
“Maybe he is. Maybe he’s not. But the contract’s real either way.” She tilts her head. “Could be he’s using the chaos as cover. Could be he’s just another predator smelling blood.”
So Rafael’s still a question mark. The hit could be him, could be Yakuza vendetta, could be Serbian payback, could be all of them converging at once.
“Targets of opportunity?” I ask.
“Anyone close to them. Family, associates.” Her eyes fix on mine. “Anyone who matters.”
Nina matters to them, which makes her exactly the kind of leverage an assassination team would consider.
I close the file, slide the phone back. “You did good work.”
“I’m not finished.” She settles back against the car. “Vera trusts me now. She thinks I’m her friend, her confidante. Her father likes me—sees potential use. I’ll stay close, learn more.”
“Be careful.”
“Always.”
She pushes off the Mercedes, walks past me toward the stairwell.
Then she’s gone, her footsteps echoing down the concrete stairs.
I stand there alone in the parking structure, cold wind cutting through from the open sides, and feel the weight of what she just handed me.
A contract on Vicente and Arturo. Active. Assassins already positioning.
Part of me—the ugly, honest part—wonders if I should just let it happen. Vicente dead means never having to face him again. No more threat of exposure, no more psychological hold. Just a closed chapter.
But Nina would lose clients she’s genuinely helping, ruse or not. Callie and Mason are tangled up with that family now. And if I’m being honest with myself—I don’t want Vicente dead. I want to prove I’m not still owned by him. Can’t do that if he’s a corpse.
I should go to Nina’s.
Instead I drive to my hotel in Culver City.
Extended stay, came furnished with generic art and a stiff bedspread that says temporary in every language.
I checked in two weeks ago and haven’t added anything personal—no photos, no books, nothing that would take more than five minutes to pack.
Tactical living. Easy to abandon if needed.
The thought tastes sour.
I drop my keys on the nightstand, pull out my laptop, transfer Tatiana’s encrypted file to the secure server.
McIntyre will want a full briefing in the morning.
Wyatt too—this is DEA-relevant intelligence, cross-agency coordination, all the bureaucratic bullshit that suddenly matters when there’s a credible threat.
My phone buzzes.
WYATT: How’d it go with T?
I stare at the message. Should be simple to answer. But my fingers hover over the keyboard, not typing.
CHRIS: Good. Got confirmation. Will brief tomorrow.
WYATT: You coming back tonight?
Back. To Nina’s house. Where Wyatt’s probably making dinner, where Nina’s recovering on the couch with Nikita, where everything is domestic and warm and I can’t fucking breathe thinking about it, because it represents everything I have to lose.
CHRIS: Need to handle some details for the case. Tomorrow.
Three dots appear, pulse, disappear.
WYATT: Okay.
Just that. No pressure, no questions. Wyatt giving me space I didn’t ask for because he can read between the lines.
I close the laptop. Pour whiskey from the bottle I bought yesterday. Sit on the couch in the dark and try not to think about Thursday.
It doesn’t work.
Thursday I’ll walk into Vicente’s compound. Sit at his table. Eat food he’s prepared or had prepared. Make small talk with his family while pretending I’m just Chris Longo, Nina’s boyfriend, Callie’s brother, a man with no history in that house.
But Vicente knows. He knows exactly who I am, what I was, what I did while wearing Cal Logan’s face.
The night at The Coterie proved that. The way he’d looked at me, said my cover name like a caress and a threat. The recognition in his eyes when he mentioned Nina.
He’s playing with me. Has been since he walked into Nina’s office for that first session. He knows the sessions are recorded. Knows I’m listening. Every word calculated for my ears as much as Nina’s.
My laptop is open in front of me before I consciously decide to reach for it. A few clicks and I’m in the secure server, pulling up the session recordings. Nina’s voice fills my apartment, professional and warm.
“You move around each other very naturally now. There’s a rhythm between you. How did you find your way to this dynamic?”
I should stop. Close the file. This is just hurting myself for no tactical benefit.
But then Arturo speaks, and Vicente responds, and I’m frozen.
“We were both wrong. And we were both right. But after thirty years, it didn’t matter anymore.”
“Is it different this time?”
Vicente’s voice: “You tell me, Dr. Palmer. When someone comes back into your life after a long absence—someone you thought you’d lost—is it ever the same as before?”
My breath catches. The way he said it. The weight underneath. He’s not just talking about Arturo.
I replay it. Again. Listening for subtext, for threat, for whatever game he’s running.
Nina’s response is careful, therapeutic deflection. But there’s tension underneath. Recognition that Vicente just shifted the power dynamic.
Does she know? Has she figured out that her client is the man who broke me apart and rebuilt me into something I’m still trying to escape?
No. She can’t know. I made sure of that. Insisted she assess Vicente without my history contaminating her judgment. Kept that information locked down because—
Because operational protocol demands it. Because compartmentalization protects the mission, protects her, protects all of us. Because I wanted to protect her professional objectivity.
Or because I couldn’t stand the thought of her knowing what I became with him.
The recording continues. I let it play, Vicente’s voice washing over me like cold water.
I wake on the couch fully dressed, laptop still open on the coffee table, whiskey glass tipped on its side. The recording has stopped—I must have closed it at some point, though I don’t remember.
My phone shows six texts from Wyatt, spread across yesterday evening and this morning. Increasingly concerned. The last one just says: Call me when you’re up.
Instead of calling, I shower. Dress in fresh clothes. Make coffee and drink it too hot, letting the bitterness cut through the fog. Then I open my laptop again and pull up the second session recording.
This is strategic, I tell myself. Preparation for Thursday. Desensitization therapy—exposure to the stimulus until it loses its power.
Except Vicente’s voice has never lost its power over me.
And hearing Nina’s voice threaded through the recordings—God.
It should be grounding. She’s safety, she’s warmth, she’s everything Vicente isn’t.
But instead it’s disorienting, the two of them woven together in my headphones.
The woman I love asking careful questions of the man who broke me.
Her gentleness meeting his calculation. It makes my chest ache in ways I can’t untangle.
Nina’s asking about their household dynamics. About Elena’s resentment, about Toni, about the complexity of found family built on blood and betrayal.
And Vicente talks about Thanksgiving. Their first together in thirty years.
“Everything’s complicated. But we’re trying anyway.”
I want to laugh. Or throw the laptop across the room.
Trying. As if that’s enough. As if showing up and going through the motions counts for something.
My phone rings. Wyatt. I consider letting it go to voicemail, but that’ll just make him show up here, and I’m not ready to explain what I’ve been doing to myself for the past eighteen hours.
I answer.
“Hey.”
“You okay?” Direct, no preamble.
“Yeah. Just needed space to think.”
“About the intel?”
“Among other things.”
Silence on his end that means he’s choosing his words carefully.
“Nina’s been asking about you,” he says finally. “Not pushing, just... noticing you’re not here.”
Guilt twists in my chest. “I’ll come by later.”
“Chris—”
“I said I’ll come by.”
Another silence, then he says, “Want to tell me what’s actually going on?”
“Nothing’s going on. Just work.”
“Bullshit.” Soft, not accusing. “You’ve been pulling away since Sunday. Since we agreed to Thanksgiving. And I get it—I know this is complicated for you. But shutting us out doesn’t help.”
“I’m not shutting you out.”
“Then what are you doing?”
The question hangs there. Honest. I sense that he wants to understand, not trap me into confession.
Which somehow makes it worse.
“I’m trying to figure out how to walk into that house without falling apart,” I say finally. Raw honesty instead of deflection. “And I don’t know if I can do it.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “You want me to find a way to pull us out?”
“We can’t. The intel Tatiana got—there’s a real threat, Wyatt.
Contract on both of them, Yakuza involved.
We need to be inside their security, see how it’s structured, identify vulnerabilities.
And someone should probably tell them, if they don’t already know.
They’re supposed to be our assets. Keeping them alive is kind of the point. ”
The words taste bitter. Protecting Vicente. Making sure he survives. Part of me wants to choke on the irony.
“This isn’t optional,” I finish.
“Then we make it work. We’ll be right there with you.”
“Yeah,” I manage. “Together.”
“Speaking of threats—” Wyatt’s tone shifts, goes professional. “DEA has an update on Rafael Marcano.”
I sit up straighter. “What do you have?”
“Not much. The identity looks fabricated—constructed within the last year or so. Mostly digital presence in Mexico until recently. But there’s credit card activity that puts him in Los Angeles.”
“When?”
“About two weeks ago. Maybe earlier, but that’s the first confirmed hit.”
The same week I got to LA. I’ve been here the whole time and didn’t notice a thing.
“Any visual? Photo?”
“Nothing. Guy pays cash for almost everything. The credit card pings are sparse—rental car, one hotel charge, a coffee chain. We’re working on who he really is, but it’s slow going.”
So there’s someone with a fabricated identity who surfaced around Vicente and Arturo, and he’s been in LA for two weeks. In Nina’s orbit. And we have no idea what he looks like.
“We’ll bring it up in the briefing tomorrow,” Wyatt says. “McIntyre should know the timeline.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m coming over,” Wyatt says. “We need to coordinate the briefing for McIntyre and Walsh anyway. Might as well do it in person.”
“You should stay with Nina.”
“She kicked me out to go grocery shopping. Said I was hovering. Callie’s coming over to take her clothes shopping for Thanksgiving in a bit anyway.” There’s a smile in his voice. “I’m already in the car.”
He’s giving me an excuse. A professional reason to say yes that doesn’t require admitting I might need him.
“Okay.”
“Ten minutes.”
He hangs up. I stare at my phone, at the recording still paused on my laptop, at the hotel suite that feels less like home than the safehouse I lived in after extraction.
Ten minutes. Not even enough time to close the recording and straighten up properly.
Instead I hit play again.