Chapter 1 – Kieran
Her bunker smells like metal and burned secrets. Just like it smelled yesterday.
I duck under the trapdoor, boots thudding onto concrete, and close the entrance behind me. No greetings. No warmth. Just the faint scent of old bourbon and acid ink, with a sharpness underneath I can’t name. Not quite danger. Not quite welcome.
Sylvara doesn’t look up. She’s got a cigarette between her lips and a scalpel in one hand, shaving the edge of a plastic ID like she’s performing surgery. The light catches the side of her face, tracing the cut of her cheekbone, the smudge of ink near her temple. She’s barefoot. Threadbare jeans and a black camisole that’s nearly transparent beneath the heat lamp overhead.
It’s not an invitation. It’s armor.
She knows I’m watching her. Of course she does.
I take my time walking in, each step intentional. There’s a power in not speaking first. I let my gaze drag across her bench—half-finished visas, scanned bank stubs, a UV light humming lazily. Every item screams precision. Every fingerprint wiped. Except the ones she’s left on purpose.
“You’re back,” she finally says without looking up.
I chuckle. “Yes, I am back.” Sweat is glistening from her forehead as she continues working. “Have you had a chance to review my request?” I ask her, a bit impatient.
“Yes I have.” She looks up finally, and I catch a glimpse of her lips. They look soft and inviting.
“And what is your response?” I try to put the images forming in my head away.
“I don’t fix dead men’s mistakes,” she says with a tone of finality.
I drag a chair from the wall, flip it backward, and straddle it like I own the place. She watches every movement like she’s trying to decide where to stab if I lunge. Smart girl.
“Rizzi isn’t just a mistake,” I say. “He’s a crack in the foundation. You know what happens when those spread.”
She shrugs. “Buildings fall. Not my problem.”
I pull the USB from my jacket pocket and place it on a bench.
“This is.”
She doesn’t reach for it. Just stares.
“It’s encrypted,” I add. “Ledger entries, dates, offshore aliases. Everything Rizzi touched. And every name he sold.”
That gets her.
Not visibly. But she breathes differently. Her cigarette burns faster, smoke curling up into the overhead vent as her mouth tightens around the filter.
“Why me?” she asks.
“Because I don’t need loyalty. I need talent. And I need it now.”
Her laugh is small and bitter. “You Veyra boys keep mistaking desperation for skill. I’m not your pet hacker.”
“You’re not anyone’s anything,” I say. “That’s why I’m here.”
She plucks the USB off the table. Spins it once in her fingers. Sets it down again.
“You think waving a corpse and some cash makes me your puppet? You don’t know me.”
“I don’t need to know you. Just need your hands steady and your brain faster than the ones coming for us.”
She lights another cigarette off the old one. Flicks ash into a dish shaped like a hollowed-out bullet casing. The kind of trophy only a survivor keeps.
“I’ve been off the grid for a reason.”
I nod. “I’m trying to give you a better one to come back on.”
We sit in the thick space between. Neither of us talks. Her ink-stained fingers tap once against her knee. Then twice. Rhythm. Habit. Control.
I wait for the moment to land. Then I drop it.
“Enzo D’Agostino,” I say softly. “That’s who Rizzi stole from.”
She freezes.
The air between us drops ten degrees, just from her eyes narrowing. That name is a blade. And she just swallowed it.
“Enzo’s dead,” she says flatly.
“Not to Rizzi’s ledger, he’s not.”
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t ask how I know her father’s name. But I can see it—all of it—behind those cold eyes: the math of betrayal, the tremor she hides in her breath, the names she’s buried and now hears ringing in her ears again.
I don’t tell her the rest. That Rizzi’s actions got my brother killed. That this isn’t a mission—it’s a fucking vendetta.
She wouldn’t take the job out of sympathy. But she might take it for blood.
“Get out,” she says.
Her voice is steady, but her knee bounces once beneath the desk.
I rise from the chair and nod. Not angry. Not smug. Just patient.
“Use the drive,” I say. “See what he did.”
“And if I do?”
“Then we talk again tomorrow.”
I walk to the trapdoor and pause with my hand on the latch.
“You’re good, Sylvara. But you’re not done. Not by a long shot.”
I know she won’t sleep tonight.
And I know damn well she’ll open that drive.
She turns her back to me.
Not a flinch. Not a dismissal in passing. A declaration. Like she’s drawing a line in her bunker and daring me to cross it.
Her shoulders stay still, but the hand holding her cigarette trembles once before going rigid again. She flicks ash into that bullet casing and stares down at her desk like it’s a goddamn altar.
“You Veyra bastards never come empty-handed,” she says. “Just empty-hearted.”
It lands harder than it should.
I shift my stance, but don’t leave. I watch the shape of her spine under the thin fabric, the mess of dark hair tied up with a pencil, the slight arch of her foot where she balances too long on one heel. She doesn’t look tired. She looks ready to bite.
“I didn’t come to ask,” I say. “This isn’t a favor. It’s a reckoning.”
She turns, finally.
Eyes dark and wild like they haven’t been quiet in years. Her lips pull tight around the cigarette filter, then she takes it out and grinds it against the steel tray without breaking eye contact.
“Of course it is. You bastards always come down here, light a match, then leave me to deal with the fire.”
I take a step closer.
“Not always.”
Her head tilts, just slightly. “No? You staying this time, Santoro? Gonna play bodyguard while the Veyra house eats itself from the inside?”
I don’t answer. I let the silence stretch. Her eyes narrow in return.
She thinks I’m here to manipulate her. She’s right. But that’s not all I’m doing—and we both feel it.
“I don’t need your protection,” she snaps. “Or your money.”
“You need the truth,” I say. “Rizzi made sure of that.”
Her jaw tightens. I almost say something about it—then remember that’s her tell. The thing she doesn’t know she’s doing when the lies scrape too close to her skin.
I nod toward the flash drive still sitting on her bench.
“You want peace? Burn that ledger. Let it rot with the rest of the dirt under this city. But if you want justice—pick up the damn phone.”
She crosses her arms and leans back against the bench like she’s not trying to keep me from seeing how hard she’s breathing.
“What justice is left, Kieran? For him? For me?”
“Not much. But it’s real.”
Her eyes flash. Not just anger. Recognition. She wants to believe it, and that pisses her off more than anything.
She doesn’t move.
I let my gaze drop to her hands—stained with ink, fingertips smudged and nailbeds black from old toner. Precise. Dangerous. These aren’t hands that shake. They make people disappear and identities real. They ruin lives quietly, efficiently.
I’ve broken bones that screamed less.
“You’re right,” I say quietly. “You don’t need me. You never did.”
I step back, but not far. Just enough to make her question it.
“Say no now, but you’ll call me within the week. The past never stays buried in this town.”
She doesn’t respond. Not with words.
But her eyes stay locked on mine long enough to say everything her mouth won’t.
I walk to the trapdoor, pop the latch. The metal creaks above me. I climb halfway up, then pause.
I walked out before I could watch her choose , I think. It was already written on her face: she would.
I close the hatch behind me and step into the cool desert night.
The dive bar thrums above, full of cheap beer and cheaper regrets. I ignore it. I head toward the strip of starlit asphalt where I parked my bike.
She’s not done with me.
And I’m not done with her.
Fire always needs air to burn.