Archie
Everything about tonight was a lie.
The dress itched. Like my skin knew it didn’t belong there and was waiting for permission to tear it off.
I stood behind the station, one hand resting lightly on the counter, posture loose, relaxed—every inch of me selling the illusion to the empty salon.
At any moment now, Baron Vilevski would roll up to the salon for his appointment.
And with any luck, it would be the last appointment he would ever keep.
Atlas sat in one of the chairs, legs crossed, posture immaculate, like he belonged there. Like he’d been born to sit in places like this. But I knew better. I knew what lived under that calm. Precision. Violence.
Gianni lingered toward the back, head down, playing the part even though we still didn’t have an audience. Anyone looking too quickly would miss the way his weight was distributed. The way his hands never strayed far from where he could reach for his gun.
And Tone—I tried not to keep looking in her direction. Because if I did, I’d linger. And lingering was dangerous considering what was about to happen here.
But I felt her. At the front. Holding the room together like it belonged to her.
She didn’t act. She became. She stepped into her role—and it fit.
That was the part her family kept trying to ignore.
In their attempts to protect her, to shield her from the inherent violence of their world, they kept her on the edges, fed her half-truths, told her when to sit out and when to stay quiet.
Like she didn’t belong in the middle of it. Like she wasn’t built for it.
They were wrong.
You could see it in the way she stood—weight balanced, shoulders set, eyes tracking everything without looking like she was trying. She had no hesitation; there was no second-guessing. She didn’t flinch at the language, the violence, the decisions being made in real time. She understood it.
Antonella Cavalho wasn’t adjacent to this world. She was cut from it. Raised in it. Trained in it. Hardened the same way the rest of us were—just without the luxury of being taken seriously for it.
And that made her sharper. More dangerous. Because she didn’t need to prove she could keep up. She already knew she could.
The difference was, she didn’t carry the same blind spots the rest of them did. Where they led with instinct, she read the angles. Where they went head-on, she adjusted.
Not softer, but smarter. Cleaner.
She wouldn’t sit out. Wouldn’t stand back and wait to be told it was safe. She’d step in. Take the hit if she had to. Deal it back harder.
One of the boys? No. Better. Because she didn’t just survive in their world—she thrived in it. Whether they admitted it or not.
The clock ticked behind me.
Slow. Loud. Counting down to the second Vilevski was due.
I checked it once—then forced my focus back to the room for a last sweep.
My eyes landed on her. Tone was already watching me.
That smile—small, sharp, dangerous—sat on her mouth like she’d been waiting for this moment all day. She winked, then brought her palms together, dragging them slowly against each other, anticipation written all over her.
“Showtime,” she murmured.
The front door opened. The bell chimed. And everything shifted.
Andrea played her part well. She moved first, without an ounce of hesitation.
Her smile came easy—polished and real—her voice warm as she stepped forward to greet her clients.
“Welcome.”
She didn’t block the entrance. Didn’t hover.
She opened the space and let them walk in.
Four men entered ahead of Vilevski, spreading out the second their feet hit the floor. They took their positions without a word—one near the mirrors, one by the chairs, another drifting toward the back, the fourth staying close to the door.
They weren’t here to relax. They were here to secure and control the room.
A girl followed—young, too young, eyes down, placed between them like cargo.
Vilevski came in last. He didn’t need to announce himself. The room shifted around him anyway.
His gaze swept once—quick, precise—but he didn’t linger on anything in particular.
Until he did.
On Tone.
She’d stepped forward just enough to be seen.
That was all it took. Something in me locked cold.
Andrea kept talking, filling the silence.
“Right this way.”
She turned, leading them deeper into the salon. Past the chairs. Past the line of sight from the street.
No one questioned it. They followed. Until we had them right where we needed them.
She reached a side door and slipped through it without breaking pace. She was gone without warning.
The air shifted the second she disappeared as the men looked at each other, momentarily confused.
It was just the opening we needed.
There was sudden movement behind Atlas. It was small, but it was all wrong.
A guard shifted—too fast, the fog of confusion lifting from his mind.
His hand came up, a gun pointed in Atlas’s direction.
I saw it. So did she.
Tone moved first. Her heel came off in one clean motion—arm snapping forward, controlled, precise. The stiletto cut the air and hit precisely where she meant it to.
Straight through his eye. It lodged there, deep, he screamed—raw, uncontrolled—as his body jerked back, grip collapsing.
His finger spasmed on the trigger. The shot went wild.
The ceiling blew out. Plaster dropped in chunks, dusting us all in a fine film of white powder.
Then all hell broke loose.
I was already moving. The man closest to me turned too late.
My hand locked onto his wrist—his weapon arm—twisting hard, forcing the barrel off line as he fired.
The shot shattered the mirror behind me. Glass burst outward.
He tried to pull back, but he was too slow.
My elbow drove into his throat, hard enough to feel it give.
His breath cut off.
I stepped in, closing the space between us, not letting him reset.
My other hand caught his jaw and drove his head down into the counter.
Once. There was a sharp crack. Twice. I heard bone split.
Blood spread across the surface, slick and immediate.
His body started to drop like dead weight and I shifted my grip, my arms sliding around his neck. I applied pressure and twisted, breaking his neck.
I moved, because this wasn’t over yet, not by a long shot.
Atlas already had a steel blade buried low in a man’s side.
He twisted it without looking, expression flat, stepping off line as another shot tore past where he’d just been. The blade stayed in as the man folded around it, breath leaving him in a wet choke.
Gianni had another pinned against the mirrors.
His forearm crushed into the man’s throat, glass breaking under their weight.
Shards drove into his skin—face, neck, shoulders—cutting him open in thin, bright lines.
Gianni didn’t rush it. He held him there, pressure steady, a low laugh under his breath like this was exactly where he belonged.
My eyes found Tone. They didn’t have a choice.
She stood in the middle of the room, gun up, arm streaked with blood that wasn’t slowing her down. Her stance was fierce, controlled. She was alive with fire, a warrior when it came to defending her family.
It hit something deep in my chest—sharp, dangerous.
Then Vilevski was on her.
His hand clamped around her wrist, twisting hard enough to force the gun out of her hand. It clattered to the floor and got lost in the shuffle of feet as more men rushed into the parlor.
I was moving before the thought finished forming. The distance between me and her collapsed. My hand closed around his throat and I tore him off her, dragging him back and slamming him into a wall. Wood cracked under the impact, frame splintering as he hit.
“Not yours to touch,” I hissed.
My voice came out wrong. Cold. Empty.
Vilevski laughed. Even with my hand tightening and his air cutting off. His hands rose, clawing at my fingers, even as they squeezed harder, digging deeper.
I felt the change in him—the flicker in his eyes when it registered there was nothing in me holding back and that I had no intention of letting him go.
Behind me, a shot cracked.
Another man broke toward Tone.
I let Vilevski drop just long enough to intercept. I caught the attacker mid-step—hand locking on his arm, yanking him forward. My knee drove up into his ribs. Hard. I felt them give under the impact.
He folded, choking. But it wasn’t nearly enough. My hand went to the back of his head and I drove him down—face first—into the edge of the counter.
The sound was wet. Heavy. Bone crunching.
He dropped to the ground.
I stepped over him and went back to Vilevski.
The room was already dying down, gunfire thinning as movement slowed.
Blood spread across the floor in dark, uneven streaks.
In my head, the space narrowed and all noise was stripped away until all I could focus on was Vilevski.
He was still breathing, propping himself up on his arms as he tried to haul himself between scattered bodies in a feeble attempt to get away.
I looked down at him.
There were no distractions now. There was no cover for him, and no performance.
It was just me and what I was about to do to him.
I stepped in front of him, effectively preventing his path to freedom. He stopped crawling and stared at my feet, before his eyes moved upward until they fixed on me.
He smiled up at me. There was blood at his mouth, but he still smiled with the same ugly arrogance he’d always carried. He was older, thicker, more violent in his arrogance.
I didn’t speak as I squatted to his level, my eyes meeting his.
“Pope…,” he sighed.
“Don’t you fucking say that name,” I hissed.
He laughed again, though I could see there was no humor left in him.
“Viktor… is…”
I didn’t let him finish. I couldn’t. The thought of him so much as mentioning my father’s name did something cruel to my insides. I reached out until my hand closed around his throat. I applied pressure. His eyes never left mine as I proceeded to squeeze the life out of him.
There was no sound, no sight, nothing in the room except me and my hand around the throat of the man who had ordered my demise. The man who sought to kill Atlas Cavalho, the man who had once saved my life. And probably would again.
Cartilage shifted. Then gave. Vilevski’s body went slack under my grip.
I let him go.
Calm settled into the room, broken only by the slow, steady drip of blood hitting tile.
I straightened. Looked for her. Found her.
Tone stood across the room, chest rising hard, a gun in her hand.
Alive.
For now, that was enough. But the edge between us remained. If anything, it had sharpened. Because now she knew just how far I’d go to protect those close to me.