Chapter 34 | Anna
I didn’t sleep on the private charter flight to Istanbul. Couldn’t make myself.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw my mother. Saw what Vormund had done to her. What he’d done to me.
Two hours by road. Ninety minutes in the air. Then the city swallowed us whole. Ancient and sprawling and indifferent to what I was about to do.
By the time we reached the safe house, I was wired. Sharp. Ready.
Kincade could tell. He didn’t say anything.
We unpacked in minutes—maps, schematics, floor plans laid out where they needed to be—then he went quiet, already working by spreading out the floor plans on the kitchen table.
Inside, the apartment was muted colors—no, drab—its furniture well worn and strictly functional.
A battered sofa hugged one wall, a single chair beside it, and a scarred coffee table between them.
Low-pile carpet covered the small living area.
The kitchen tiles were peeling. One bedroom. One bath. Enough.
Vormund was in this city. And soon, I was going to kill him.
The safe house was a fourth-floor apartment in Kartal, wedged between the old city sprawl and the industrial zones stretching south. Below, narrow streets tangled with vendors, traffic, and cats prowling the alleys. The real Istanbul—the one that didn’t care about tourists or our plans.
From the balcony, two cushioned chairs faced the city placed to catch the salty breeze, the Marmara Sea glittering beyond them, ferries cutting white lines through dark water. Farther south toward Tuzla, the industrial district waited—where Vormund’s facility sat.
Twenty minutes away. Close enough to strike. Far enough to plan.
Silas’s style. Functional, forgettable, and perfectly positioned.
I stood on the balcony, letting the breeze off the Marmara Sea wash over me. Salt and sea air mixed with the city smells rising from a vendor’s cart below, coffee brewing somewhere nearby, the sharp bite of spices drifting from an open window. And underneath it all, something warm and woody.
Sandalwood.
My chest tightened. That scent would always be his. Two thousand years walking this earth, and the city itself smelled like him. Like he’d left traces of himself in the air.
I closed my eyes and breathed it in. Let it calm me.
Tonight, I’d need that.
In moments like these, when my life was one terrible disaster after another, it was a reminder that there was still something good in the world. And it was also in moments like these when I wished we were merely travelers on a long holiday doing tourist things and… being normal.
Nothing about my life had ever seemed normal.
I tried to picture what that looked like—if we were those people. It was laughable. Kincade was far from the tourist type. He’d lived history. He didn’t need to visit it.
“Are you going to stand there all night,” he said, “or are we going to get to work?”
Oh, he was so charming.
I turned from the balcony and joined him at the dining table wedged against the wall. He had the floor plan of the Tuzla facility in front of him.
“Vormund expects you to come for him. Which means he’s already decided where he wants you,” he said.
“And so… are you saying I’m not supposed to go?” I folded my arms, defensive.
“I’m saying we don’t give him that moment he’s already planned,” he said. “We watch first.”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to go now. But he was right.
“He has two routines,” he said. “Office and residence. We don’t want him at his residence. We want him at his office. We learn when he rotates his guards, which ones are weakest.”
“And then?”
“Then you end him.”
“And the servers?” I asked. Still thinking about all that data. All that research that could be resurrected at any moment.
He pointed to the server room on the first floor near the center of the building. “Here. That’s where we erase what he’s built.”
“So, we erase what he’s built,” I said. “But Munich still stands. Wouldn’t it make more sense to take out the headquarters instead?”
“Vormund is here now,” he said. “Munich will be fortified. We save that for later.”
He had a point. I peered down at the small box of a room that likely held racks and switches like the research lab in Iskenderun. Imagining destroying it all.
“How do we do it?” I asked.
“Two options.” He sat back in the chair. “First, fire suppression.”
I frowned.
“Gas-based,” he added. “Designed to choke flames and protect the hardware. It keeps the data intact.”
I looked back at the floor plan. “So, it saves his work.”
“And if we get stuck in there, we suffocate.”
“Unacceptable on both counts.”
He nodded.
“Second option,” he said. “A directional charge. Focused inward. The room doesn’t survive.”
“But the rest of the building does?”
“Long enough for us to leave,” he said. “After that, it’s condemned at best.”
I considered it. The knife was for Vormund. This was for everything he’d built to outlive him.
“That’s how we do it,” I said.
“So, no RPGs, then?”
My gaze flickered up to his. “You sound disappointed.”
“I’m sure you’ll make it up to me.” His mouth curved, something he was doing far too much these days.
“I’m sure I will,” I said with a nod. “When do we start watching?”
“As soon as you’re ready.”
I gave him my best straight face. “This is not your first day with me.”
“Right. Then let’s gear up, get supplies, and go.”
We watched him for two days.
Vormund was predictable in the way men like him always were—precise, arrogant, convinced the world bent around his schedule.
He arrived at the Tuzla facility after eight every morning, black sedan, tinted windows, security detail rotating in a tight, practiced loop.
He stayed until dusk, then disappeared back into the city like a ghost who believed himself untouchable.
From a borrowed office across the street, we mapped everything. Guard rotations, vehicle movement, shift changes. The facility breathed on a schedule. Doors opened. Doors closed. Cameras swept in repeating arcs. It was comforting in its sameness. Too comforting.
“You know,” I said one afternoon, peering through the binoculars, “for a man obsessed with controlling minds, he’s remarkably boring.”
Kincade didn’t look up from the tablet. “Predictable is good.”
“Predictable is lazy,” I countered. “And lazy men make mistakes.”
Vormund favored his office on the second floor—corner room, northwest side. He spent hours there alone, pouring over screens, delivering orders through secure lines. He trusted the building. Trusted the systems. Trusted that no one would come for him in daylight.
“He’s going to be there tomorrow,” I said, certainty settling in my bones. “Late afternoon.”
Kincade studied the data, then nodded once. “He thinks he’s safe.”
I smiled without humor. “That’s his second mistake.”
By the time the sun set on the second day, the plan was no longer theoretical. Vormund’s routines were locked in. His guards complacent. The server room hummed below his feet, waiting to burn.
I set the binoculars aside and stretched. “All right,” I said. “I’m officially done stalking him.”
Kincade arched a brow.
“Next step,” I added. “I ruin his day.”
“Don’t you mean life?” he asked.
I smirked. Indeed.
“They always warn you about becoming the monster,” I said.
Kincade looked at me. Waiting.
“But there’s a verse they forget.”
“What’s that?”
“An eye for an eye,” I said. “He took more than one.”
Silence. Then he gave one sharp nod.
“Then we make sure the debt is paid,” he said.
We waited until late afternoon. Nearing dusk, the time the doctor would be leaving for the day.
I checked the weight of the knife where it rested against my body. Familiar, balanced, right where I’d put it. He’d sharpened it to the point it could shave the hair off his arm.
I could have chosen something louder. Faster. Distant.
I didn’t.
This wasn’t about efficiency. It was about proximity. About looking him in the eye and making sure he understood why this was happening.
Vormund didn’t deserve a quick end.
He deserved to know who had come for him.
The charge in my pack had come from a back-alley shop that sold curiosities no sane person should own. A place you didn’t find unless someone led you there.
I’d raised a brow at Kincade.
He hadn’t been concerned in the slightest.
“Security protocols changed this morning,” Kincade said on the way there. “Silas flagged it. Selective clearance. Facial recognition override tied to Vormund himself.”
“So, he’s expecting me,” I said.
“He’s going to let you walk in.”
“Good.”
He parked the car at the back of the lot, nearest the exit for a quick, clean getaway. Then we entered the facility together.
No alarms. No chaos. Merely another late afternoon in an industrial building no one looked at twice.
Kincade stayed a step behind me as we moved through the corridors. Close enough that I felt him, far enough that he disappeared into peripheral vision. Where he wanted to be. Where Vormund wouldn’t look.
We took the stairs to the second floor.
The office door was unlocked.
Vormund stood behind his desk when I opened the door and stepped inside, hands braced against its polished surface looking at his laptop. His dark eyes flicked to me, sharp with interest, not fear. He looked… pleased.
“Hello again, Miss Walker,” he said, like he was greeting an old colleague. “I wondered when you’d arrive. I’ve been waiting for you.”
“I bet you have,” I said.
“I appreciate the message you left me. Though I didn’t appreciate the destruction of the equipment.”
I shrugged as if to say I didn’t care. Because I didn’t.
His gaze looked past me to the doorway, to the empty hall beyond.
A faint smile tugged at his mouth.
“I have to say I’m disappointed you didn’t come alone.”
I stepped farther into the room.
“I didn’t. But that doesn’t mean I’m still not dangerous.” I smiled.
“He’s supposed to be dead,” he said, sounding disappointed. “Which means you didn’t complete the assignment.”
Heat flashed under my skin. “He taught me to control it. To aim.”
He snorted. “Impossible.”
“Is it?”
His wary eyes tracked me as I moved, calculating. Searching.