Chapter 2
The fluorescent light above Frederica's head had been flickering for forty-seven minutes. She knew because she had been counting. Counting was better than thinking, and thinking was what had landed her in this shit hole in the first place.
The holding cell of the Heraklion Municipal Police station smelled like bleach, stale sweat, and the ouzo she had spilled down her shirt three hours ago.
A drunk tourist was snoring on the bench opposite her, face pressed against the cinderblock wall.
Frederica sat with her legs crossed at the ankles, hands folded in her lap, trying to doze.
She needed to sleep because she couldn't remember when she last ate, and she had stopped counting her drinks six hours ago.
Frederica had been having a good time, and somehow, she had ended up in a jail cell. So what if she had punched a man in the throat for grabbing her ass in a bar? And then threw a boot at him? And then called the arresting officer a malakas to his face? Hardly jail-worthy crimes in her opinion.
Frederica was sobering up, which was worse than being drunk because sobriety came with clarity, and clarity meant she had to acknowledge exactly how she had ended up here.
The plan had been simple. Fly to Rhodes. See her parents. Eat her mother's baklava. Let her father delight her with his latest acquisition stories.
She needed to go through his files on Serapis, whom her father only knew under his other name, Lucius Foscari, to see if they could track him down.
It was meant to be a quick and simple trip.
She didn't want Serapis to think that her parents knew anything worth killing them over, so it was meant to look like a fun visit home.
Instead of doing that, Frederica had bought a ticket to Crete because a man had gotten under her skin.
You are a professional killer. You have ended the lives of thirty-one people across fourteen countries. You do not detour to Greek islands to drink yourself stupid over a man.
And yet, here she was.
Frederica closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall. The concrete was cool against her skull, soothing the dull throb of the hangover that had settled behind her eyes.
The problem of Dario Colleoni had started at Leo's wedding. No. Before that. It had started in Treviso, when they had stood over two dead men and laughed like it was the funniest thing either of them had ever seen.
Something had shifted between them after that. The barbs had softened. The rivalry had become something else, something that crackled with a different kind of energy, and Frederica had told herself it was the impending siege and adrenaline.
At the wedding, she had saved him a seat. She still didn't know why she had done it. The chair had been empty, and she had put her hand on it, and when Dario walked in, scanning the room with easy confidence, she had caught his eye and dared him to sit down beside her.
They had spent the entire reception tearing strips off each other, and she had enjoyed every second of it. Dario was the only person she knew who could keep up with her.
Not her friend Kon, who was patient and wouldn't push back when she needed pushing. Not Altun, who saw too much and knew when she was picking fights for fun. Not her parents, who loved her with an intensity that could be suffocating.
Dario fought her. He met her sharpness with his own and didn't flinch. He called her Spartana just to piss her off, took her insults as compliments, and gave them back with interest. He was infuriating and relentless, and she didn't know why she liked it.
This is pathetic. You are pathetic.
Her mother, Despina, would say she needed to stop and think about it. She had the emotional clarity of a sniper scope—see the target, pull the trigger, deal with the consequences. Do you like him? Tell him. He says no? Break his kneecaps and move on.
Frederica was not her mother. She was not soft curves and easy warmth hiding a killer's instincts.
She was all edges and angles, and people saw that.
They saw the Spartan build, the direct stare, the calluses on her hands, and they made their assumptions about her on sight. Too intense. Too aggressive. Too much.
The men she had been with over the years had all hit the same wall eventually. The moment they realized she wasn't going to soften, wasn't going to dim, wasn't going to become the yielding, gentle woman they had been hoping was hiding underneath the muscle and violence, they all bailed.
She wasn't hiding anything. What they saw was what they got, and what they got was a woman who could kill you six ways with a butter knife and didn't have the patience for a man who needed her to be anything less.
And Dario has never expected you to be less. The thought surfaced before she could drown it.
She opened her eyes and stared at the flickering light. Forty-nine minutes now.
When the police officer asked who she wanted to call, she ran through her options.
Her father. No. Tore would arrive with a bag of tools and a plan to break her out, far more elaborate than the situation warranted. He would also tell Despina.
Her mother was firmly on the do-not-call list. Despina would come with a lecture, a gun, and the kind of maternal disappointment that made waterboarding look merciful. Worst of all, she would know why Frederica had been drinking. Despina always fucking knew.
Altun? It was mortifying just thinking about it. The sorceress had enough on her plate without bailing out a grown woman who couldn't handle her alcohol like an adult.
Kon would come with a smirk that she had fucked up, which was almost worse. He would bring Athena, who would demand to know why she had been dumb enough to get caught.
That left the one person who would find this genuinely funny instead of concerning. The one person who would walk into a Greek police station and treat the whole thing like the greatest entertainment of his week.
Dario Colleoni. You called Dario fucking Colleoni.
She hated that she knew his number by heart. She hated that when the officer had asked for a name, the words 'tell the big idiot bear malakas dickhead he owes me a favor' had slurred out of her mouth without conscious thought.
She hated that some traitorous part of her, the part that wasn't furious and starting to have a hangover, was looking forward to seeing his face.
This is what rock bottom looks like. You finally made it.
Time passed. She refused to count the light flickers anymore because it was becoming obsessive, and Frederica tried very hard not to be obsessive.
She was controlled and a professional, and if she let her obsession start controlling her, she would end up counting the bricks in the wall over and over again.
There was a ruckus, and she opened her eyes.
The voice came first, filtering through the heavy door that separated the holding cells from the reception area. Deep, warm, and booming with such cheerful confidence that it was almost impressive.
"Good evening. I'm here for a woman in your cells. Tall, dark hair, looks like she could kill you with a pencil faster than John Wick? Yes, that's the one."
Frederica's stomach did a complicated roll, and she hoped she wouldn't spew up the bottle of ouzo she had downed. At least, she thought it had been ouzo.
There was the sound of the desk sergeant trying to maintain professional composure, only to fail, followed by Dario's laugh. A full, easy, genuine sound that she had memorized against her will.
Dario made a joke she couldn't quite make out, followed by bad attempts at speaking Greek, and cheerful flirting with the kind of shameless confidence that only an Italian man could manage.
The door to her cell opened with a high-pitched buzz.
The overhead strip light caught the red silk like a flag to a pissed-off bull, and there he was.
Two hundred and fifty pounds of solid, tattooed muscle packed into a shirt that belonged in a nightclub, not a police station.
Long dark curls mussed from travel and an insufferable grin that said he was enjoying her predicament. He held a pair of boots by their laces.
"Buonasera, Spartana." His eyes swept over her, taking in the stained shirt, the tangled braid, the bare feet, because she had thrown one of her boots at the man who grabbed her, and the police had confiscated the other as evidence. His grin widened. "You're looking well, baby."
Frederica stared at him from the bench, every fiber of her being vibrating between the urge to kill him and the terrifying, undeniable relief that flooded through her chest at the sight of him standing there.
"Took you long enough, arkoúdos," she said, and her voice came out steadier than she had expected. "Did you stop for sightseeing, or are you naturally this slow?"
Dario leaned against the cell door frame, arms crossed. "It was only a ninety-minute flight. You're lucky I was in Istanbul, and I like a rescue mission. You want to tell me why you're in a jail cell in Crete instead of at your parents' place in Rhodes?"
"No."
"Didn't think so." He straightened and held out a hand. "Come on, let's get you out of here before your mother finds out and kills us both."
Frederica looked at his big, outstretched hand, and with a tired sigh, she took it. His fingers closed around hers, warm and unyielding, and he pulled her to her feet with effortless ease, reminding her exactly how strong he was.
For half a second, she was close enough to smell him—whiskey and smoke and something warm underneath, like cedar—and her grip tightened before she could stop herself.
Frederica let go and stepped back. "I need my boots."
"Here," he said and passed them to her. "Sergeant Papadakis is a reasonable man once you stop calling him names. Apparently, because of your excellent aim, the guy you threw this boot at needed three stitches."
A flicker of satisfaction cut through Frederica's hangover. "He deserved more."
Something shifted in Dario's expression. The grin remained, but underneath it, his eyes went dark and focused in a way she had only seen when he was working. "Yeah, he probably did."
The moment lasted a beat too long. Frederica broke it by snatching the boots from his hand and shoving her feet into them.
"So," Dario said, the lightness sliding back into place like a mask. "Care to explain when exactly I owed you a favor?"
"Rome," she said without looking up. "I could have put that bullet in you instead of your client. That's a favor."
Dario's laugh echoed through the holding cell, startling the snoring tourist awake. The man blinked at them, confused, and passed out again.
"Fair enough," Dario conceded. "Let's go. I have the Colleoni plane waiting, and you owe me a story."
Frederica pulled a face. "I don't owe you anything."
"You owe me a fucking story, Spartana. A good one. I want to know how the deadliest woman in the Mediterranean ended up drunk and bootless in a Cretan jail cell on a Tuesday night."
Frederica straightened, both boots now on, and met his eyes. The fluorescent light was still flickering overhead. She had lost count.
"It's Wednesday," she corrected.
"Even worse." He held the door open for her with a theatrical sweep of his arm. "After you."
She walked through it, and if some part of her felt lighter than it had in weeks, she refused to acknowledge it.