Chapter 17 Matteo’s Memory of the Kill #5
Matteo understood then: this handler wasn’t the primary threat. He was a delivery system for the method. The real driver was inside The Shadows, issuing directives and ensuring compliance.
Elena stepped closer to Matteo, her voice low. “Matteo.”
He turned his head slightly. Her eyes were bright, too focused. “Tell me you felt it.”
“I felt it,” he said.
“What?” she demanded, and the word came out like a knife.
Matteo’s mind flashed the memory again - his body moving in the exact way the assassination method required. The technique had been mapped to him. The network had known his reflexes would respond, knew his discipline would try to protect Elena by obeying the trigger.
He didn’t want to admit that part. Saying it would make it real. Saying it would turn Elena into the proof against him.
Matteo forced the truth out anyway. “Someone used my training as a blueprint.”
Elena’s face tightened. Her gaze dropped to his sidearm, then to his phone. “So the next directive - ”
“Will be written to make me do it,” Matteo finished.
The safe room lighting flickered once. Not enough to plunge them into darkness, but enough to remind Matteo that the building was part of the trap. The air carried that same faint chemical note, stronger now, like a warning being applied to the back of the throat.
Elena’s hand went to her own jacket pocket, where she kept what she needed - tools, paper fragments, whatever she’d managed to retrieve in earlier chaos. Matteo didn’t see her drive fragment in her grip, but the way she moved told him she was ready to act.
Ready to fight.
Ready to insist on doing it her way.
Matteo looked at the handler again. “Lucien Moretti,” he said, and the words came out like a vow. “Where is he?”
The handler’s eyes slid away. “Dead men don’t talk.”
Matteo’s blood surged with anger. He didn’t care about the man’s deflection; he cared about the confirmation. Lucien Moretti wasn’t just an alias in Matteo’s memory. He was tethered to the assassination method itself.
The network had a handler name to attach to the technique, and the technique had been tailored to Matteo’s past. That meant the assassination pattern wasn’t random. It was engineered, and engineering required access.
It required someone inside The Shadows - someone with enough reach to study Matteo’s training and choose the correct signature to deploy.
Elena’s voice went quiet. “Matteo.”
He turned to her. Her expression wasn’t fury now. It was something more dangerous - clarity edged with fear.
“You’re shaking,” she said.
He wasn’t. Not visibly. But inside, his control was splintering. The flashback wasn’t a clean picture; it was a loop of sensations - salt air, cold metal, the snap of a cue, the feel of his own body moving like it belonged to someone else.
His pulse hammered too hard against his ribs. His hands felt oddly distant, like he couldn’t trust them to obey him.
Matteo exhaled slowly, forcing stillness. “It’s the containment air.”
“Don’t lie,” Elena said.
His mouth tightened. He didn’t want to admit it wasn’t just the chemical smell. It was the truth that the network had been inside his head long before the note trail, long before the directives. They’d been shaping him with the same method they now wanted to use on Elena.
Elena stepped closer, close enough that Matteo caught the scent of her skin beneath the sterile air - soap and salt and the faint metallic tang of adrenaline. She looked up at him, and the calm in her gaze was almost unbearable.
“Say it,” she demanded.
Matteo’s jaw worked. He could feel the words forming and fought them like they were a threat. If he said the memory out loud, Elena would realize the extent of what was happening, and that would change what she risked next.
But Elena’s eyes didn’t move. She wasn’t letting him hide behind discipline.
Matteo’s voice dropped. “When I hear Vesper Cut, my body goes first.”
Elena went still. “You mean you - ”
“I don’t want to,” Matteo said, and the confession came out harsher than he intended. “But the script is in me. It’s in my timing, my angles. It’s in what I think I’m supposed to do.”
Elena swallowed. Her throat moved like she was trying to swallow fear too. “That means they can make you fail.”
Matteo’s laugh was short and humorless. “Or make me succeed at the wrong thing.”
The handler on the floor shifted, wincing as the seal mechanisms continued to engage. He stared at Matteo with a kind of satisfaction.
Matteo could feel the trap tightening around them, but the internal fracture was what threatened him most. He could handle bullets. He could handle fists. He could handle being outnumbered.
He couldn’t handle being rewritten from the inside.
Elena’s gaze flicked to the handler again. “He doesn’t know,” she said, as if she’d decided something. “He’s just the cue.”
Matteo looked at her, surprised by the steadiness. “How do you know?”
“Because he keeps talking like he’s waiting for permission,” Elena said. “And because he didn’t try to kill me. He tried to trigger you.”
Matteo’s throat tightened. Her analysis wasn’t just smart. It was intimate -