10. Ivy
IVY
This is fun.
Maybe I can brainwash myself into thinking that if I try hard enough. Lying on my side of the bed, facing away from the man handcuffed to me, is a good time. The drifting in and out of sleep, groggy and disoriented, is what I’ve been missing in my life.
Otherwise, I just might go crazy.
This isn’t like me. There hasn’t been a situation I’ve been up against in the past decade or more that I haven’t been able to bend and twist until it looked the way I needed it to.
Discipline, training. That’s what it’s all about, the only reason I’ve been able to make it as long and as far as I have.
Turns out all it took was a few pointed questions and a flight across the Atlantic to erase years of progress.
I close my eyes for maybe the hundredth time in the past several hours, refusing to give that thought any energy.
Like depriving a fire of oxygen until it goes out.
That’s what I need to do. That’s the only way I’ll make it through this.
I’ve been able to train my mind to do a great many things. I can do this, too.
Then again, considering there’s so much I don’t remember, starting at birth and up to the age of fifteen or so, maybe my mind isn’t as trustworthy as I believed.
Back in the day, early on, when I still dared ask questions, I used to worry about it to Vincenzo.
Why couldn’t I remember? Was there something seriously wrong with me?
What if I started to lose my current memories, too?
He always reassured me there was nothing to worry about, but in an offhand, dismissive sort of way.
Still, it was what I needed to hear, so I accepted it.
All those old fears have come back, along with so much else, and I feel myself losing my grip a little more all the time.
Sleep starts to take hold again, and I give in gladly because I need to be as sharp as I can.
Otherwise, situations like the one in the kitchen will keep happening, and I can’t have that.
It’s bad enough my body seems to want him.
I need to be sharp, focused, or else risk making an even bigger mistake than kissing him.
It might be an hour, or it might be a minute before there’s a buzzing sound from the nightstand on the other side of the bed. His breathing changes, and the cuff shifts between us.
In the time it takes my heart to beat again, I’m fully awake. Vincenzo used to test me by sending people into my room at night. If I didn’t wake up before they reached the bed, there were an extra five miles to run in the morning.
I never ran those miles. Not once.
I look over my shoulder. He tilts the phone toward his face, and the light catches his expression. Whatever he sees takes the last of his sleep and drains it from his features, replacing it with something hard. Focused. I know that look. I’ve seen it all my life… at least, the life I remember.
“Laura. Wake up.”
All things considered, this isn’t the time to remind him he insists on calling me the wrong name. “I’m awake,” I confirm, sitting up, reading the situation by tracking his eyes. “What’s happening?”
“Eastern side has been breached. Multiple contacts.” He drops the phone on the bed and grabs for the key on the nightstand, unlocking the cuff. The metal falls away from my wrist—I flex my hand to restore circulation. “They’re moving in formation from the tree line. We’ve got maybe four minutes.”
Which means closer to three, probably.
I’ve been here before. Maybe not geographically, but situationally.
When I get out of my own way and allow my body to do what it needs to do, it takes no time to pull my clothes on and shove my feet back into the sneakers sitting by the bed.
“How many?” I ask, quickly tying the laces before rising.
I’m not rushing. No trembling, no racing. I’ve been here before.
“At least three, based on the sensor pattern.” He’s dressed now, going to the closet. “Could be more. They triggered in sequence. It means a coordinated approach.”
“Standard formation,” I muse, watching him pull a large bag from the closet. “They’ll split up. Main force through the back where the trees give them more cover, one or two around the front to catch runners or create a diversion.”
He looks up at me, and there’s a flicker of something in his eyes. Not surprise. More like acknowledgment that my thoughts run in the same direction his do. Maybe it’s a grim reminder of who I really am rather than who he wishes I was.
“Stay behind me,” he fires off, unzipping the bag and unloading a small arsenal. Where did that come from? Was this part of Liam having the house stocked, the way Nick mentioned during dinner?
“No way.”
“Laura—”
“Dammit. My name is Ivy, and I’m not hiding behind you while people breach this cabin.
” With frustration bordering on rage filling my veins, I keep my voice low and even.
Emotion is noise. Noise gets you killed.
“You know what I can do. And we both know who this probably is.” Granted, I didn’t think they’d come for me so soon, and I have no idea how they knew where to find us.
But this is Vincenzo we’re dealing with.
He has his ways. “If this is the Russos, they won’t send two or three men.
They will send a full team. You’re good, I’ll give you that, but you’re on an injured leg and you need me. ”
I watch him wrestle with it for a second or two.
Weighing the risk of arming me against the risk of fighting alone.
For all he knows, I could take a gun and put it to his head.
I could use the chaos as cover and disappear into the woods.
He’s thinking about both of those possibilities along with more I haven’t considered.
I can’t blame him. If I were in his position, I would think the same thing. I’m not sure why I want to fight in the first place—yet another question probably going through his head, as well. If these men have come to extract me, I should throw open the door and invite them in.
Why don’t I, then? Why did I immediately decide to fight? Like a reflex, something that popped up in my head before I had the chance to think.
Was it the kiss? Damn it. This isn’t the time.
“You need me,” I insist while the clock ticks, and we lose time against these assholes, whoever they are, whatever they’re here for. “If they breach, you’re fighting in close quarters with limited cover and a bad leg. I am a very good asset. Use me.”
He hesitates another beat before reaching into the bag and pulling out two handguns. One is a compact Beretta, the other a Smith & Wesson. He holds them out, grip first. “Don’t make me regret this.”
I take both weapons, check the chambers, then tuck one into my waistband.
The weight of a gun in my hand settles something in me that’s been unsettled since Prague.
This is what I know. This is who I am. Whatever confusion exists about my name, my identity, none of it matters when I’m holding a weapon and someone is coming to possibly kill me.
“No promises,” I mutter, and he almost smiles, which is insane considering the situation.
We move down the hallway in the dark, keeping low. He talks along the way. “There are three access points. Front door, back door, kitchen window. They’ll circle and cover front and back before breaching.”
“I’ll take the back,” I tell him. “Kitchen. You cover the front.”
He doesn’t like it. I feel it in the way he pauses, the fresh tension in his shoulders. He wants me in his sight line. He needs to know where I am at every moment.
But he knows I’m right.
“Fine,” he decides. “Back door and kitchen window.”
At the end of the hallway, we split up. I’m moving left into the kitchen before the word is fully out of his mouth.
I have the Beretta in a two-handed grip.
My breathing is slow and controlled. Four counts in, four counts out.
The way I’ve been doing it since I learned to shoot in a basement in Rome with Vincenzo’s men watching and judging every twitch.
And punishing me at the first sign of weakness. I knew it even then that they enjoyed it.
My position behind the kitchen counter gives me cover and a clear angle to both the back door and the window above the sink. I set the Smith & Wesson on the counter within reach.
And I wait.
The silence is its own kind of sound. I hear the lake out there, the soft lap of water against the dock. My own heartbeat, steady and slow.
And underneath it, getting closer all the time, boots on the ground. Multiple sets, moving fast. They’re not bothering with stealth anymore.
They’re coming.
The front window shatters first. I hear the shot, the spray of glass, Nick returning fire in the living room. Two controlled rounds. There’s a shout outside—someone got hit. Good.
The back door explodes inward.
They come in pairs, like I knew they would. Two through the door, two through the window half a second later. Fast and aggressive, designed to overwhelm a single defender with speed and angles.
They weren’t expecting two defenders. They really should have scouted this out.
The first man through the door is dead before he registers my position.
I put two rounds in his chest from behind the counter, center mass, and he drops in the doorway.
The second man trips over him—a half-second stumble, barely anything—but half a second is a lifetime in a situation like this.
I shift my aim and fire once, and he goes down on top of his partner.
The window pair is faster. The first one comes through feet-first, and he’s up with his rifle before I can track him.
I drop behind the counter as a burst of automatic fire chews into the cabinets above my head.
Splinters and broken dishes fly everywhere.
With my left hand, I grab the gun from the counter, lean around the edge, and fire three times.
Two of them miss. The third catches him in the throat—he drops his rifle to grab his neck with both hands.
The fourth man is already on me. I don’t have time to aim before he comes around the counter with his rifle up. I throw myself sideways, roll, and come up firing. The first round takes him in the shoulder and spins him. The second puts him down for good.
The entire thing couldn’t have taken more than fifteen seconds. My ears are ringing. There’s something hot on my cheek. Maybe from the glass or a splinter from the cabinet, but nothing serious.
From the living room, Nick continues firing. Controlled shots, spaced and deliberate.
Then, silence.
I clear the kitchen. Check corners, the bodies, the window. There’s no one else coming through. “Clear!” I call out.
There are more shots from the front. Two more, and then more silence. This time, it’s real.
Nick appears from behind the fireplace, gun still in hand. His eyes find me immediately, then scan me for damage. “How many on your side?” he asks.
“Four. Two by two.”
“Four on mine.” He looks down at one of the men, still on the floor. “One of them might still be breathing.”
“Eight total.” I lower both guns, letting them hang at my sides. “A full team.”
We’re thinking the same thing. This was a coordinated assault, not reconnaissance. Not a warning.
Thinking back, I add, “They were shouting to each other. In English.”
“American,” he confirms. “Not Italian.”
“No.” Vincenzo’s personal soldiers are Italian, trained in Italy. They speak Italian under stress because that’s what you default to when bullets are flying.
These were American. Local.
Vincenzo outsourced this.
Nick goes to the porch, where one of the bodies is slumped against the railing.
I follow, watching as he crouches beside the man sprawled in the gravel next to the woodpile and searches his pockets.
No IDs. Generic tactical gear. But there’s a phone in his vest pocket.
Nick presses the dead man’s thumb to the sensor to unlock it.
I watch as he scrolls through whatever was open last on the phone. His face changes as I watch. There’s a coldness that settles in his eyes—I’ve never seen it before.
Then he turns the phone my way.
I read the messages. First, logistics. GPS coordinates matching this cabin. A satellite image with the security positions marked, which means someone gave them our layout.
Number of occupants: two. No names. Only descriptions.
Then the final message.
Terminate both. No recovery. Confirm when complete.
I have to read it twice. Three times. It makes no sense. In the back of my mind, I don’t want it to.
This wasn’t a rescue or retrieval. This wasn’t Vincenzo sending men to bring me home. He wasn’t interested in reclaiming his asset or punishing the man who took me.
This was a kill order. Both of us, dead.
And when I look at the number at the top of the thread, the cold stone that settled in my stomach turns to ice.
“I know this number,” I whisper. “My handler. I don’t know his name. But this is the number my orders have always come from.”
Nick doesn’t say a word, but then he doesn’t need to. The silence says it for him. I told you. Everything they gave you was a lie.
Trembling, I set the phone down on the porch railing. They weren’t coming to bring me back. They were coming to erase me. The way I’ve erased people for them. Quickly, cleanly, with no recovery.
I’m not their asset anymore. I’m a loose end.
And I know exactly what they do with loose ends.
I stare at the lake. Moonlight is turning the water silver. It’s beautiful and still. Meanwhile, dead men are going cold all around us. The people I spent years killing for just tried to kill me.
“Now we have to figure out how they found us,” Nick says. “And what we’re going to do next.”
He’s watching me the way he always does: patiently, waiting to see which version of me will surface. The woman who fights him, or the one who fights beside him.
Something has changed that can’t be changed back. I feel it in my chest, a hollow space where loyalty used to live. Vincenzo emptied it in an instant with seven words on a screen.
Terminate both. No recovery. Confirm when complete. They’re branded on my brain. I’ll see them every time I close my eyes from now until this is over.
For the first time, when I look at Nick, I don’t see a captor. He’s not a stranger or an enemy. He’s the only person who fought beside me instead of trying to kill me.
“Yes,” I decide with a nod, pushing my useless, noisy emotions aside. “We have to figure it out.”