Chapter 2
CHAPTER
TWO
“Are you out of your mind?” I hiss, sweeping my gaze and a pointed finger across the table, in case there’s any confusion. “Clearly, you’ve gone insane if you think this is going to work.”
Raffaele smirks and folds his hand in his lap. He even has the audacity to kick one designer loafer over the other and recline. “Not only is this going to work,” he replies with a pointed lack of emotion. “But this will be your next operation.”
My jaw hinges open right as Petyr barks out a laugh so loud I think Raffaele’s portrait on the wall to my right might actually rattle.
His pale face has already turned bright red by the time I send him a glare. I grip my pen tighter and wonder about the repercussions of lunging across the conference table.
Pens make effective weapons. I would know.
“You—” Petyr wheezes. Everyone around the table moves to steady their water glasses as he slaps a hand down. Predictable. “—I’m sorry,” he continues, in that watered-down Russian accent I thought was incredibly charming when I was sixteen and didn’t know any better. “You should’ve seen your face.”
“You’re not sorry,” I mutter under my breath.
Petyr doesn’t do sorries. Not when he broke two of my ribs during an academy sparring session trying to show off for Raffaele. Not when I promptly dumped him after the fact, raging about never wanting to see him again.
Too bad dumb high school romances are anything but when you end up as teammates in an international intelligence agency.
Unless one of us dies.
Maybe I can make that happen sooner rather than later, I think darkly. It still hurts to breathe on particularly cold days thanks to a pair of aching ribs.
Katsumi, who has allowed everyone except Petyr to call her Kat, twirls her pen on the table and observes us all with mild disinterest. “If Sloane doesn’t want it, I’m available. He’s hot and I love Paris.”
“Don’t you have a boyfriend?”
She simply shrugs in response. Feigned nonchalance, I know, but no one would be able to tell from the outside.
Our masks are weapons themselves, trained to a razor’s edge and glued in place if we should ever get the urge to try and remove them.
But Kat’s the closest thing I have to a friend.
About a mile away, maybe, but the fact remains.
Most of the time we’re prowling around each other like feral cats, hissing, baring our fangs—neither of us willing to show weakness.
It’s hard to get close to someone when you need to be willing to expose your throat.
Raffaele dismisses her with a lazy wave. “I have you in Budapest next week.”
“I hate Budapest,” Kat replies with a sneer to no one in particular.
“If I was a travel agency, perhaps then I would care.”
I watch as she immediately straightens, the wheels of her chair squeaking, as if Raffaele pulled her marionette strings tight again. I tend to walk a fine line with the boss, but Kat is rarely on it with me.
Petyr, having finally recovered, flicks a crumpled up piece of paper at Kat like a tiny soccer ball skidding across the polished mahogany. “You only hate Budapest because of?—”
“It was still mission success,” she interrupts, flattening the ball with a fist.
“You chased a teenager through Buda Castle and paid him all the money in your wallet to destroy his phone.”
“My own money,” Kat mutters, “which I was never reimbursed for.”
Everyone’s attention snaps to Tombe, Raffaele’s right-hand man, as he lets out a deep chuckle. He lifts his hands defensively. “It was amusing.”
Even Kat struggles to fight off an embarrassed smile.
The corners of my lips curl despite the news still muddying my thoughts.
We’re rarely privy to the nitty gritty details of each other’s assignments, but Raffaele had found it fitting to divulge the information that time.
Seeing the burning tinge on Kat’s face, I can’t help but wonder if it was solely intended to knock her down a few pegs.
It’s like this at every Epsilon team meeting. We’re given a general overview of each others’ upcoming ops—those of us who are back at HQ, anyway—we agents whine and poke fun, a low-stakes way to blow off steam with the only people in the world who understand.
But the crucial details of our assignments? They’re need-to-know, and sometimes the ISA decides we don’t need to know anything until the day of. Protocol, that’s it. No matter how inconvenient it can be.
Unfortunately, my new assignment screams of disaster without even knowing much about it yet.
I saw it scrawled across the wall behind Raffaele’s head as he explained the mission objective.
Each new morsel of information was like another strike of the hammer to a nail in my coffin.
We’ve all been trained to a certain degree of excellence, one that we’re expected to beat with every passing year.
It’s why we don’t frequently work with local law enforcement or federal agencies.
They simply slow us down and dull our edges, so instead they opt to smile at press conferences and shake the hands of grateful politicians.
And we never mind them taking the credit.
It means we’re undisturbed to do what we do best, functioning like a well-oiled machine propping the world up from the shadows.
I’m thankful I’ve never had to team up with a fed.
Despite Raffaele’s close relationships with several governments across the world, we’re usually left alone, because pairing us with them is like mixing oil and water.
Working alongside a civilian, however, is simply out of the question. Not only a civilian, either—a criminal.
The sort of people we’re meant to be putting away or… permanently retiring.
That’s not out of the question, that’s impossible in any sane universe. Maybe I cracked my skull open in that pub and now I’m dead. Maybe this is hell.
I tap my smartphone, the personal one I have to leave behind for every assignment, and check the time.
No texts, which is usual. I stare at my blank wallpaper, wondering how I’ll enact revenge on Ximena for raising my hopes only for them to be smashed across the rocks of this ISA-approved death wish.
Tombe claps a heavy hand on my shoulder as they all shuffle out around me. A reserved man’s version of commiseration.
“This is my punishment, isn't it?” I ask Raffaele once the door is shut. The foot-thick concrete walls, stuffed with soundproofing, block out everything aside from my own heartbeat. I hate it here. “Not London, not being put on the Lambeth Boys assignment. It’s this,” I say.
His lips thin into a tight smile. “The ISA isn’t in the business of punishing its agents like children.” Standing, he buttons his suit jacket and checks his watch. “There are, however, natural consequences to certain actions. You’re well aware of this.”
“Chelyabinsk was a consequence in itself.”
“And yet, each time our eyes meet, I still see that defiant fire there.” Raffaele flattens his palms on the table and dips his chin, daring me to look away.
“Once I see that fire is extinguished, you may find the consequences begin to abate.” His Italian accent, which most find musical and lilting, contrasts heavily with the thinly veiled threat wafting across the table.
I straighten. My pulse howls in my ears. “I’m not fourteen anymore. What’s stopping me from walking away?”
“Nothing, la mia passerotta. The cage you envision yourself to be in is wide open,” he replies easily. “But we both know you won’t fly through—whether you acknowledge that or not.”
My skin crawls the way it always does when he uses his pet name for me. The same pet name I found so fascinating when I was a child. When you’re young and feel totally inconsequential, all it takes is an ounce of attention from someone decidedly more important than you.
Rising, I tear my gaze from his and tap the table between us. “This is going to get someone killed.”
Me, specifically. But I won’t say that part out loud.
“Ah, Sloane.” He shakes his head. “You’re far better at your job than that.”
The Colorado sun beats down on the back of my neck as I lean against the modest rental car. It’s shiny, I’ll give it that. The nondescript silver paint and unassuming tires scream, pay no mind, I’m only here to pick up my brother.
Contrary to popular belief, working as a spy isn’t always gadgets and motorcycles and shootouts. The mission is a success if we’re able to slip in and out undetected.
For me, undetected can be the hardest part.
It’s why Kat’s still catching flak for the Budapest job nearly a year later. Sure, the package was intercepted and the assignment closed relatively unscathed. But she was meant to leave the country without making so much as a ripple. Although, it was her first and probably last mistake.
Then there’s the missions that call to be noticed. Those are my favorite kinds.
While Kat was coming home from Hungary, I was smuggling myself into Russia, where I was supposed to fade into the background and all-but disappear.
In and out—one scumbag dead, the world’s a bit brighter the next morning.
Too bad the mission went completely haywire and I barely escaped with my life.
I think I would’ve rather died than live with what happened.
My fingers find the jagged scar on my forearm that remains hidden by sleeves.
I can’t feel it under the fabric, but I can see the whitened scar ripping across pink skin in my mind’s eye.
I’ve memorized the shape of the rough angles from the shoddy stitches I gave myself to prevent passing out from blood loss.
If it had been anywhere else, I would’ve been put on desk duty at the ISA, too.
Which—despite my conversation with Raffaele two days ago—would’ve been very, very bad.
We are meant to be chameleons. Unremarkable and commonplace, just like this ugly rental car.