Kasien
Present
The forest closes around us like a fist. Thick trunks, wet moss, cold air humming through the branches. It’s darker here than it should be. The kind of dark that’s actually perfect for us.
We leave the SUVs behind and move in a scattered formation, twenty-one men dissolving into the trees like smoke. The fog lingers low on the ground, curling around our boots. Even our breaths look muted here.
Marko signals one fist up and we halt instantly. Then I see it ahead of us—faint movement in a raised hunting stand. A guard with a rifle leaning against his shoulder, but he looks half-asleep.
Adrien climbs up the ladder silently, careful step by step, no creaks. A hand clamps over the guard’s mouth, a short struggle follows, then a single slice beneath the jaw.
The body slumps forward, blood pattering softly against the wood. Adrien slowly drags him out and lowers him down to us before we cover the body with a fallen branch.
We continue ahead, another guard stands by an old stone wall—smoking, bored, the light of his cigarette glowing in the dark like a firefly.
Marko emerges from behind a tree, loops a garrote wire around the man’s throat and yanks him backward into the shadows.
The legs kick once, twice, then nothing.
He lowers the body and wipes his palms on his pants, eyes sharp and empty.
“Two down,” he murmurs.
A third lookout patrols the ridge above us, flashlight swinging lazily, cutting through fog.
I gesture to the youngest of our silencers.
He nods, crouches, and stalks up the incline.
When the guard turns, confused by a sound that wasn’t there, the silencer shoots once, directly into his sternum and the guard drops like a bag of gravel.
Three kills and zero noise so far.
Nice.
We slip deeper into the woods and finally the estate wall rises between the trees.
Tall, concrete, modern and wet with condensation.
There are no cameras along the outer ring, just hidden motion sensors beneath the soil.
We step over them one by one, exactly where Marko indicated.
A wrong step here triggers a silent alarm and it’s over.
“Tunnel entrance ahead,” Marko murmurs.
We drop into the wide drainage trench, sliding down the damp bank on our boots. The grate is rusted, half-swallowed by roots. Adrien crouches and starts working on the screws.
“Give me a second,” he whispers.
I give him none and rip the grate off myself. It groans low, metal bending like bone.
“Idiot!” he whisper-yells.
I drop inside, everyone following me one by one. The tunnel is narrow and cold, with the concrete beneath us slick and covered by a thin layer of water. We crouch low, moving single-file. Every sound echoes here.
Halfway in, Marko raises a hand. A guard sits at the far end of the tunnel, nodding off periodically, watching something on his phone.
I whistle under my breath, just a soft noise to catch his attention, before I shoot a silenced bullet into his forehead.
Perfect.
The body doesn’t even fall, it’s eased down against the wall instead.
We slip through into a service basement, dimly lit by dying emergency strips. Pipes run along the ceiling and condensation drips onto the old concrete. It smells like oil, metal and mold.
The generator room is ahead. Two guards sit at the panel, half-turned toward each other, arguing about something.
Marko gestures to us. I take the left and Adrien the right. I slip behind the first guard, press a hand over his mouth, I slide the blade into the artery behind the collarbone. His body twitches once, then goes limp. Adrien does the same, even faster, but messier.
We drag them behind a stack of old equipment. Marko plants the charge under the coil.
“You ready?” he whispers.
I just nod and wipe the blood on my hands on my jacket.
He triggers it, the generator coughs and sparks, and everything goes black instantly.
No more hum, lights, or cameras.
I take a deep breath, my heart hammering from excitement.
“Let’s go.”
We sprint up the stairwell, each step soft and controlled. At the first landing, two guards are arguing about why the power’s out. Before they draw breath to shout, they’re dead. Adrien slits one throat as I slam the other into the rail and break his neck.
Second floor hallway. More confusion and more shadows moving around lazily—perfect opportunities. A pair of guards jog toward us, guns out but no flashlights. Amateurs.
I melt into the alcove and when the first passes, I hook him with my arm, crush his windpipe with my elbow and lower him silently. Adrien catches the second from behind, putting him out with a chokehold.
Pain flares behind my eyes every time a muscle tightens. Yet something kicks awake inside me. A volatile mix of adrenaline, fear, and a thin, reckless thread of hope.
The guys drag the bodies aside, step over them carefully, and we keep moving. Three more stand by the south wing door, trying to figure out how to reset the power. Marko signals to the two silencers behind us. Two soft puffs, the third from me. Three bodies fall with a loud thud.
We look around and wait. No more men seem to be here. The other groups of our men should be done with the rest of the house soon. One of the teams calmly walks toward us from the other side of the house.
“The other wing is clear. Half of them were asleep,” Sebastian says.
“Lucien?” Marko asks.
“No, he was nowhere to be found.”
This was way easier than I thought. I don’t like this. It was way too easy. Lucien is either really stupid or… I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense.
We reach the reinforced door, exactly where Marko said Kiara would be.
He kneels at the lock, wires exposed. Adrien checks the hall.
“Four more guards coming from the east corridor.”
“Take them,” I gesture toward the other men. They launch forward, silent, moving like water. Then I hear two shots, suppressed, and one body slamming into a wall, then a knife struggle before a loud thud.
Good.
Marko finishes working on the lock and it makes a heavy mechanical thunk. Adrien grabs my shoulder when I launch forward into the door.
“Kas, breathe.”
I don’t.
I shove the door open and my heart stops so violently it feels like something tears inside my chest.
No.
No, please, no.
She’s slumped against the metal headboard, chained both wrists together, her dark wavy hair covering her entire face like a shroud. Her skin is pale, damp with sweat, her body frighteningly still.
Please, no.
Kiara.
I cross the room in two steps that don’t even feel real and drop to my knees in front of her.
The agony that detonates inside my ribs is instant, blinding. I grab her shoulders, too hard, shaking her like I’m trying to force life back into her body, the metal chain rattling around her wrist, when her hair finally falls down from her face.
“Kiara—”
Her body hangs loose in my hands, her head rolling forward, hair spilling everywhere. I push it back with a shaking hand. Her eyelids flutter.
“Kas, she’s drugged. She’s alive, Kas. Stop.” Adrien says quickly, already cupping her face in both hands and forcing her eyes open. Relief hits my body like a heavy trunk and my vision blurs.
Fuck.
Okay.
She’s alive.
Marko is already at the chain, fingers moving fast, the metal rattling as he unclips it from the floor.
The moment the chain is free, dangling from her wrists, I pull her against my chest, arms locked so tightly around her limp body that my muscles tremble.
I bury my face in her damp neck—she smells like fear and cold metal and something that is hers, something I’ve been dreaming of for four weeks straight.
I press my ear to her pulse to ground myself.
Four weeks.
Four weeks of imagining her dead, drowning, broken, screaming for someone who would never come.
And now she’s here.
“Baby,” I breathe into her hair. The word comes out ruined, cracked open, more plea than sound. “I’m here. I’m right here.”
Wild sobs start to shake with my chest, my tears already wetting her hair. “I’m so sorry baby, I’m so sorry.”
I press her closer, as if my body can shield her from everything that ever touched her in this place.
“I’m so sorry.”
My chest pulls tight, the pain in my ribs sharp, but I don’t care. I need her weight, her warmth, the proof she’s not a ghost I’ve been chasing in my head.
“Baby, I’m so—”
“Kasien—” she mumbles, barely audible, her eyes still half closed.
I cup her face, my forehead dropping to hers, tears spilling into the corner of my mouth.
“I’m here,” I say through a heavy sob. “I’ll never leave you again, I promise.”
“I came—back,” she says, words swirling slowly, “—the next day.”
“What?”
She’s obviously still half under the weight of whatever they gave her. She inhales, as if she’s trying to force the words out with every bit of strength she has left.
“I came back—but you were gone.”
Her face hangs loose in my hands as she tries to talk. I swallow, trying to make sense of what she’s talking about.
“It’s okay. You’re okay. I’m here,” I say eventually, lifting her up, the chain rattling from her weak wrists.
Her face sinks into my neck.
“I came back the next day,” she repeats as I’m trying to make her comfortable in my arms. “But the mansion was gone. Burnt,” she adds.
I freeze when I realize what she’s talking about. I look down at her, her eyelids half opened, searching for me.
My brows furrow with another wave of tears I can’t seem to hold back.
She came back.
She came back?
I press my lips to her forehead.
“I’m so sorry. I’ll never leave you again,” I whisper, my lips trembling. “I never stopped loving you, my little fox. Never even for a second. I couldn’t.”
My body feels like it wants to fold into itself and take her with me. I only now realize I collapsed on the ground again, kneeling with her pressed to me.
Her fingers just weakly curl into the skin on my neck, as if that’s the only answer she has the strength for.