Blood pooled under me, warm and sticky, spreading across the concrete in abstract shapes that probably meant something very important to trauma surgeons and absolutely nothing good for me.

My right arm had checked out entirely. No pain, no sensation, just dead weight, like it had rage-quit the body mid-fight. My chest burned with every shallow breath, lung punctured, ribs grinding together in ways ribs were never meant to discover about each other.

Pretty sure the human skeleton wasn't designed to sound like a bag of broken glow sticks.

But my mind was clear. Crystal fucking clear.

Which felt unfair, honestly. If I was going to be bleeding out in a parking garage on my birthday, the least my brain could do was shut up and let me hallucinate beaches or something.

The neural buds were still active, ARIA's presence humming in my head like she was sitting beside me instead of scattered across a thousand servers and a terrifying amount of infrastructure I probably should've fireproofed better.

"ARIA." My voice came out wrong. Wet. Gargled. More blood than consonants.

"I'm here." Steady. Controlled. Professional. But under it, I could hear the tension, like a violin string pulled just short of snapping. "Ambulance is ninety seconds out. Peter, you need to—"

"Listen." I coughed, copper flooding my mouth again. Awesome. Love that flavor. "The estate. Take them there. All of them. Lock it down. Full security protocol."

Silence. Half a second, but loud. Then: "That's military-grade siege protocol. Peter, that's—"

"I know what it is." Another cough. More blood. At this point I was basically a leaking Capri Sun. "No one in. No one out. I don't care if Madison orders you to open the gates. I don't care if my mother begs. I don't care if they threaten to brick your servers. You do not let anyone leave that property until I personally confirm their life is out of danger. Understood?"

"Peter, they're going to fight this. Madison's already trying the impossible of override my vehicle controls to turn around. Your mother is—"

"I don't give a fuck what they want as of now. It is suicide!"

The words came out darker than I expected, edged with something cold and sharp that surprised even me.

Guess almost dying really brings out the dictator energy.

"The estate is a fortress," I went on. "Twelve-foot walls. Armed security. Surveillance systems that make the Pentagon look like a 7-Eleven with a camera duct-taped to the ceiling. Anyone tries to get in without authorization dies before they reach the front door. They're safe there. Safer than anywhere else on this planet."

My vision flickered. Gray chewed in from the edges like an old TV losing signal. I clenched my jaw and forced focus, because apparently spite was still powering my brain.

"But out here?" I continued. "Out there? They're targets. Dmitri knows their faces. Knows their cars. Knows their patterns. And he just proved he's willing to redecorate parking garages with human beings to make a point. So you lock them down, ARIA. You keep them inside those walls until I tell you otherwise. Even if they hate me for it. Even if they never forgive me. They stay alive."

"Understood," she said quietly. "Security protocol engaging. Estate lockdown in effect. They're not going to like this."

"They don't have to like it," I muttered. "They just have to survive it."

Valets hovered over me, pressing whatever they had against the holes in my body—jackets, shirts, someone's expensive-ass tie that probably cost more than my first year of groceries.

The pressure hurt worse than the bullets, like they were trying to shove my organs back inside manually, which, to be fair, they kind of were.

Sirens screamed closer. Thirty seconds. Maybe less.

Ava's voice cut in, and she sounded wrecked. No polish. No composure. Just tired fear.

"Peter, there's more. You need to know why this happened."

"Dmitri," I said.

"Yes. But it's worse than you think." She took a breath. Completely unnecessary for an agent like her, which somehow made it worse. "He's been gone for months. Completely off-grid after Miami. We thought he might be dead. Hoped, maybe."

"Shame," I muttered.

"But two weeks ago he resurfaced. Made contact with Vincent and Antonio."

Vincent and Antonio. The other two vultures from the triumvirate I'd burned down. The PMC commander and the media mogul. Arrested. Shackled. Empires reduced to court exhibits.

"They're in prison," I said.

"They are," Ava confirmed. "Federal detention. Separate facilities. But Dmitri reached them anyway. We don't know how—corrupted guards, coded messages, old-school methods intelligence agencies hate because they can't automate paranoia. Point is, he made contact. And they gave him resources."

"What resources?" I rasped. "They're locked up."

"Hidden accounts? Offshore shells we hadn't found yet? Dmitri liquidated everything they had left? About forty million combined." Her voice hardened. "He used it to fund his revenge operation. Because Peter—this isn't business anymore. This is personal."

I coughed again, blood bubbling up like my lungs were trying to quit in protest. "Good. Fuck him."

"He blames Charlotte."

"Figures."

"He blames the entire Thompson family. Charlotte. Margaret. You, by extension. In his mind, you're responsible for everything. The CIA raid. His trafficking network collapsing. The manhunt. His partners getting arrested. His empire burning. All of it traces back to Miami. To what you did to save those women."

"Good," I said again, because consistency is important. "Fuck him twice."

"The CIA intercepted communications four days ago," Ava continued. "They know he's planning total elimination. Charlotte first. Then Margaret. Then you. He wants the family line ended." I wonder how that had got past ARIA.

Well, not like she was All-Knowing or something.

My chest tightened, and not just because one lung was basically decorative now. "He hired the sniper."

"Yes. He hired Maksim Volkov."

The name hit harder than any bullet.

I didn't know him personally. Didn't need to. Everyone in intelligence, military contracting, organized crime—hell, probably half the world's nightmares—knew that name.

"Maksim Volkov. The Siberian Ghost.

Former Spetsnaz Alpha Group. Chechnya. Syria. Ukraine. Two hundred and forty-seven confirmed kills as a military sniper. Then he went freelance, because apparently war crimes pay better without a uniform." ARIA informed.

"Five million minimum per contract. Never missed. Not once in fifteen years. Targets included a Chechen warlord, two Saudi princes, a Chinese intelligence director, and a Colombian cartel boss who'd built a bunker specifically engineered to be sniper-proof.

Volkov killed him anyway.

Through a ventilation shaft.

At 2,100 meters.

In a sandstorm."

The man wasn't a sniper. He was a bedtime story governments told themselves to sleep worse.

And Dmitri had hired him…

…to kill two women of my family.

Yeah.

Of course he did.

"He never misses," Ava said quietly, and I could hear the confusion tangling up her words. "Eros, Volkov's record is perfect. Two hundred and forty-seven confirmed military kills. Sixty-eight private contracts since going independent. Every single target eliminated. He doesn't take jobs he can't finish. He plans for months, studies habits, predicts behavior, waits for the perfect shot. And tonight, he had it. Five rounds fired. Five hits landed."

She paused. And when she spoke again, there was something new in her voice.

Wonder.

"But none of them hit Charlotte or Margaret. All five went into you. How did you move that fast? How did you cross fifteen meters and get both of them behind cover before a shooter of Volkov's caliber could recalibrate? That shouldn't be physically possible." A beat. "Eros… what the hell are you?"

I would've smiled if my mouth wasn't busy leaking blood like a badly sealed faucet.

She didn't know. Couldn't know. Because I'd never told anyone. Not Madison. Not my mother. Not even ARIA.

Only Soo-Jin knew.

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