The government had been watching Vincent Castellano for years.
Private military companiesâPMCsâwore the respectable mask of contractors: ex-soldiers peddling security, training, logistics. Plausible deniability for governments with dirty hands. Vincent had shattered that mask. His PMCs were corporate raiders armed with assault rifles. Hostile takeovers that meant exactly that. Executives of resistant companies suffered "accidents" in regions where Vincentâs mercenaries answered to no one.
The Department of Defense averted its eyes when the victims were foreign. But when American CEOs began dying in "random street crimes" on U.S. soil? Someone finally remembered ethics.
Enter Ava Voss.
Deputy Director of the CIAâs Domestic Operations Division at thirty-fourâyoungest in history. Pulled from counterterror operations spanning six continents to neutralize Castellano. Not because she was Helenaâs sister. That was merely convenient cover. No. Ava Voss was chosen because sheâd erased seventeen high-value targets across three war zones without leaving a forensic whisper.
If Helena was a sledgehammer, Ava was the scalpel. And the government required precision: excise Vincent without triggering an economic collapse that would gut half the Eastern Seaboard.
I stepped into the Ritz-Carlton bar knowing this, courtesy of ARIAâs violation of every classified database in existence. The moment I entered, the atmosphere
curdled
. Conversations thinned to silence. A woman at the bar fumbled her martini glass, shattering crystal on marble. The bartender paused mid-pour, liquid frozen in stream.
Subtlety is a casualty of godlike enhancement. My presence crashed into the room like a gravitational anomalyâpheromones, magnetism, whatever alchemy ARIA had engineered. Every woman turned. Half the men did too, brows furrowed at their own involuntary reaction.
I smiledâa thin, private amusementâand threaded through the frozen tableau toward the corner booth. There sat Ava Voss, alone, eating oysters and drinking vodka as if it were water.
She did not look up. Did not flinch.
Interesting.
Avaâs skin glowed like polished bronze under bar lights. Her face was long, dimpled faintly when she deigned to smile. Eyes like chips of obsidian. Lips the red of spilled wine. Her nose was small, delicate; ears hidden by a cascade of black hair falling to her waist. My gaze skimmed her formâslim, lethal in a pale green top that clung like a second skin. No bra. The cotton strained over her breasts, teardrop-shaped, shameless. She seemed indifferent to the covetous stares. Below, tactical black cargo pants rode low on her hips, exposing the sculpted plane of her stomach. A perfect, lethal curve meeting at her waist.
Attraction? Certainly. But that wasnât why Iâd come.
"Mind if I sit?" I asked.
"Yes," she said, still focused on her plate. "But you will regardless."
I slid into the booth. Up close, Helenaâs fear made sense. Where Helena radiated frayed nerves and desperation, Ava exuded stillness. The serenity of a bomb disposal expert mid-wire. Her aura wasnât merely dangerousâit was steeped in violence. This woman had killed more people than small platoons. Bare hands as often as blades.
"Youâre immune," I observed, more of a whisper to himself than to her. "To my presence."
She finally looked up. Grey eyes, cold and focused as a sniperâs scope. "Iâve been conditioned to resist biochemical manipulation, pheromonal warfare included. Your...
charisma
... may impress civilians. I am not civilian."
"Thank God," I said. "At last. A woman whose thoughts donât drift below my belt."
A ghost of a smile touched her lips. "Who says they arenât drifting?" She speared an oyster with unnerving precision. "I simply donât let them dictate strategy. Thereâs a difference."
I chuckledâa genuine note of admiration. "TouchĂ©."
She took a measured sip of vodka. "So. Who are you? And why disrupt my dinner?"
"Someone offering solutions to your Vincent Castellano problem."
The air between us turned arctic. Her hand remained motionless beside the oyster fork. No weapon needed. This woman could gut me with a cocktail napkin if she chose.
"We have nothing to discuss," she said.
I set the thumb drive on the scarred tabletop between us. Not like evidence. Like a
detonator
. "Seventeen shell companies. Forty-three subsidiary meat-puppets. Every bribe, every threat, every wet-work order Vincent dispatched through his private army of psychos.
"Plus, Dmitri Volkovâs âtravel agencyâ â routes, contacts, poor bastards he treats like inventory. Antonio Riveraâs little side hustle selling state secrets to China and Russia. The whole goddamn nest of vipers. All here." Spelled out.
She stared at the drive like it might spontaneously combust and take her pension with it. "Who the hell
are
you?"
"Someone who shares your deep, abiding desire to see those three malignant tumors carved out of the body politic. But I require your...
particular brand of bureaucratic sanitizer
to do it without leaving a blood slick across the front page of
The Washington Post
."
"Cleanly." She tasted the word like spoiled milk, spat it back like a grenade pin. "Nothing about this
disease
is clean. Youâre talking about three men who collectively float nearly twenty
billion
in ill-gotten booty."
"Eighteen point five billion," I corrected, deadpan. Because precision matters when playing God with other peopleâs empires. "And yes. I already
have
it."
Her blink wasnât metaphorical. It was literal. Composure shattered like a cheap vase. "You what now?" Her voice climbed an octave, disbelief wrestling with sheer, unadulterated avarice.
"Sitting pretty in a digital war chest, just itching for a new home. Every dime they stuffed into offshore cockroach motels? Gone. The bribe money?
Poof
. The trafficking proceeds? The weapons deals slush fund? Mine. Or yours. Assuming you
play nice
."
"Youâre offering me
eighteen billion dollars
that you
stole when you can take it and no one would know
?" Her voice sliced the air, a scalpel dipped in suspicion. "Why?"
"Because the
state
wants Vincentâs assets when he does his inevitable faceplant. They want his stable of hired killers absorbed, declawed, turned into paperwork. They donât want highly trained, unemployed psychoponds freelancing as birthday clowns for dictators.
You
, my dear, are the governmentâs chosen janitor.
"The one sent to make it happen
legally
,
officially
, with
paperwork
and
subpoenas
. I give you the smoking gun in easy-open packaging; you make the asset grab bulletproof. Or tribunal-proof. Whatever floats your sinking bureaucratic boat."
She studied me with those storm-grey eyes, like she was scanning barcodes for expiration dates and hidden motives simultaneously. "You know an awful lot for someone who doesnât register on my radar."