Chapter 5

The morning alarm blared on a stool next to the bathtub, its shrill cry cutting through the thick silence of the warehouse like a knife. Ava's eyes snapped open instantly—no groggy confusion, no slow adjustment to consciousness.

She had been trained to wake like a soldier, ready for battle in the space between one heartbeat and the next. Her body was already tensing, her mind already cataloging her surroundings, assessing for threats even before she was fully awake.

She was still in the bathtub. The water had gone cold hours ago, but she hadn't noticed.

She had slept there, her body submerged, her head resting against the porcelain rim. The position was uncomfortable, her neck stiff, her muscles cramped, but she had learned to sleep anywhere, under any conditions.

It wasn't the first time she had slept in a bathtub. It wouldn't be the last.

She slammed her hand down on the alarm, silencing it with a sharp crack that echoed off the bare walls. The sudden quiet was almost as jarring as the noise had been, a heavy blanket of silence that settled over the room.

The water was scalding when she had first climbed in. Now it was tepid, lukewarm, barely warm enough to feel.

But she didn't mind the cold. The cold was familiar.

The cold was an old friend. It reminded her of Vostria, of the frozen lakes where she had trained, of the icy winds that had whipped across her face as she learned to survive.

The cold was a constant companion, a presence that never left her.

She had always preferred her water hot—scalding, really, hot enough to turn her skin pink and make her feel something other than the permanent chill that had settled in her bones years ago. It was the only sensation that could penetrate the cold that had taken root in her soul, a cold that no amount of blankets or fire could chase away.

It was the cold of surviving something you shouldn't have survived. The cold of watching your parents die and living to tell the story.

The cold of becoming something other than human.

Ava submerged herself completely, sinking beneath the surface until her hair floated around her face like dark seaweed. She held her breath, counting the seconds, feeling her lungs begin to burn.

One Mississippi. Two Mississippi.

Three. The water was dark around her, the world muffled and distant.

She could hear her own heartbeat, slow and steady, a drumbeat in the silence.

The silence underwater was a welcome respite from the noise of the city outside, the phantom echoes of gunshots that still rang in her ears, and the pleading cries that haunted her dreams—her mother's voice, cracked and desperate, begging for mercy that never came. The water muted everything, softened the edges of the world, and made it easier to forget.

She stayed under until her lungs screamed for air, until her vision began to sparkle at the edges, until her body's survival instinct finally overrode her will. Then she surfaced with a gasp, water sluicing down her face, her chest heaving as she sucked in oxygen.

The air was cold against her wet skin, a shock that jolted her fully awake.

In the steamy haze of the bathroom, the ghosts felt closer.

Her father's cracked voice: "Please… we have nothing!"

Her mother's final, choked sob: a sound that wasn't quite a word, wasn't quite a prayer, but something in between. A mother's last thought for her children.

The small, terrified face of her brother, Daniel, peeking out from the hallway closet, his stuffed rabbit clutched to his chest.

Find them.

The command echoed in her head, not in her own voice, but in something older, something deeper. The voice of the girl she had been, screaming into the void, making promises she had spent fourteen years trying to keep.

It was a voice that had been silenced by training, by conditioning, by the relentless pressure of survival. But it was still there, buried deep, waiting for the right moment to resurface.

It was a cold, hard knot in her stomach, a stone she had swallowed long ago that had never dissolved. It was the only thing that mattered.

The only thing that kept her going when the missions blurred together, when the faces of her targets became indistinguishable, when the blood on her hands felt like just another layer of skin. It was the purpose that gave meaning to the violence, the justification for the endless cycle of killing.

The assassination jobs—for Emmanuel, for the syndicate, for whoever held her leash—were just a means to an end. They funded her real mission.

They bought her access to a world of corrupt elites, the very world that had swallowed her family whole. They gave her names, connections, leads that would have taken years to find on her own.

They were the currency she used to buy the truth.

Every kill was a transaction. Every bullet was a payment toward the debt she was owed.

Her burner phone buzzed insistently on the tiled floor, its vibration rattling against the concrete, shattering the fragile silence. The sound was sharp and insistent, a demand for attention that she couldn't ignore.

She ignored it, leaning her head back against the rim of the tub, staring up at the water-stained ceiling. The pattern of cracks above her looked like a map of somewhere she had never been—a country of fractures and fissures, a landscape of broken things.

It would be Emmanuel, she knew. Panicking.

Wanting a debrief. Wanting reassurance that the package was secure, that the heat wasn't too high, that his investment hadn't gone up in smoke.

He was a nervous man, a man who had gotten in over his head and was only now realizing the depth of the water. He called too often, asked too many questions, and wanted too much reassurance.

He was a liability, a loose end that would eventually need to be tied.

Or it would be her new handler—the one who had poached her from the skit-maker with promises of bigger targets and deeper pockets. The transfer had been abrupt, a sudden command from her Vostrian superiors that had come with no explanation and allowed no discussion.

One day she was working for a flamboyant socialite with delusions of grandeur. Next, she was working for a shadowy political figure whose name she didn't even know.

It was inefficient. It reeked of internal power plays, of factions within the syndicate jockeying for control.

But questioning orders was a quick way to end up in a ditch, and Ava had long ago learned to keep her questions to herself.

The phone stopped buzzing.

Silence returned, heavy and thick, pressing down on her like a physical weight. She could hear her own breathing, the faint drip of water from the faucet, the distant hum of the city outside.

It was a moment of peace, fragile and fleeting.

Then it started again a moment later—a different ringtone this time. More urgent.

More insistent. The one reserved for the syndicate.

Ava's eyes snapped open.

She rose from the water in one fluid motion, not bothering with a towel. Water dripped from her body onto the concrete floor, creating dark spots that spread and merged.

Her footprints marked her path as she crossed the bathroom, her skin glistening in the dim light. She was a creature of water and shadow, a figure from a myth.

She picked up the secure device—a heavy, encrypted phone that had cost more than most people's cars—and glanced at the screen. The message was brief, encrypted, and devoid of any warmth, as always.

The syndicate didn't waste words on pleasantries. They didn't care about her feelings or her comfort.

They cared only about results.

Asset Morales. New employer confirms satisfactory completion of first acquisition.

Next target dossier uploaded. Priority Alpha.

Political target. Cleanse the system.

A ghost of a smile touched her lips. Cleanse the system.

The hypocrisy was almost amusing. She was a weapon hired by the corrupt to eliminate the corrupt, replacing one rotten cog with another that they controlled.

The system wasn't being cleansed. It was being reorganized.

The beneficiaries were just shifting. The bloodshed would continue, the bodies would pile up, and the cycle of violence would spin on.

But their goals, for now, are aligned with hers. The political elite were the ones who hid their sins behind power and money.

They were the ones who gave the orders that trickled down into bloodshed in quiet suburban homes on Easter night. If the syndicate wanted them dead, who was she to argue?

It was a marriage of convenience, a temporary alliance that would last only as long as their interests overlapped.

She wrapped a black silk robe around herself—the only luxury she allowed herself, a small indulgence in a life of deprivation. The fabric was soft against her skin, a small comfort in a world that offered few.

It was the one thing she had allowed herself to keep, a reminder that she was still capable of wanting something other than revenge.

She walked into the main room of the warehouse, her wet footprints marking her path across the concrete floor, glistening in the pale morning light that filtered through the grimy windows. The warehouse was a cathedral of shadows, the morning light casting long, distorted shapes across the walls.

She booted up a sleek, encrypted laptop, its screen glowing to life in the dim room. The dossier opened automatically, filling the display with text, images, and schematics.

The target's face stared back at her—a man in his late fifties, overweight, with the kind of confident smile that came from decades of privilege.

TARGET: Honourable Minister Abiodun "The Bull" Fashari.

CHARGE: Embezzlement of State Funds, Contract Killing, Human Trafficking.

LOCATION: Private Residence, Coral Isle.

TIME WINDOW: 48 hours.

Ava scanned the details with the efficiency of long practice. Security schematics: three layers of perimeter defense, motion sensors on the eastern wall, a blind spot near the garden shed.

Guard rotations: twelve men, working in four-hour shifts, a gap of approximately ninety seconds between changeovers. His schedule: meetings all day, dinner at eight, usually alone in his study by ten.

It was all there, laid out like a roadmap to his death.

A man who lived in obscene luxury built on the backs of the desperate. A man who had signed death warrants with the same hand that signed his paychecks.

A man who might, just might, have been in a position to know about a certain hit on a middle-class family fourteen years ago.

Her parents weren't political. They weren't powerful or wealthy or connected.

They were a threat for another reason—a reason she had never been able to uncover, a secret that had died with them and been buried by the men in masks. They had known something, seen something, stumbled upon something they shouldn't have.

And they had paid the price.

But secrets had a way of resurfacing. And Ava had learned to dig.

She closed the laptop. First, she had to deal with Emmanuel.

She picked up the other burner phone—the cheap one, the disposable one, the one that couldn't be traced back to anything except a fake name and a dead drop. It had seventeen missed calls.

Seventeen.

The man was desperate.

She dialed back.

He answered on the first ring, his voice a frantic whisper laced with panic. "Ava!

Jesus Christ, Mary and Joseph! I thought you were dead!

Or worse, caught! The news is everywhere!

A hijacked truck, two men in the hospital—what happened to subtle?"

"The package is secure," she said, her voice flat, devoid of the fake charm she'd used in his office. "The method is irrelevant.

The job is done."

"Irrelevant?" His voice cracked, rising in pitch. "My contact in the Force is already asking questions!

There's a Senior Officer on the case, a real pitbull, they say. Benson Benjamin."

The name meant nothing to her. Just another obstacle.

Another badge to be avoided or bribed or, if necessary, eliminated. "Then your contact should earn his bribe.

I'm off your roster, effective immediately. My superiors have reassigned me."

There was a stunned silence on the other end. She could almost hear his brain struggling to process her words, to find a response that would change her mind.

He was a man who was used to getting what he wanted, who had never been told no.

"What? Reassigned?

To who?" His voice came barely above a whisper now, as if he was afraid someone might overhear. "You can't just—we had a deal!"

"The deal," Ava said coldly, "is whatever they say it is. Consider my contract terminated.

Don't try to contact this number again."

She ended the call before he could respond, her thumb pressing the screen with finality. Then she pulled the battery from the phone—a necessary precaution, a habit drilled into her until it was instinct—and tossed both parts onto the table.

They landed with a clatter, separate and useless.

Emmanuel Chukuebuka was a loose end, but a harmless one. He was too busy playing gangster to be a real threat.

He would lick his wounds, count his losses, and move on to the next scheme. Men like him always did.

They were survivors, in their own way, adaptable and resilient. They didn't let failure define them.

Her gaze returned to the laptop. Minister Fashari.

Coral Isle. The most secure residential area in Korevia, a gated community for the ultra-wealthy, where the streets were paved with imported stone and the security guards carried rifles.

A fortress of privilege, built on the bones of the poor.

A challenge.

Ava smiled—a thin, cold expression that didn't reach her eyes. It was the smile of a woman who had found her prey.

She dressed quickly: simple, unremarkable black trousers and a tank top. Nothing that would draw attention.

Nothing that would be remembered. She pulled her damp hair into a tight ponytail, the strands still wet from her bath, and studied her reflection in the cracked mirror.

The woman who stared back was a stranger. Sharp features.

Dark eyes that held no warmth. A face that had forgotten how to smile without calculation.

She was beautiful, in the way a blade is beautiful—dangerous, polished, made for one purpose.

She needed to case the location, to find the weaknesses the dossier couldn't show. The schematics were useful, but they were just paper.

The real intelligence came from observation, from watching, from seeing with her own eyes what the architects had missed. She needed to feel the rhythm of the place, to understand its heartbeat, to find the cracks in its armor.