"Kyle, we have to go together!" I coughed, the silk tie he'd wrapped around my face doing little to stop the sting of the gas.
"Go, Valentina! That's an order!" he roared, his voice cracking the silence of the warehouse.
He didn't look at me. He was a statue of dark intent, his gun leveled at the front doors. The iron bar was bending. The men on the other side weren't just thieves; they were professionals. They moved with a synchronized violence that made my skin crawl.
The bar snapped.
The heavy doors shrieked open, and three figures in tactical gear burst through the fog. Kyle didn't hesitate. The warehouse echoed with the deafening crack-crack-crack of his handgun. He moved with a brutal, practiced grace, ducking behind a crate and returning fire while the world turned into a nightmare of lead and shadows.
"I said run!" he yelled over his shoulder, his eyes never leaving the target.
I looked at the back of the warehouse. The sea-door was there—a rusted metal slab that led straight into the dark, churning waters of the Mediterranean. I could jump. I could disappear. Without the guards, without the Maybach, and without the man who had turned my life into a cage, I could be free.
But then I saw him.
A red laser dot danced across Kyle's shoulder, moving toward the back of his head. He was too busy pinning down the two men at the door to see the third one perched on the catwalk above him.
"Kyle! Above you!" my loud mouth screamed before my brain could process the danger.
He dove to the left just as a bullet sparked off the concrete where his head had been a second before. He rolled, firing upward, and the figure on the catwalk tumbled into the darkness with a heavy thud.
Kyle looked at me, his face smeared with grease and sweat, his eyes wide with a look I'd never seen before—genuine shock. He expected me to be halfway to the water by now. He expected the thief to do what thieves do best: take the exit.
"Why are you still here?" he rasped, his chest heaving.
"Because I'm a loud-mouthed idiot, apparently!" I shouted back, grabbing a heavy iron crowbar from a nearby workbench. I didn't have a gun, but I had five years of desperation fueled by a need to survive.
The two men at the door were closing in. Kyle was out of ammo; I heard the sickening click of an empty chamber. He dropped the gun and pulled a folding knife from his pocket, his knuckles white. He looked like a man prepared to die to keep them away from me.
One of the tactical men leveled his rifle at Kyle's chest.
"Stop!" a voice boomed from the doorway.
The attackers froze. The smoke cleared just enough to reveal a figure standing in the entrance. He wasn't wearing tactical gear. He was wearing a grey suit, his hands tucked into his pockets, looking as calm as if he were at a Sunday brunch.
My breath hitched. The crowbar slipped from my hands, clattering to the floor.
"Hello, Valentina," the man said. His voice was smoother than I remembered, but the underlying coldness was unmistakable. It was the voice that had haunted my dreams since Rome. "It's been a long time. You've grown... expensive."
Kyle stepped in front of me, his knife held low, his body tense. "Moretti."
"Vanguard," the man replied with a thin, cruel smile. "I see you've been taking care of my property. I appreciate the collar. It suits her. But I believe our time is up."
Kyle let out a low, animalistic growl. "She's not your property. She's a Vanguard debt. And I don't settle debts with ghosts."
"You're bleeding, Kyle," Moretti observed, nodding toward a red stain spreading across Kyle's side. "You're arrogant, but you're not invincible. Give her to me, and you might live to see the sunset."
Kyle didn't even look at his wound. He just reached back, his hand finding mine in the dark. His grip was tight, almost painful. He leaned back, his lips brushing my ear one last time.
"On three," he whispered, his voice a rough edge of silk. "You jump. I'll hold the door."
"Kyle, no—"
"One."
Moretti took a step forward, his men raising their rifles.
"Two."
"You're not leaving me," I whispered, my fingers digging into his hand.
"Three!"
Kyle didn't wait. He spun around, not to push me toward the door, but to shove me behind a heavy stack of steel pipes. He threw himself toward Moretti with a roar of pure, unadulterated rage.
The last thing I saw before I dove for the sea-door was Kyle slamming into Moretti, both of them disappearing into the thick, white haze of the tear gas.
I hit the freezing water of the port, the cold shocking the air out of my lungs. As I sank into the darkness, the sound of the warehouse exploding above me was the last thing I heard.