Somewhere off the Corsican coastline.
"He's not supposed to be alive."
The words echoed in Audrey Rousseau's skull like a ricocheted bullet, sharp and insistent. She pressed her back against the icy stone wall, Glock steady in her grip, lungs barely daring to breathe. The villa overlooking the Mediterranean cliffs was supposed to be abandoned—just another decaying monument to men who no longer mattered. Dead files. Dead names. Dead men.
But something was off. And her instincts—sharp, honed, unforgiving—were screaming.
Moonlight fractured across the marble floor in broken shards, slicing through the hallway's darkness like a blade. Outside, the waves shattered against the jagged rocks below. But inside, the real storm moved beside her.
Sebastian Donovan.
No longer the polished executive cloaked in bespoke suits and half-lies. Tonight, he was stripped of illusion. Tactical shirt rolled to the sleeves. Hands dirtied by something far more dangerous than money. Quiet. Deadly. Focused.
His shoulder brushed hers, and his fingers ghosted the small of her back. Not to guide her. Not to lead. Just contact—raw, necessary, infuriating.
It burned. God, it still burned.
"Ten minutes," he whispered, his voice like gravel coated in heat. "Then the guards reset their pattern."
His breath brushed her ear. Every nerve in her body reacted—betraying reason, protocol, distance. She should have shoved him off, reminded him why she didn't trust him. But this wasn't about trust. It never had been.
This mission wasn't sanctioned. It wasn't clean. And it sure as hell wasn't smart.
But it was personal.
Codename: Heretic.
Audrey had seen him die. She'd seen the blood, the final breath, the detonation that buried the past in fire. But two weeks ago, his name reemerged—buried deep in a decrypted file no one should've been able to access. Redacted and reclassified. His face was grainier now, but unmistakable.
Lucien Moreau.
Heretic.
The corridor narrowed into something coffin-tight. At the end stood a heavy oak door, flanked by two armed guards in matte black uniforms.
Audrey didn't blink.
Two shots.
Two bodies.
No sound beyond the dull thud of collapse.
Sebastian didn't flinch. He moved like a man born into violence—every step deliberate, a predator in motion. Audrey followed, pulse tight, breath shallow. She always followed—until Damascus. Until everything fell apart.
The door creaked open. They stepped inside.
The lock clicked behind them.
She turned, suddenly alert. "That wasn't supposed to happen."
"No," Sebastian said, low and unreadable. "But it always does with him."
It wasn't an intel room. It wasn't a server den or weapons cache.
It was a bedroom.
Spartan. Controlled. Lived-in. Personal.
A bed, made military-tight. A desk with hand-written notes. A bottle of aged bourbon—opened, untouched. A single photograph on the wall. She approached it slowly.
Her.
Younger. Smiling.
Lucien's fingers rested on her shoulder in the frame. The moment had been captured during training in Marseille, years ago. It shouldn't still exist.
Audrey's stomach dropped.
"We're in the wrong place."
Sebastian stepped closer, his eyes burning with something old and raw. "No. We're exactly where he wanted us."
The air shifted. Heavy. Thick. Years of repression, fury, need—condensed into the breath between them.
And then he kissed her.
No warning. No pretense.
It was brutal. Consuming. A collision, not a connection. Tongues, teeth, and hands desperate for something real in the chaos. She kissed him back like her mouth had been starved for years. Because maybe it had.
She hated herself for needing him. For remembering how it used to feel. For still feeling everything.
His hand gripped her hip, fingers digging through the fabric. Her gun clattered to the ground, forgotten.
Then—
A scream.
Piercing. Female. Raw.
Familiar.
Audrey froze. Pulled away. Her body was shaking, but not from lust anymore.
"Did you hear that?"
Sebastian had already turned toward the door, his expression carved from stone. "Yeah," he muttered. "I know that voice."
It wasn't possible.
That voice had belonged to someone gone. Buried. A memory behind a locked door in both of their pasts.
Plans forgotten. Desires evaporated. Guns retrieved.
They moved—two ghosts stepping back into the fire.
The hallway now glowed red from emergency lights. Somewhere deeper in the villa, alarms had begun to howl.
This wasn't an intel run.
It was a trigger.
As they advanced through the compound, Audrey's thoughts spiraled. This wasn't a comeback. It was a resurrection. And the dead had sharper teeth than she remembered.
They reached the end of the corridor. Smoke was seeping under a sealed door.
Sebastian's hand reached for the handle.
Audrey's stopped him. Her voice shook—not with fear, but rage.
"He lured us here. He planned this."
Sebastian nodded grimly. "Then we change the script."
But as the door blew inward with a concussive roar, a single truth slammed into her chest like a hammer:
This wasn't the end of their mission.
It was the beginning of his.
And they had walked straight into the trap…