Chapter 2 - The Shadow of the Agency
The apartment above the bakery was small, smelling constantly of yeast and burnt sugar. Cass liked the smell; it was grounded, real, the exact opposite of the sterile, chemical odors of the safehouses she had inhabited from Berlin to Bogota during her time with the Special Activities Division.
It was 3:00 AM. Cass sat on the edge of her mattress, her shirt off, staring at her reflection in the full-length mirror attached to the wardrobe door.
The scars were there, mapping out the history she had tried so hard to bury. A jagged line across her left shoulder blade from a shrapnel fragment in Peshawar. A small, neat circular indentation just below her collarbone—the remnants of a 9mm round that had missed her main artery by less than an inch in Bucharest. But it was the scar on her lower abdomen, a thick, ugly keloid from a surgical incision made in a dark room without anesthesia, that made her fingers tremble.
That was the mission that had broken her. The one where her team had been compromised from the inside, left to rot in a black site until she had literally carved her own way out through the flesh of her captors.
She pulled a fresh black t-shirt over her head, her movements stiff. She walked over to the kitchen sink, poured a glass of tap water, and looked out the window down onto the dark street. A black sedan was parked across the road, its engine idling, the exhaust forming faint white plumes in the cool night air.
It wasn't Marcus’s men. She knew the Castellano signature—they drove heavy, armored SUVs with tinted windows and vanity plates. This car was a standard, nondescript mid-sized Ford, the kind of vehicle purchased by the dozen by federal fleet procurement offices.
"They found me," she whispered to the empty room.
The burner phone she kept hidden in the hollowed-out space beneath the kitchen refrigerator began to vibrate. It didn't ring; it just buzzed against the floorboards like an angry insect. Cass didn't move for three seconds. Then she walked over, knelt down, pulled the small plastic device out, and flipped it open.
"Cassandra," the voice on the other end was dry, ancient, and entirely familiar. It was Arthur Vance, her former director at Langley—the man who had signed her papers, given her targets, and ultimately left her for dead when the Bucharest operation collapsed. "You made quite a mess in that restaurant tonight. The local media might be quiet, but the internal feeds are lighting up like Christmas."
"I don't work for you anymore, Arthur," Cass said, her voice dropping into a register that would have terrified anyone else. "I died in Romania. Remember? You signed the death certificate yourself."
"A legal fiction, my dear, and you know it," Vance sighed, the sound of paper rustling through the encrypted line. "The problem with assets like you is that you never truly disappear. You’re too efficient. When you took down five of the Vicari family's top enforcement unit with a wine bottle and a piece of kitchen cutlery, you didn't just save Marcus Castellano. You threw a rock into a very delicate hornet's nest."
"The Vicaris are local greaseballs," Cass snapped. "They don't have the reach to bring Langley into this."
"The Vicaris are currently negotiating a major logistical transit contract with the Bratva out of Brighton Beach," Vance corrected her, his tone turning deadly serious. "A contract that involves the movement of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft systems through the port of Chicago. Marcus Castellano was the only obstacle in their way. By keeping him alive, you’ve preserved the stalemate. But you’ve also put yourself directly in the crosshairs of a Russian kill-team that is already on a flight from New York."
Cass looked back out the window. The black sedan across the street had turned its headlights on. High beams, flashing twice. A signal.
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"I’m out, Arthur," Cass said, her fingers tightening around the plastic phone until it creaked. "If the Russians come, I’ll handle them the same way I handled the guys tonight."
"They aren't bringing pistols, Cassandra," Vance said softly before the line went dead. "They’re bringing the past. And they know exactly what you’re hiding in that apartment."
