The betrayal tears through me. My best friend. My confidant for all these years, and now she stands at my back, about to be the very reason for my fall.
The electricity finally dies, and the silence that follows feels heavier than the current ever did.
Every muscle trembles violently as the last aftershocks ripple through my body. Even my lungs struggle to remember how to breathe. The scent of blood and burned skin hangs thick in the air, mixing with gunpowder and the metallic bite of adrenaline still flooding my veins.
Somewhere beyond the ringing in my ears, a slow pair of footsteps moves through the wreckage of my apartment. Deliberate. Unhurried. Too fucking confident. And that’s the biggest mistake she’ll ever make.
She thinks she has the upper hand because I’m down, but she has a lot to learn about this industry, and a shitload still to learn about me. Because I don’t give up. I don’t let women like this take the win. It’s not in my DNA.
I force my head up, taking in everything around me. Bodies litter the floor, dark shapes slumped against shattered furniture and splintered walls. Blood stains the hardwood, soaking into the rug beneath the couch. The apartment barely resembles the place I walked through only a few minutes ago.
The footsteps stop a few feet behind me, and I groan as I attempt to turn back, to take in the woman who’s called herself my best friend for all these years, but my body doesn’t respond.
Milan’s voice cuts through the silence. “Well . . . That took longerthan I expected.”
She steps around in front of me, boots crunching over broken glass and shell casings as she surveys the carnage with casual amusement. Tactical gear hugs her frame, black fabric smeared with streaks of someone else’s blood, her weapon hanging loosely in one hand. And it’s almost comical to the way I’d imagined her.
She’s a hacker. Not an assassin. She doesn’t know how to use the weapons lining her belt, wouldn’t even know where to begin, and considering she knows exactly what I’m capable of, she must truly believe that she has an ace up her sleeve; otherwise, she’d never even try. Perhaps the countless assassins were that ace, but I barely broke a sweat taking them out.
I don’t recognize her face. We’ve never met each other in this way.
But the voice. God. The voice. I could almost pretend that it’s not real, that this woman before me truly isn’t Milan, but there’s no denying the voice of my best friend—my only friend.
“I’ve always wanted to use one of these. How sweet that you got to be my very first test hamster,” she says softly, not even a hint of guilt in her tone, making me wonder who the fuck I’ve been talking to all these years. The woman I know would never do this.
The betrayal hits harder than the taser ever could.
“Well, this is awkward,” she says, tilting her head as if considering the situation, “Surprised?”
I stare at her, my chest tightening so hard it hurts to breathe. “You . . .” My voice cracks as I try to force the words out. “You did this?”
“Of course I did,” she says, a subtle laugh in her tone as her smile widens, sending a chill pulsing through my veins as I finally get a bit of movement back in my body. Though I’m careful to keep still, not willing to give myself away. “I’ve known who you were from the beginning, Kiara. I know we promised not to, but I couldn’t help it. It’s just who I am. But that’s the perk of being a hacker. There are no secrets. Home address, background records, your agency stats, your real name.” She pauses, eyes glittering with something ugly. “Even the little detail about the family who left you on a firehouse doorstep when you were four days old.”
My chest tightens. That’s not something I’ve ever told a soul.
“You and me, we had a good thing going. But you just had to go and ruin it. You brought this on yourself,” she says with a shrug, casually stepping over bodies, as though they’re nothing but dirt on the floor. “You should’ve stayed away from the Iron Viper.”
Raiden. Fuck. Just mentioning his name tells me she already knows too much.
Fear spikes through my veins.
“You should never have gotten involved with him,” Milan continues, almost conversationally. “But you couldn’t help yourself, could you? Always got to have it all. Didn’t take long for you to slip up, and all the pieces started clicking. Once I realized Raiden was the Iron Viper, and that you’d been compromised, everything just kinda . . . fell into place.”
She gestures lazily at the bodies scattered around us before lettingout a sigh. “This is going to be a problem, though. I knew you’d get through some of them, but you’ve nearly taken out the whole agency. I’m going to have to start recruiting new contractors, but it’s honestly a shame. Losing you really is going to put a dent in my bank account.”
My hands curl into fists against the floor.
“You left evidence everywhere,” she says, almost sounding disappointed. “Stealing each other’s hits, playing ridiculous little games. You’re better than that, Kiara. Honestly, you’ve left me no choice.”
She’s right, and I hate that. It’s the reason why Raiden had walked away. We were already heading down this slippery slope, but it doesn’t make the sting of her betrayal hurt any less.
Milan’s gaze drifts across the apartment before settling on the only two things in the entire room still intact, and my heart sinks.
No.
Spikezilla and Needles.
“Oh look, the cactus survived,” Milan chimes, picking up Spikezilla, recognizing her in an instant from the hundreds of pictures I’ve sent of all her ridiculous pots over the years, just as I’d recognize her cat, Morris. She looks over Spikezilla before picking up Needles in her other hand, scanning over the penis pot and immediately knowing how it managed to come into my home. “This though . . . This is new.”
