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“I’ve got work to do,” she told him. “I’m not on leave like you are.”

He flinched as if she’d struck him, but he covered it with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Sure,” he said. “Catch you later.”

She collapsed as soon as he closed the door behind him. How could she be upset with them after all they’d done to get her back on both feet? But she was upset. She was angry. And she was hurt that Atticus hadn’t given her the benefit of the doubt.

She’d done what she thought was right. But it hadn’t been good enough.

All good things come to an end.

With her decision made, Elena jotted detailed notes for Willa to follow in securing Atticus’s instructions for their mission in Somalia. It was time for Willa to be given more responsibility if Dynamis planned to use her as a replacement once Elena left.

She guzzled a bottle of room temperature water and allowed the emotion from the day to slip from her shoulders. Maybe she’d skip the workout and go straight for the wine. It wasn’t like anyone would know. Maybe if she had enough wine, she’d just pass out and sleep a whole night through. Though it hadn’t worked the time she’d tried it before. In fact, it had made the nightmares worse.

She scrolled through the communications scanner channel just in case there was any news about the missing men. Not a word.

She scanned over her Cryptocat app and saw the message notification. “So much for trust,” she said. She’d assured Atticus that he’d be notified once their meeting location was secured in Mogadishu. There was no reason for him to send her another reminder.

Elena accepted what had been taken from her by those savages, but try as she might, it was impossible to harden her heart completely. She felt the responsibility of those lives weighing on her shoulders.

She clicked on the secure message, wondering what else Atticus might have to throw at her. But it wasn’t Atticus’s words that filled the screen.

Es hora de volver a casa.

Time to come home.

The bile rose in her throat and she hunched over the console, gagging as she realized what the message meant. The room tilted, walls closing in, and she couldn’t get enough air.

Her hands started shaking—not the slight tremor of nerves but the violent shaking of someone whose body remembered trauma on a cellular level. Cold sweat broke out across her skin despite the room’s steady temperature. Her vision tunneled, narrowing to just the glowing screen and those terrible words.

Time to come home. They weren’t dead. Seven years of telling herself she was safe, seven years of building a life, seven years of pretending the monsters were gone—all of it crumbling in the face of five Spanish words.

Chapter Three

Elena didn’t expect to return to her apartment after the day she’d had, but she needed somewhere to think. The command center felt too exposed, too many eyes, and she couldn’t process what the message meant with people around.

Her apartment was exactly as she’d left it that morning—minimalist and pristine, everything in its place. Floor-to-ceiling windows offered a view of Dallas’s glittering skyline, but she’d drawn the blinds hours ago, preferring the artificial twilight of recessed lighting.

The space was all clean lines and neutral colors. White walls, unmarked by art or photographs. Gray furniture—a low-profile sectional in charcoal linen that was more severe than comfortable, glass coffee table with chrome legs that caught and reflected the recessed lighting, a single accent chair in pale silver that she’d never once sat in. Everything was glass and chrome, surfaces that could be wiped clean in seconds, that showed every fingerprint and encouraged the discipline of not touching, not marking, not leaving evidence of existence.

The hardwood floors were pale ash, their blond color making the space feel even more stark. A single sisal area rug defined the living space—natural fiber in cream that provided texture without warmth. The kitchen was visible from the main room, separated only by a long counter in white quartz that looked like marble but was more practical, less precious. Stainless-steel appliances, their surfaces fingerprint free and gleaming. A bowl of green apples on the counter—the only spot of color in the entire space, and even that was controlled, deliberate, replaceable.

The only indulgence, the only concession to comfort rather than function, was her bed. She sank onto it now—still fully clothed, not even bothering to remove her shoes—and felt the plush mattress give beneath her weight. It was oversized, a California king that dominated her bedroom, piled with pillows in varying shades of cream and dove gray. The duvet was white Egyptian cotton with a thread count she couldn’t actually feel the difference of but had bought anyway, something about the luxury of it appealing to a part of her that still wanted soft things, safe things, comfort in the dark.

Glass nightstands flanked the bed, their surfaces bare except for matching chrome lamps with cream shades. The closet held her clothes—organized by type and color, everything on matching hangers, everything in its place. Blacks and grays and whites and the occasional navy, nothing bright, nothing that drew the eye. Her bathroom beyond was more of the same—white subway tile, chrome fixtures, fluffy white towels that she replaced every six months whether they needed it or not.

The apartment was kept at exactly seventy-two degrees by a smart thermostat that adjusted automatically. It smelled of nothing—she didn’t cook here, didn’t burn candles, didn’t keep flowers. Sometimes she thought she could smell the faint chemical scent of the cleaning service that came every Thursday, but even that faded quickly into the building’s engineered neutrality.

This was where she lived. Not a home. A space. Clean and controlled and utterly devoid of personality.

She stared at her phone, the screen’s cold blue light illuminating her face in the darkened room.

Es hora de volver a casa. Time to come home.

They were supposed to be dead. All of them. Brock’s team had hunted them down after what they’d done to her. She’d been told the cartel was disbanded, the leaders eliminated, the threat neutralized.

But someone was still out there. Someone who remembered.

Her phone buzzed with a new message.