Marseille, France - Six Days Prior
The sunset bled across the Marseille sky in burnt orange and dusky crimson, like an old wound reopened. Light danced across the harbor's surface, catching on masts and hulls, turning the port below into a glimmering graveyard of idle vessels.
From the suite's third-floor window above the Vieux-Port, Audrey Rousseau watched the scene without seeing it. The boats swayed gently in their berths, but her thoughts drifted far from France—toward places where the air smelled like cordite and burnt sand, where the silence came with teeth.
Djibouti. Mogadishu. A corridor in Damascus that had run slick with blood.
Her hands rested at her sides, but tension simmered just beneath the skin, the kind that didn't fade with time or oceans. Peace, when it came, never stayed long. And when it tried, it fit her like a jacket tailored for someone else.
The door buzzer broke the quiet.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
A code. Familiar. Intentional.
She moved.
No hesitation. Her fingers grazed the handle of the SIG tucked in the drawer beside the stovetop. Safety off, grip sure. Bare feet on hardwood. Soundless.
She cracked open the door—gun low, ready. Not a greeting. A warning.
And there he stood.
"C'est moi," said the man in that gravel-laced French-American tone.
Her breath caught. Her aim didn't.
"Julien?"
Julien Vance looked like a ghost that had forgotten how to die. The edges of his suit were frayed now, the once-immaculate lines softened by wear or regret—maybe both. His shirt clung to him like a last obligation, and the absence of a tie felt deliberate. But his eyes…
Steel. Vatican grey. Same as always.
Still watching. Still dangerous.
Audrey lowered the weapon—but only slightly. "I thought you were dead."
"I was," he said, stepping past her like he'd never left. "Then things got complicated."
The door clicked shut behind him, the lock sliding home.
"I didn't expect to see you again."
"No one ever does," he said, dropping a thick brown envelope on her counter. It landed with the weight of something final. "But you will want to see this."
Her eyes stayed on him. "If this is what I think it is—"
"It's worse."
She didn't reach for the file. Not yet. Not when ghosts were still settling in the air between them.
"I'm not on anyone's leash anymore," she said evenly.
Julien's laugh was dry. "You were never on a leash. You were the bullet."
He leaned forward. "This is about Donovan."
Something sharp pricked behind her ribs. A pause. A flicker. Nothing more.
Still, she didn't let it show.
"Sebastian?"
Julien nodded once. "The man everyone thinks is untouchable. Someone just touched him."
She didn't move, but something inside her did. Shifted. Slid out of place.
Julien opened the envelope himself, sliding the top page toward her like a challenge.
A grainy surveillance still stared back. Sebastian Donovan. Broad shoulders, crisp lines, that signature smirk that always felt like it was hiding something—or everything. Even in monochrome, he radiated heat and danger.
But it was the annotation below that twisted her gut.
Priority Target.
Corsica.
Execute by July 11.
She flipped the page—maps, threat logs, intercepted comms, burn codes. All pointing to a single truth. Someone was preparing to erase him. And whoever it was had resources.
"You want me to protect him," Audrey said, voice flat.
Julien shook his head. "No. I want you to find out who wants him dead. And why. And if necessary…"
He let it hang.
She didn't need the rest. She'd finished those sentences too many times before.
Audrey stared at the photo again. The face she hadn't seen in years. The man whose name hadn't left her mind even after she'd sworn to bury it beneath layers of mission reports and memory.
"Donovan doesn't trust people."
"He doesn't have to," Julien said. "He just has to trust you. Briefly."
Audrey exhaled through her nose, slow and quiet. She'd walked away from this world, from the kill orders and dead drops and endless shades of betrayal.
But the look in Julien's eyes told her it was already too late.
Corsica.
Sebastian.
The line was already drawn, and she was already standing on it.
"Why me?"
Julien didn't blink. "Because you're the only one who won't flinch."
She turned her gaze back to the sea. The last light of day was bleeding out across the water, fading into dusk.
Somewhere out there, Sebastian Donovan was moving through his empire, unaware that someone was threading a noose beneath his feet.
She looked down at the photo one more time.
The clock had already started.
And this time, she wasn't sure which would kill them first—the enemy outside, or the one she was about to let back in.