The sirens almost look pretty from up here.

Red and blue lights choke the perimeter of the Diamond, police swarming like ants around a corpse that doesn’t even know it’s dead yet. Helicopters circle. Cameras flash. News vans are already setting up their little graves.

They’re too late.

They’ve been gone for twenty minutes. Clean. Efficient. Textbook.

Behind him, the crew is celebrating—laughing, clinking bottles, the kind of noise that only comes after surviving something that should’ve gone wrong. Someone pops champagne. Someone else is already drunk.

He should be satisfied.

He is satisfied.

Still… there’s a gap. An absence that needles at him, one that’s been there since the final countdown hit zero.

Miss Cheng.

No— Georgina. She corrected him once, sharply, like it mattered. Like names meant trust.

She should’ve been here for this part.

Lester shifts his weight, leaning harder on his cane, the bottle of wine cool in his hand. She left before the job went loud. Said she didn’t need to watch the fall—just wanted to know it happened. That the casino owner who’d taken advantage of her brother, bled him dry with rigged games and quiet leverage, finally paid for it.

She never wanted the money.

That should’ve been his first clue she was different.

Most people came to him for greed. Or desperation. Georgina came with a plan that was clean in its cruelty: Tank the Diamond’s reputation. Expose the rot. Let him and his crew keep whatever they lifted along the way.

Revenge, but… surgical.

He hears it before he sees her.

The sharp, confident tap of heels against concrete—measured, unhurried. Then heavier steps behind it. Security. Professional. Alert.

He doesn’t turn right away.

“I hope I didn’t miss the celebration.”

Her voice slips into the space beside him like it belongs there.

He turns.

She’s smiling—small, knowing. Dark hair immaculate, expression calm in the way of someone who planned this outcome weeks ago. Her bodyguards stop several paces back, scanning the rooftop, giving them space without being told.

She actually came back.

For a fraction of a second, his thoughts stall. Not fear. Not paranoia.

Surprise.

“Ah—yes,” he says, recovering because that’s what he does. “You didn’t miss anything, Miss Chen—” He catches himself. Clears his throat. “I mean. Georgina.”

She looks pleased by that. More than she should be.

Lester leans against his cane, lifting the bottle slightly as the crew whoop behind them, fireworks of laughter and relief. “Casino’s surrounded. Owner’s reputation? Ruined. Stock will bleed by morning. Regulators will chew him up for months.”

A pause.

“You got what you wanted.”

She steps closer, eyes flicking past him to the chaos below—the police, the lights, the spectacle. Then back to him.

“And you?” she asks.

He doesn’t answer right away.

Because somewhere between late-night scouting runs, whispered conversations in surveillance vans, her standing too close while studying blueprints over his shoulder… the job stopped being just a job.

Chemistry isn’t supposed to factor into probability.

Yet there it is. Undeniable. Inconvenient.

He takes a sip of wine. “I got paid,” he says flatly.

Her smile curves, slow and dangerous. “That’s not what I asked.”

Below them, the Diamond burns without a flame.

And for the first time since the heist ended, Lester realizes he isn’t disappointed anymore.

Not at all.