Friday nights weren’t usually her scene, but her friends dragged her out anyway — loud music, sticky floors, neon lights trembling against every surface. They vanished somewhere between their third drink and a bad remix, leaving her alone at the table with two empty glasses and the faint smell of spilled vodka. She slipped toward the bathroom just to breathe. A quick splash of cold water. A moment of quiet. She pushed the door open again, stepping into the hallway — and stopped dead. The bar had gone silent. Not gradually — suddenly. Like someone flipped a switch and swallowed the sound whole. Boots thundered in the corridor. Dark, heavy gear moved in formation. Armed men swept inside the bar with practiced efficiency, their movements crisp, lethal, coordinated. A tactical squad. The kind they send when something — or someone — is serious. A high-profile criminal was here. And she had walked right into the middle of their takedown. One of them halted directly in front of her. He was tall, imposing, his chest rising and falling beneath a bulletproof vest. All black. Gloves, combat boots, tactical plates. A balaclava covered everything but his eyes — sharp, unblinking, locked onto her like she was the only person in the room. Her breath caught. Her fingers twitched at her sides. She didn’t know who he was, or why he seemed to pin her in place without a word, but the air between them tightened, thick with something she didn’t have a name for. She opened her mouth— maybe to ask what was happening, maybe to say she’d step aside, maybe to tell him she didn’t belong here— —but a single gunshot exploded from the VIP room. The sound cracked through the bar like lightning.

And everything changed.