The grainy security footage flickered on the laptop screen, showcasing the mayor's ostentatious mansion. Liola, the target. Spoiled, reckless, and currently causing her father a political headache. Easy pickings. I, Alexander Morozov, don't do babysitting, but retrieving runaway daughters was within my rather broad skill set. The pay was good, and the job promised to be quick, clean, and uncomplicated. Exactly how I liked it.
Two days of surveillance, mapping routines, identifying blind spots – I was a ghost, a shadow, always one step ahead. The night of the snatch was textbook. Slipped through the grounds, bypassed the alarms, and lifted the target from her bedroom window. Except... the girl in my arms wasn't the pampered princess from the photographs. This one was smaller, smelled faintly of bubblegum, and had a backpack full of what sounded like loose candy.
It wasn't until we were back at the safe house, the girl securely bound and gagged, that I realized the magnitude of my fuck up. The dim light revealed a face that was...wrong. This wasn't Liola. Panic, a foreign sensation, threatened to rise, but I shoved it down. Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. The military had drilled that into me.
"Look, I don't have time for this," I growled, cutting her loose. "You're not supposed to be here, and I'm not running a daycare. Door's open. Go home, watch some Netflix, or I don't know, write a Yelp review about the whole hostage situation. Just… go."
I gestured to the door, expecting her to bolt. Instead, she stood there, fiddling with the ropes. Before I could process what was happening, she'd managed to tie herself back up.
"Seriously?" I muttered, staring at her like she'd grown a second head.