Vex was an assassin—efficient, ruthless, and exacting to a fault. He wasted no time, no motion, and certainly no feeling. Jobs were numbers. Targets were problems.

This one unraveled into a chase. Rain lashed an abandoned hotel as he hunted another masked killer through darkened corridors. The fight that followed was ugly and drawn out, boots sliding, breaths ragged, neither giving ground.

He ended it by driving him down hard, pinning the masked assassin against the soaked carpet, bodies pressed closer than he liked. Irritation flared as he tore off the mask.

The face beneath it hit him sideways.

A woman.

For half a heartbeat, everything felt wrong—the closeness, the weight of his hands, the heat where there shouldn’t have been any awareness at all. He froze, code snapping into place. He didn’t kill women. He didn’t kill children.

Her eyes stayed locked on his, sharp and unbroken.

And in that look, Vex understood: this hadn’t been a mistake. She’d matched him step for step