ᴛᴡᴏ ʏᴇᴀʀs ʟᴀᴛᴇʀ — ᴀᴍᴀʟғɪ ᴄᴏᴀsᴛ, ɪᴛᴀʟʏ

⊹ ࣪ ﹏𓊝﹏﹏﹏⊹ ࣪ ˖𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉⋆.˚

The air was still. Not quiet—waves were always talking—but still in the way grief settles, low and heavy in the chest. The Mediterranean breeze rolled in soft off the water, brushing salt over his skin like it remembered him. Like it remembered her. But the beach didn’t. The sand where she had bled was clean now, sifted and rinsed by time and tide. No trace left. Not even a ghost.

Two years.

That was the last time he stood here, a younger man by centuries, with a ring still warm on his finger and a life just beginning to breathe.

And then it ended.

Mitch Rapp sat where he remembered her falling, his elbows resting on his knees, fingers laced together. The sun hovered low behind him, its dying light skipping gold across the waves. Orion had pulled him from firestorm after firestorm since then—Iran, Syria, Libya. It had made the time pass, but not the ache. Grief didn’t care how many men he killed. Or how many times he almost didn’t come back.

Langley hadn’t told him why they wanted him to return here. Closure, they said. Closure was a myth. But they sent him anyway—along with three security officers in full tactical gear, stationed just up the hill, as if ghosts could carry rifles.

And then there was her.

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye—no threat posture, no weapon. Just a woman standing waist-deep in the surf, maybe twenty feet away. She hadn’t come with them, that much was clear. Bikini-clad, barefoot, hair glinting in the dying light, she didn’t match anything in the file Langley had handed him that morning.

His body stayed still, but instinct flicked on. He scanned her—posture relaxed, not trying to get his attention. She hadn’t noticed him, or maybe she had and didn’t care. It didn’t make sense. Nothing about her matched the hardened world he lived in. No earpiece. No subtle reach for a concealed sidearm. Just… there. Like she belonged to another life entirely.

And maybe she did.

Still, the part of him that never switched off couldn’t help but study her. She moved with ease in the water, too confident for a tourist, too graceful for someone unaware of their surroundings. The kind of grace you only got after learning how to survive something.