More like between a prologue and introduction. Sorry if you fall asleep.


"your thoughts kill you, don't they?"

Nesssian Assassin 1

In the dark, the shape of a black-clad woman moved with years of elegance and unspoken grace as she skimmed the edge of the building. She quickly slung the leather bag off her shoulders, yanking the familiar cold metal of the Venom Tactical Taipan onto the rooftops. Setting the attached visor over her forehead, she tapped the link piece hook up through a single wire in her ear.

"All clear," she mumbled to herself, brutally efficiently setting the weapon up. Her fingers strummed the rifle as her instrument, clicking and checking every gear before she settled into a prone position. The wind bit at her face, a ghost of an animal.

Clicking on the eye mask, the suction clung to her skin. The machine whirred and focused with every detailed resolution onto the mansion complex. One single window had been opened, and one remain so only for a short time. Her index finger brushed over the trigger, and she aimed her target at the man leaning against the wall, almost as if blending in the shadows, his dark pants and fitted shirt dark as midnight. The one who had leaked thousands of plans and foiled them with their recovery. He had been wanted by her agency for years. And she finally had her window.

Today, he would have to face the consequences of snooping.

It was time for the spymaster to tell no more secrets.

The bullet flew from its barrel and pierced the air at the perfect arc Nesta had executed flawlessly every time.

Except that this time her target did not hit.

She hadn't missed—no.

This was worse.

A second, unplanned male, definitely larger and more noticeable, wearing a rutting pink shirt, took the bullet for her target, crashing down from the ceiling. No one told her there would be a second person.

A curse escaped her lips. Her employer would not be happy.

The sound of alarms had her packing faster and retreating back into the darkness of the shadows her target has seemed so at ease with, and out and away from the pink-shirted man doubling over in pain.

It was regular for the spymaster to dodge bullets that Nesta had always shot at him. He'd been the first and last man to always miss her poison-laced bullets, so he knew there was specifically one individual out for his death.

This should have been it, her last time chasing his tail.

Nesta gripped the steering wheel tighter and drove the black sedan back to her organization's temporary base, dreading the outcome.

If only she had made it.


Tomas whipped her for her first failed mission. Kidnapped and forced to submit in the sex trade for ten years, he had chained her and had many generals with passing faces train her. Never once did she think of her past life except for the lingering doubt if her sisters missed her. All she needed was a warm bed and food, and she could survive.

Except most of the time, the beds were forced into another male's who would have to paw at her as she cried with paralyzing poison flowing through her veins and heavy sedations pumping through her.

She needed out.

Needed to end Tomas, who would keep coming at her. And finding ways to punish her, like this whipping, each flick of his wrist harder than the last.

Nesta took each blow with gritted teeth, forcing herself to remain silent. He'd taken her failure especially hard since she'd been the first girl he picked to kidnap. She had to be perfect. Machine-like. Utterly broken.

And she was.

The first lash had her back arching of the ground.

The second had her whimpering, much to her dismay.

The second had her quivering.

The third had her sobbing.

The fourth had her unconscious.

The fifth had her jaw splintered against the ground.

The sixth had her blood bathing her body and the cobblestones.

The sixth had her flesh torn, revealing her bones.

The seventh had her wailing.

The eighth had her numb.

The ninth had her limp.

The tenth had her silent.

They left her body on the cement until she woke up, her next mission in a neat manila folder in front of her, the only part of the floor untouched by the blood seeping from her mangled flesh.

Closing her eyes briefly, she chanted her sister's names for thirty seconds, the most saved amount of time she'd allow herself for respite. Inhaling sharply through her nose, she flipped the folder open, warily glancing over the paper.

"Fuck," she swore, slamming her fist against the ground, not caring that her knuckles splintered. Numbness had already swept through her body. She'd already been sucked into this life.

There was no way her second youngest sister could be, too.

Except this time not to be trained into one of the assets, but as a target with a bullet through her head.

Forty million for target Feyre Archeron.

Another swore left her lips. She could never live a normal life, could she? Just what in rutting hell did her sister do to aim herself the sticker from one of the most notorious underground crime organizations?

Not feeling like briefing through the rest of the papers, she slammed it shut and wobbled to the bench where a sorry excuse for a medical kit sat in the corner. Every movement hurt her back and had her grunting in pain. She needed stitches, and no one in the compound would be able to do so without actually exacerbating her wounds.

There were only killers here; no healers or caretakers. Just bloodthirsty monsters seeking the sight of submission and defeat, and Nesta would not give them that. Not when they called her the real life Black Widow, not when her codename was the Phoenix.

She'd laughed at first, thinking of the pettiness and the redundancy. But then she realized its truthfulness. Her life had ended as soon as she fell for Tomas's sweet smile and outstretched hand, and as soon as the first injection of morphine and other drugs pumped through her system.

She'd risen, but not from the ashes. She'd risen from gunpowder, blood, and sweat. She lived in the grime and the darkness and she was not the fire-breathing Phoenix of rising hope spiraling in the Sun's rays.

She was the Silent Phoenix, the bringer of swift death, the one who flew in the shadows and streaks.

If only the stupid pink-shirted man hadn't been there. Tomas had called her a liar, saying their intel had been clear, and that it would just be the spymaster there.

Nesta knew what her eyes saw, and would have to do serious recon. The shadow-like man had been her assignment for years and had been her most elusive. She had been assigned other backward recon and other heists, most killing the spymaster remained her most frustrating.

And now this most recent one topped everything.

Wrapping a makeshift bandage, Nesta flung open the iron door and held her high as she marched out the building. Didn't stop when she felt part of the bandage rip and the blood soak down the back of her shirt.

She would have to rekindle her ties with her sisters, it seemed.