Aimed at my heart
Description
Mara Archer lives by rituals: sweep the room, kiss no one, keep the Beretta taped to the headboard. A chance collision at a gallery introduces Adrian Ricci-tailored charm with secrets under glass. When Mara's unit brands her a traitor and her parents are executed, Adrian "rescues" her... and she finds he's also the leak. Bound by rage and a rules-only truce, they hunt the real architect inside Mare Nero, carving a path through poker rooms, safehouses, and rat lines. Every kiss is evidence; every touch, leverage. To bury the syndicate's golden boy, Mara must choose: walk away clean-or love the enemy and burn the map.
Chapter 1
Nov 13, 2025
POV Mara
I woke at eleven-seventeen to the foreign sensation of my body not being on high alert.
No adrenaline already coursing through my veins, no mental inventory of who might need hurting today. Just the disorienting weight of safety pressing down on me like a blanket I didn't trust.
My phone pulsed with notifications—two texts labeled "Ops" that made my stomach clench with trained response before I swiped them into oblivion. Today, I would pretend to be human.
Coffee burned my tongue, but I held it there, letting the pain anchor me to something real. No breakfast. Food was fuel, and I wasn't working today.
The decision to visit the gallery came from that desperate place where I kept my mother's voice, telling me art would save me someday. As if beauty could wash blood from beneath fingernails that looked so clean.
At the gallery entrance, I paid the admission in cash and declined the email receipt. I preferred my movements untraceable, my paper trail nonexistent.
The gallery's familiar rhythm should have soothed me. Instead, I felt exposed, like my skin had been peeled back and everyone could see the violence coiled beneath.
Four exits. Two guards. Fourteen witnesses. My mind cataloged threats while my body pretended to appreciate art, the dissonance making me dizzy.
I forced myself to slow in the modern wing, standing before a steel sculpture that looked like my insides felt—twisted, sharp, somehow both breaking and beautiful.
"Oh my God, I'm so sorry!" The collision came with champagne and chaos.
Some woman—all bleached confidence and designer delusions—had backed into me while trying to document her own existence.
The cold liquid hit like a slap, soaking through silk to skin, and for one horrifying second, I felt young. Vulnerable. Normal.
My heel betrayed me, skidding in the champagne puddle. The fall should have been nothing—I'd been trained to turn every stumble into a weapon—but my body chose this moment to forget its programming.
I crashed backward into solid warmth, hands grabbing expensive fabric, someone's arm steadying my waist with a touch that sent electricity through me.
"Jesus Christ, I'm sorry, I didn't see you, let me get napkins, oh God your dress," the blonde catastrophe babbled, already fleeing toward the café like a coward abandoning a crime scene.
"Well, this is one way to meet someone," he said, and I finally looked up at the man holding me.
Handsome in that deliberate way that suggested good genes had been improved by better tailoring. Green eyes that seemed amused by the chaos rather than annoyed.
His arm was still around my waist, steady but not presumptuous.
"I usually prefer introductions that don't involve assault by champagne," I managed, stepping back though every nerve ending screamed at the loss of contact.
The dress clung to me now, wet silk revealing the body I'd trained into a weapon, and I watched him not look. The restraint made something dangerous flutter in my chest.
He produced a handkerchief—actual linen, monogrammed, the gesture so earnest it made my throat tight—and offered it with careful distance.
"May I?"
"I've got it." I took it, our fingers brushing in a way that shouldn't have mattered but did.
The champagne was already sticky-sweet on my skin, and I found myself wondering if he could taste it if he—stop.
"Though I appreciate you not immediately running away like our friend with the phone."
"Abandoning a beautiful woman who's just been attacked by prosecco seems ungentlemanly," he said, then caught himself with a slight grimace. "Jesus, that sounded like something my grandfather would say while adjusting his monocle. I promise I don't usually talk like a Victorian novel."
The honesty made me laugh—a real one that surprised us both. "At least it wasn't red wine. Small mercies."
We drifted toward a painting, and I let myself pretend this was my life—standing next to beautiful men in galleries, making jokes about art instead of calculating kill shots.
"I think it's about man's struggle with late-stage capitalism," he said with mock seriousness. "Or possibly someone spilled paint and framed it."
"Definitely capitalism. You can tell by the way the blue is oppressing the yellow."
"Ah, you see it too."
When he turned to me, something shifted in his eyes, and my body recognized danger of a different kind.
"Look, this is going to sound forward, but I live about ten minutes from here. You could borrow something dry, or I could at least call you a car. No pressure, just offering."
The words hung between us, loaded with possibility.
He realized what he'd said a beat too late, eyes widening. "That sounded significantly less creepy in my head. I swear I'm not usually this bad at normal human interaction."
I could have destroyed him for it—a lot of different ways before he'd even see me move—but instead I wanted to trace the embarrassment flushing his neck, and wanted to tell him that normal human interaction was my worst subject too.
"I appreciate the offer, but I'll survive the journey home damp."
I returned the handkerchief to him. We traded phones, entering numbers with the strange intimacy of mutual trust. Only after did we realize the absurdity of not knowing names.
"Adrian," he offered, and the name lodged itself somewhere vital.
"Mara," I replied, already regretting the truth.
"I'll text you in a few days. Once you've had time to forget this disaster."
"Looking forward to it," I said, meaning it in a way that terrified me.
I rose on my toes and kissed his cheek—quick, light, the kind of gesture that belonged to someone who didn't have a gun taped under her bed.
His skin was warm against my lips, and I fled before I could do something stupid like stay.
Outside, paranoia reclaimed me. Different route. Switch sidewalks. Check the windows for shadows that moved when I moved. But the city remained innocently itself, and that felt wrong too.
At my apartment door, I ran the checks: hair thread intact, matchstick unmoved, scratch aligned.
The apartment held its breath with me.
Past my parents' room—door closed, undisturbed. Kitchen—mail stack exactly where I'd left it, angled just so. My bedroom—nothing moved.
I hung the ruined dress in a garment bag, showered quick and efficiently, no lingering under the hot water.
In the dark, I reached up to the headboard's edge. My fingers found the holster, the Beretta's familiar weight. Safety on, suppressor attached, one in the chamber.
Everything was exactly as I'd left it, except for the stupid hope blooming in my chest.
My phone lit in the dark—Adrian. Already. The thought that he couldn't wait either sent something hot and reckless through my chest.
Glad you're okay. Next time, no slippery floors.
He'd lasted what, three hours?
The careful control he'd shown at the gallery had cracked just enough to reveal he'd been thinking about me too.
Maybe he was lying in his own bed, replaying our collision, wondering what would have happened if I'd said yes to his offer.
I smiled like an idiot in the dark, typed Deal, and let my thumb hover over the send button.
This was dangerous—not the familiar kind with blood and bullets, but the kind where you gave someone the power to destroy you from the inside.
I hit send anyway, then turned the screen off before I could type something stupid like I've been thinking about your hands since I left.
For tonight, I would pretend that tomorrow wouldn't arrive with its familiar violence, that the flutter in my stomach was just champagne and not the first symptom of something fatal.
The door was secure. The routines held. For tonight, worries stayed worries.
Aimed at my heart
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