Page 7 of The Vagabond

He didn’t just take Sienna. He processed her. Filed her. Sold her. Fed her into a machine that ran on pain and profit. And I knew the second his name crossed my desk, smooth and glowing like the tip of a knife, that the system would never touch him.

So I stopped being part of the system. I offered myself up to something darker. A deep-cover infiltration into the very organization that fed men like Kadri.The Aviary.A network of criminals,traffickers, terrorists, and billionaires in tailored suits pretending they give a damn about the world.

The Bureau labeled them a domestic threat that needed neutralizing. And I volunteered. Said the right things. Signed the right forms. Lied when I had to.

They think I’m a rising star—sharp, focused, clean-cut enough for press interviews and polite enough to shake hands on Capitol Hill. But I’m not here for medals. I’m here for the burn. And as I walk deeper into the Aviary, pretending to align with monsters so I can slit their throats from the inside, only one thought keeps me sane:

When I find Altin Kadri? I won’t arrest him. I won’t bring him in for questioning. I will end him. Not just for Sienna. But for every girl who never came back.

They still called me a rising star back then. Agent Saxon North. Specialist in high-risk, deep-infiltration ops. Fluent in five languages. Decorated twice. On track for a desk at Quantico and a golden handshake into a leadership role before thirty-five.

That’s what the Bureau saw, when I only let them see what they wanted to see.

What they didn’t see—or didn’t want to admit—was the way I bled underneath the badge. The way I stopped flinching when a body dropped. The way I could look a trafficker in the eye, shake his hand, and walk away without blinking. Because somewhere along the line, I stopped being a man pretending to be a monster. And started being a monster pretending to be a man.

By the time they let me go dark for the Aviary, I was already halfway there. No handler. No partner. Just a burner phone, a black credit card, and orders to stay alive.

I moved through cities like a shadow, switching aliases the way most people changed clothes. One week I was a mid-level smuggler with a European passport. The next, I was brokering arms for a cell that didn’t technically exist.

Sometimes I wore a wire. Sometimes a knife. Most of the time, I wore nothing but rage under my skin and Sienna’s photo imprinted on my brain.

I lived in hotel rooms and slept with one eye open and a gun in the nightstand. Ate only when I had to. Trusted no one. Not even myself. And the thing is? I was good at it.

But you can’t fake that kind of darkness—not for long. You either become it, or it devours you.

The Bureau praised my efficiency. My cold precision. They liked that I didn’t get attached. That I could sit across from a man who sold children like cattle and smile while planning how best to erase him. But none of them knew the real reason I was so damn good at this.

I didn’t see them as people. The traffickers. The buyers. The ones running the logistics, laundering the money, greasing the political wheels. They were walking corpses. They just didn’t know it yet.

The lines blurred so fast I barely kept track of which lie I was wearing that week. That’s when I first heard the Aviary’s name whispered in the quiet corners of a quiet room. Not just a network. A system. With branches that stretched across countries, into boardrooms and embassies. Politicians. Philanthropists. Clergy.

It made the other cartels look like petty criminals. And it made the Bureau terrified.

They reclassified the Aviary as a terror-linked syndicate. Started shuffling files into restricted tiers. Slapped “do not pursue without authorization” across half my leads. Told me to “stay in my lane.”

So I did what I always do when they tell me to back off. I went deeper. Started following the money. The girls. The auction trails. Started making “friends” I hoped I’d one day bury.

I met a man named Timur in Prague who laughed while telling me how long a child could survive inside a shipping container without water. He said it like it was trivia.

I smiled back. Bought him a drink. Two weeks later, they found his body floating in the Vltava. Eyes gouged out. Teeth missing.

No one linked it to me. Untraceable. That’s the thing about ghosts. You can’t pin them down. But you always feel them coming. That’s who I was becoming. A ghost with a grudge. A weapon off the chain. And then… the first whisper of a girl.

Young. Pretty. American. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Sold at an underground auction then shipped off to her new owner; a man known only by a codename:The Architect.Aka Altin Kadri.

But then she vanished. No trail. No resale. No body. She was just gone. At the time, I didn’t know her name. But it wouldn’t be long before I found it scrawled on a purchase manifest in ink.

Maxine Andrade.

And I wouldn’t realize until it was too late that I’d already seen those eyes before. In my sister.

There’sthis thing they tell you at Quantico—early, like week one.

“You’re not God. You don’t get to play executioner.”

It’s meant to keep you grounded. Keep your badge from turning into a crosshair. It’s supposed to draw a line. A clear, bright line between justice and vengeance. And for a while, I clung to that line like it meant something. But lines blur in the field. Especially when the screams you’re chasing start sounding like your sister’s.

The first time I crossed it, I told myself it didn’t count. The man was a trafficker. A recruiter. He had a girl in the trunk—barely breathing, wrists bound with zip ties that had carved through her skin. He pulled a weapon, but I got a shot in first. The Bureau called it “clean.” Textbook. Heroic, even. But there was nothing clean about it.

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