Page 8 of The Vagabond

After that, the line got harder to see. Each op bled into the next. One body. Then three. Then five. All of them tied to the Aviary. All of them ghosts like me, only I was hunting my way back toward the light. Or that’s what I told myself.

I started choosing the assignments no one else wanted—the ones that came with too many unknowns and too much paperwork. Missions that didn’t guarantee a clean exit or a clear conscience.

In Mexico, I helped stage a cartel infighting massacre just to smoke out a buyer linked to the Aviary. Seventeen men died. When I only needed one.

In Poland, I held a man over a rooftop by his tie and asked him how much he paid for redheads, because he had a penchant for such girls. I only let him go when he gave me his answer.

They called it a suicide. I called it balance.

I kept telling myself I was still doing good. Still working for the Bureau. Still answering to something higher than hurt. But then came the night in Paris.

The girl’s name was Ava. Thirteen years old. No parents. No papers. Sold three times before anyone even noticed she was missing. When I found her, she was barely alive. When I found him—the man who’d bought her—I didn’t bring him in. I didn’t read him his rights. I just tied him to a chair and left him in a room with the father of another girl who hadn’t survived. Then I walked out.

That was the night that I stopped pretending. That was the night I realized I wasn’t wearing the badge anymore. I was wearing vengeance. And the thing about revenge is... it’s addictive.It doesn’t whisper. It roars. It promises closure, but all it delivers is fire. And I let it consume me. Because the more I killed, the quieter the screaming got. Not the girls. Not the monsters.

Sienna.

Her voice faded a little more each time I took another one of them off the board.

I told myself I was doing it for the girls I couldn’t save. For the ones still out there. For the ones whose names I never learned. But the truth? It wasn’t about them. It was about me. About the hole inside me that only filled up with violence. About the fact that I didn’t feel guilty after that rooftop in Poland. I felt peaceful. And that’s when I knew that there was no coming back from this.

The line between justice and revenge wasn’t blurry anymore. It was gone. And I was never going to wear that badge the same way again.

5

MAXINE - FIFTEEN MONTHS AGO

By the time Devon Walsh walked into my life, I was already half-dead.

Not physically—though my body was little more than bones and bruises wrapped in skin. But inside? I was just a collection of survival reflexes wearing a human face.

I didn’t remember what month it was. What season. Whether it was morning or night. All I knew was Altin Kadri’s voice. All I knew were his fists, his rules, his casual, calculated degradation.

For nine months, I had belonged to him. Nine months of being paraded like a prized possession. Passed from room to room. Hand to hand. Laughed at. Stripped bare. Called pet, whore, property.

Sometimes they called me Maxine, like it was still my name. But it didn’t feel like it was mine anymore.

Altin never raised his voice, because he never had to. He broke girls with a look, a deceptive smile, letting his guests do the rest. And when he touched me, it was with a predator’s patience—like he was molding something beautiful out of something broken.

The worst part? The part that ate me alive? I had stopped screaming a long time ago. It was useless. Because no one ever came. Until him. Devon Walsh. That was what they called him.

He arrived on a Thursday. Or maybe it was a Monday. Time bled there. His hair was dark brown and unkempt, tousled in a way that made me think he didn’t pay much mind to his appearance before stepping through the door. But that didn’t make him any less formidable.

Five-day stubble shaded his jaw. He wore expensive clothes and shoes that looked like they could be custom made.

He didn’t look at me the way the others did. That was the first thing I noticed. He looked at Altin. Straight on. Unflinching. A man who didn’t fear monsters.

And when he finally turned to me, it wasn’t with that hungry look I was used to receiving. He looked at me as though he were looking through me.

The room was cold, its bite sinking into my bones. Silence pressed in on all sides, thick and suffocating. I stood barefoot, the bruises on my skin pulsing like tiny heartbeats. The silk clinging to me was no comfort; it left faint marks, little dots across my flesh, as if even the fabric wanted to remind me I didn’t belong here.

Altin draped a possessive hand across my shoulder, nails pressing into bone.

“She’s our most... valuable possession,” he said, wearing that smile he always wore—like he was talking about a bottle of wine, not a person.

The man he referred to as Devon didn’t reply. He just stepped closer. And when he did, I saw it.

His eyes. Dark brown on the surface. But when the light hit him just right, I caught the glint of something pale underneath. Contacts.

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