The body lay on the steel table like a fucking accusation no one had voiced yet.

Raven stood two paces back. Weight shifted off the ankle that still screamed at any sudden turn. Palm stitches pulled tight every time she flexed her fingers around the cold edge of the table. Four days. Functional. Not forgiven. The dead soldier’s face looked too young—barely out of his teens. De Luca ink tattooed on the inside of his left wrist. Then her eyes dropped to the arm. Mottled violet bruising bloomed right where a sleeve would brush skin during a handshake or a bump in a crowded stairwell. Faint yellow halo spread at the edges. She knew the compound before the medic even opened his mouth.

"Skin-absorbed paralytic," she said. Flat. "Eight-minute onset. Heart stops clean. No foam. No vomit. He didn’t even fight it."

The medic’s gloved hands stilled mid-air. Vincent didn’t move from the far side of the table. Black suit sharp, shoulders squared, nothing loud about the way he watched her read the corpse. He already knew she would.

Raven’s gaze dragged over the bruising pattern again. Precise placement. Deliberate. Her stomach twisted hard, a cold knot low in her gut.

"Viper," she said. "He did this."

Adrian’s voice cut from the doorway, sharp as the live blade he still owed her. "You trained with him."

She didn’t look away from the arm. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

"He trained me. Compound work. Everything I know about contact poisons—his formulas. I was seventeen. Lab under the east warehouse. He liked the way I mixed the stabilizers."

Adrian stepped closer. Boots quiet on the tile, the sound too loud in the cold room. "Then he knows your style. Your tells. Your distance."

Raven straightened fast. Ankle twinged sharp. She ignored it.

"He knows the old Caruso version. The one that followed orders and didn’t ask why the batch smelled wrong." She let the silence punch the air between them. "There’s a difference now."

Vincent’s hand rested on the table edge. Not touching her. Close enough that the heat from his knuckles brushed the air near her wrist. He stayed quiet. The room felt heavier, thicker.

Adrian’s jaw flexed once. "Difference doesn’t stop a bullet. Or a sleeve brushing your skin."

Raven met his eyes. Pulse kicking harder now, thudding in her throat. "He doesn’t know what I taught him right back."

Vincent’s fingers shifted a fraction on the steel. She caught it. He caught her catching it. Her throat went tight.

"Can you beat him?" Vincent asked. Low. The same tone he used when he told a room the war had already started.

She didn’t answer right away. The corpse’s arm lay there between them like a ledger she’d helped write years ago. Memory flashed hot and ugly—rough hands during a drill, thumbs locked a certain way on a vial. That grip had felt familiar even then. Before the labs. Before the brand on her wrist. Her chest squeezed hard. She didn’t know why. Didn’t say it.

"I’ve seen him before," she said instead. "Before Caruso."

The words dropped heavy into the room. No one filled the gap.

Adrian exhaled through his nose. "You sure?"

She just lifted her chin a fraction. The room felt the shift anyway.

Vincent’s gaze stayed on her face a beat too long. Then he straightened. "Medical team confirms it’s Viper’s work. We move like Raven’s the only counter we’ve got in real time."

Adrian opened his mouth.

Vincent cut him off with the same economy he used to end wars.

"She reads the compound before it finishes the job. She stays on the board."

Raven felt that decision land solid between her ribs. Not because she’d asked. Because the logic was iron and he hated that it was. His hand left the table. The space where it had been went cold fast.

She pressed her palm flat to the steel once—quick, hard—then pulled back. Stitches tugged sharp. Good. Kept her here. Kept her sharp.

Adrian studied her another second. "Old you or new you. He’s still the one who built the trap."

Raven’s mouth curved. Not a smile.

"Traps have blind spots. I put one in his formula the night he showed me how to double the half-life. He never tested the third stabilizer I swapped. Thinks it’s inert."

Vincent’s eyes narrowed. Just a fraction. Not dark. Tighter at the corners. Her stomach flipped again, that confusing pull low in her gut.

Adrian gave a short nod. "We run it your way. But if he gets close enough to use it—"

"He won’t," Raven said.

The words came out certain. She let them hang there.

The Blades filed out after that. Adrian last, boots deliberate on the tile. Dante clapped her shoulder once on the way past—solid, no words. Leonid didn’t look at her but didn’t avoid her either. Small win in the shape of silence.

The door clicked shut behind them.

Vincent stayed.

Raven turned from the table. The corpse still lay there like an open file neither of them wanted to close tonight. She felt his stare burning on the side of her throat, right where her pulse beat too fast now. Not racing. But close.

He crossed the space in three steps. Stopped just short of touching her. Close enough she caught the faint trace of gun oil and the whiskey he hadn’t touched since the body arrived.

"You taught him something he doesn’t know you taught him," he said. Not a question.

She nodded once.

His gaze dropped to her palm. The fresh stitches. Then to the ankle she kept perfectly still. He didn’t comment. Didn’t offer to carry her. Didn’t tell her to sit this one out. Just looked at the places she was still mending and accepted them as part of the equation.

Raven lifted her hand. Not reaching for him. Not yet. She pressed two fingers to the inside of his wrist instead. Right over the slow, steady thump of his pulse. Skin on skin. No knife between them. No blood. No adrenaline crash. Just them.

His pulse didn’t jump. But his fingers flexed once. Curling inward like they wanted to close around her wrist and hold on tight.

She dropped her hand.

The ghost question burned low and ugly in her gut now. The one about that familiar grip from before the labs. The one about how the Viper had known her movements before Caruso ever sent her to the casino. The one about why Vincent’s eyes had tightened when she said the words out loud.

He didn’t ask it.

She didn’t answer it.

Vincent’s voice came lower. "If he takes you—"

"I know what it costs," she said.

She let the sentence finish itself.

Outside the tall windows the city lights blurred behind frost. Inside, the steel table held its dead weight and the Viper’s signature waited for whoever moved first.

Vincent’s gaze stayed locked on her face. Something patient lived behind it. Something that had been waiting way longer than four days.

Raven turned toward the door. Ankle held. Stitches pulled. She kept walking anyway.

The question stayed in the room with him.

Unasked.

Burning.

Waiting.