They spent the afternoon like a couple rehearsing a lie. Clothes brushed. A list checked twice.
Small talk that never was small, schedules, routes, escape windows.
The city folded into late afternoon and then tilted toward dusk.
When the sun dropped, they layered themselves in intent. Mikael in a suit that made him look like a knife. Tatiana in something Mikael chose, practical, tight where it needed to be, loose where she needed room to move.
She didn't argue. She never argued about wardrobe. If she could fight in it, she was satisfied.
"Too tight?" she asked once, twisting a hip in the hallway.
"Move," he said, buttoning his cuff with slow hands. "If you can run in it, it fits."
She tested it, spun, knife strapped to thigh in the exact spot she liked, and grinned. "Perfect."
They had the target's file open on the passenger seat, Herbert Livik, patriarch, ninety-two, brittle and rich.
Commissioned by his son.
Note attached: burn the house, take the body, leave nothing behind.
The kind of clean job that smelled like money and malice.
Tatiana read the note twice, then laughed, loud and sharp. "Burn it down. God, I love when they ask for fireworks."
"Contain the collateral," Mikael said, scanning the route. "Minimum witnesses. Exit north."
"Exit north? Boring." She shoved the file toward him. "Step on it. Drive through the gate. I want to see the chandelier fall."
Mikael clipped the file closed with the flat of his palm. "I prefer doors that open."
She shoved her shoulder into him. "You drive like a funeral director. Go faster."
He smiled once, without humor, and hit the gas. The car slid out into the dark that was already swallowing the freeway.
They tore east, city lights thinning behind them until suburban lawns and long, dark hedges closed around the road.
The mansion sat beyond a gated drive, lit like a fortress,.garden lights, security beams, men with radios. A place that expected law, order, and bank accounts.
Tatiana's hand drifted to the knife at her thigh. Mikael kept one hand on the wheel, the other on the comic, reading lines as if they were coordinates. He didn't look away.
"Now," she said, as if the word was a drumbeat.
He accelerated. The car hit the gate with a cry of metal, splinters and hinges tearing.
The gate folded outward, wooden posts snapping like cheap toys. They didn't stop.
The car smashed through the front door like a battering ram and fishtailed into the gravel, engine knocking, air bags still intact.
Tatiana slammed the door open before the dust settled. "Go!" she yelled. Her boots hit stone and she sprinted for the mansion like a dog off a leash.
Inside, hallways smelled of varnish and old men. She ran, heartbeat loud in her ears, hearing doors slam behind her as house staff, if there were any, stumbled awake.
A light flashed, men in black spilling into the corridor with rifles raised.
They opened fire. Bullets thudded into planks and plaster. Tatiana ducked, rolled, moved too fast for them to track.
She slid between a shuttered window and a grandfather clock, dagger up, breath steady.
Men fired again. She lunged, evading a spray, dropped low, came up under a rifle barrel and drove the dagger in where the sleeve met the armpit, thin skin, big artery.
Blood hit her face in a hot splash. He went down coughing, clawing the air.
Two men charged from the stairs. Tatiana turned, spinning, using their momentum.
One caught an elbow to the throat, the other a blade through the carotid where it tasted the brightest. They hit the floor in pools of sound.
Tatiana's breath came out in a laugh.
A man in an expensive robe stumbled out of a doorway, Herbert Livik, wheezing like a broken pump, hands raised.
"Please-" he rasped.
She stepped closer. "You should've left the money to the right people," she said. Her blade found tendon and flesh with practiced cruelty.
He doubled, screaming, eyes wide and wet.
Downstairs, the car's headlights cut through the drive. Mikael sat, one knee up, comic covering half his face like a mask.
He watched the perimeter, calm. Reinforcements were already moving through the hedges, voices, flashlights, five men converging fast, disciplined.
He never looked flustered. He reached into a pocket and picked five smooth pebbles, small stones he'd kept for nights like this. He counted silently, then rolled a pebble into his fingers and flicked.
The first pebble hit a forehead like the snap of a twig. The man staggered, head jerking forward, eyes glassing.
The second pebble hit another brow. He convulsed and slumped.
The third. The fourth. The fifth. One by one, tidy and merciless, five men folded without a sound that mattered.
No gunshots.
No alarm.
Just thuds and the soft curse of falling bodies.
In the house above, Tatiana heard nothing but the scream. Herbert's voice cut off as the blade met a final place.
She wiped her hand on the sheets of his robe, then kicked the door open to the balcony where the maids had stacked lamps.
She tossed a torch into the hallway, watched curtains catch, watched a roar start low and hungry.
She sprinted down the stairs as the fire took. It moved fast in dry high-ceiling wood, greedy and immediate.
She met Mikael in the foyer; he shut the car's trunk with a soft click, comic still tucked under his arm, eyes unreadable in the flames' reflection.
"Fast," she said, chest heaving. "That was-" She couldn't find the word. Satisfied, maybe. Hungry.
"You did what you promised," Mikael said. He didn't praise; he stated. Matter-of-fact.
They stood on the drive as fire spilled through those huge windows, orange tongues bursting into the night.
Somebody in the crowd shouted, gunfire started, panicked policing, but the mansion was already claiming itself to flame and smoke.
The patriarch's screams had been replaced by the building's roar.
Tatiana looped her arm through his and leaned her head on his shoulder.
"Next time," she said, voice low, "we should bring sledgehammers."
Mikael closed his eyes for a beat, then smiled the slightest edge.
"Maybe. Or maybe we'll just take the subway." He opened the comic and turned a page.
They walked away, hand in hand and ash on their boots, leaving the blaze to chant its own verdict.
Behind them, the mansion collapsed in a gust, a body swallowed by heat. Around them, people screamed, cried, called out names. The night swallowed their noise.
Tatiana hummed a tune between her teeth, small and pleased.
Mikael read on. No one noticed them, because no one wanted to.
They were just a couple walking home, hands full, voices soft, hearts too practiced in the dark to surprise.