Chapter 2
I woke to a throbbing pain under my ribs, the kind that makes breathing feel like punishment. I blinked at the ceiling—this wasn't my room.
The sheets were too clean, the air too still.
A quiet apartment. Small. Smelled faintly of coffee and rain.
"Where the hell…?" I muttered, my voice rasping.
I tried to sit up, but pain clawed through me and sent me collapsing back into the bed. A thin IV line tugged at my wrist, clear fluid dripping down into me. My pulse spiked. Someone had patched me up. Someone had watched.
Gather yourself.
I tore the tape off, gritting my teeth as the needle slid free, and sat up again—slower this time. The room came into focus: one small window, a dresser, a crooked lamp, and a gunmetal-gray pistol on the bedside table.
"Okay… that's comforting," I breathed, sarcasm doing a poor job of masking the panic.
I opened the drawer. A handgun. Full magazine. Beside it—an ID card and a passport.
Name: Kirika Yamaguchi.
Age: 20.
Nationality: Filipino-Japanese.
Citizenship: French.
I raised an eyebrow. "A girl with three countries and one identity crisis."
Then I caught myself staring at the photo on the passport.
Soft black hair, tan skin , a smile that looked… dangerous in the quietest way.
"Putain…" I whispered, blinking too long. "Elle est jolie."
Pretty. No— too pretty.
I shook my head fast. "No, no, non, stop it—you're just gathering intel, pas vrai?"
My cheeks warmed before I could stop them. Great. I'd been shot at, maybe kidnapped, and my first reaction to danger was apparently developing a crush.
"Urgh, I'm losing it…" I mumbled, raking a hand through my hair. "Je parle toute seule maintenant. Super."
The apartment felt too quiet—like it was listening. I stood and peeked through the window. The city outside was washed in rain, neon smearing across the glass. Paris—definitely Paris.
My reflection caught me—pale skin, messy hair, eyes with too many questions.
I huffed out a shaky laugh. "At least I'm alive. Probably."
I looked back at the passport photo one last time. There was something about her—not just her face, but the stillness in her eyes. Like she knew exactly who she was… and maybe exactly who I was, too.
"Merde," I whispered, clutching the passport tighter. "What did you get me into, Kirika?"
The rain outside hit harder, like the world was waiting for me to move. I stuffed the gun into my waistband, slipped the passport into my pocket, and took one long, steady breath.
"Alright," I told my reflection. "Let's wait for the girl who saved me.''
If I could stitch together the pieces, it always snapped back to the café—the bell, the rain, the girl. I slammed my palm against my forehead as if I could force the lost seconds back into place. The flash drive. The data. My work—eleven years of digging, training, and cold nights—blown because I had a stupid moment of mercy.
« Putain, pourquoi j'ai fait ça ? » I hissed to the empty room. What was I thinking, trusting that a schoolgirl wouldn't bolt the second shots rang out? It sounded ridiculous even in my head.
My hands trembled with a heat that wasn't entirely from the wound. I could see it: dossiers, stakeouts, code names, every lead threaded toward one dark center—my mother's death, my uncle's disappearance. I'd chased ghosts and trafficked in secrets for a decade, and for what? One instinct to save someone, and I'd lost the lead that might have paid for a lifetime of answers.
Still—there were people who kept me moving. The hacker who fed me tips, the informant who'd whispered that café route. I closed my fingers around the pendant at my throat, the small, worn thing Mama had pressed into my hand years ago.
« Maman… » I breathed, thumb rubbing the silver. « Je viens. Je te rendrai justice. »
I kissed the pendant hard, like a promise and a prayer wrapped in one.
The doorknob clicked.
My body folded into practiced silence. I slipped behind the door, breath shallow, gun already in my hand. The Sig Sauer was a weight that steadied me; the muzzle found the hollow at the base of her skull without looking. Her hair brushed my fingers. She didn't move. Calm as a photograph.
For a second, the world narrowed to the hiss of the rain and the pounding of my heart.
«Who are you? » I said, voice low and flat, more accusation than question.
She tilted her head like she was trying to place a song. For a moment I almost forgot to hate her—that stupid crush-flare, the silly, human glitch that made me look at her differently when she looked at me through our reflection in the window. Then the training snapped back, and with it the truth: she might be the key to everything I'd spent years hunting.
«Answer me. Maintenant. » My whisper held a knife.
"By the look of my place," she said, voice flat as ice, "I assumed you already know. Vionne Corbeaux."
The name hit like a fist. For eleven years I'd tried to bury it, and there it was, spoken in a calm voice. My fingers tightened on the Sig. Shit. She knows me.
I scanned the room. The sheets were rumpled. The bedside drawer hung open. The IV bag still swung, a slow, emptying pendulum. Whoever put me here hadn't taken everything—they'd left enough to shout 'someone's been here' in the quiet.
She didn't need to point out my little tells. She hadn't rifled through my things; she'd simply walked in and seen the obvious.
« Putain… » I breathed. "How—how do you know my name?"
I pressed the Sig to the smoothness of her forehead, the cold bite steadying my hands. Up close, she looked impossibly calm—like someone who'd learned to be quiet in storms.
"I know a lot about you, Vionne," she said, voice flat, "but the funny thing is—I don't know shit about me."
She met my eyes with that same weary, dead look. "That's why I tipped you off about the café transaction. I thought you'd be the key, but it didn't work out."
"You?" I croaked, the name like a match to dry paper. "Who are you, then? Why give me the lead?"
She shrugged, an odd, small movement. "I wish I could tell you who I really am." Her tone held a thread of confusion that didn't match the rest of her. "I gave you that lead because I thought you might unlock something for me."
"Unlock what?" I snapped, incredulous. "How could I—? I barely have a clue who I am myself." The room spun a little. Her calm made the whole thing smell wrong—like a trick.
She slid a hand into her pocket. For a second I tensed, ready to pull the trigger. Instead, she made a small, ridiculous peace sign, like a joke. I let my finger ease off the trigger.
She pulled out something and held it up between us.
My throat closed. Mama's pocket watch dangled in her fingers, scarred at the rim. The sight of it punched every breath from me. "Where—where did you get that?" My voice came out small, cracking.
She opened the watch. The fragile, sad melody unfurled into the air, and for a moment the world narrowed to that sound and the taste of salt in my mouth. Tears burned my eyes before I could stop them.
"I found it with a gun and some papers in a drawer," she said quietly. "When I woke up, I had nothing—no name, no past. Just the memory of killing. Not one or two. Many. Precise. Efficient. No remorse. I remember how to do it, but I can't remember why."
She looked at me then, and something flared in her face that wasn't entirely empty—an edge of shame, maybe, or a question.
"I thought maybe—if you were chasing the same people, if your path crossed mine—then maybe together we'd find what I lost," she added, voice softer. "Or at least find a place to start."
My grip loosened. The gun felt too loud in my hands. Questions crowded like birds against a window: Was she telling the truth? Had she killed my mother's killers? Had she been used? Or was she the use?
"Putain," I breathed, the word a ragged thing. "So you give me a lead, and I wind up saving a killer. Brilliant." Part of me wanted to laugh; the rest wanted to throw the watch against the wall.
She watched me without flinching, the little music still threading between us. For the first time since the café, I felt the wrongness of that day in a new shape—less like a mistake and more like the first move on a board I didn't yet understand.
"That killer—she knows me."
Her words yanked me back from my thoughts.
"You were there?" I asked, my voice sharper than I meant it to be.
She nodded once. "You almost got hit when she shot you, but I shot her bullet mid-air, just enough to keep it from killing you. You passed out right after."
Ah. So that's why there was only one wound—the one from the man I'd disabled myself.
"She could've finished you," she went on, her tone strangely distant. "But she didn't. She just… watched while I dragged you out of the café. Then she called me a name."
"A name?" I leaned forward, pulse quickening. "What did she call you?"
Her eyes lifted to mine, cold and haunted all at once.
"She called me Top."
My stomach dropped. Top.
Not possible. That name only existed in one place—the secret archive from Levi's case. My adoptive father. The one who'd died five years ago in what they called a "random" car explosion.
I stared at her face, searching for a lie, but she only stared back—calm, unblinking, like she'd accepted her own damnation long ago.
"C'est pas possible…"I whispered.
But the more I looked at her, the more it made sense—the calm precision, the empty eyes, the watch that once belonged to Mama.
Everything was starting to fit together.
And I hated it.