Six months later, the sky over Manhattan was a bruised purple, reflecting the neon hum of the city that never slept.
I stood in our new office on the 48th floor of a glass tower in Hudson Yards. It wasn't a fortress, and there were no hidden vaults. The sign on the frosted glass door simply read: V&H Strategic Solutions.
"The security audit for the Cairo museum is complete," I said, not looking back as I heard the familiar, heavy click of boots on the hardwood floor.
Yuri walked up behind me, his presence a warm weight that I had finally learned to stop flinching from. He leaned over my shoulder, looking at the tablet in my hands. He looked different now. The sharp, lethal edge was still there, but the haunted look in his eyes had softened into something like purpose.
"You found the weakness in their perimeter?" he asked, his voice a low rumble near my ear.
"It wasn't a weakness in the walls, Yuri. It was a weakness in the people. They were underpaid and unmotivated. I suggested a 20% raise and a better rotation. It's harder to bribe a man who actually likes his job."
Yuri let out a short, soft laugh. "You're turning my world of shadows into something remarkably transparent, Jessy."
"That was the deal," I said, turning around in his arms. I adjusted the collar of his charcoal suit—a suit that was no longer a uniform of war, but a tool of business. "No more 'Glass Ledgers.' No more 'Phoenix Protocols.' We protect people now. We don't own them."
He grabbed my hands, his fingers interlocking with mine. "My mother called today. She's enjoying the garden in the cottage we bought her in the Cotswolds. She asked when we were coming for tea."
"Soon," I promised.
But even as I said it, I saw a flicker of movement across the street—a reflection in a darkened window that didn't belong. My heart didn't race with fear; it hummed with readiness.
The past was a ghost that didn't know how to stay dead.