Adrian stopped sleeping properly in 2018.

Before that, he still managed fragments.

Two hours on military transport planes.

Thirty minutes against concrete walls between operations.

The kind of sleep soldiers learned to survive on when survival mattered more than rest.

After Odessa, even that disappeared.

Now he mostly closed his eyes and waited for memories to attack first.

The safe house remained quiet just before dawn.

Rain still tapped softly against the windows while weak gray light slowly crept across the apartment walls. Valentina had finally fallen asleep sometime after four on the couch beneath a blanket Adrian found folded inside the hallway closet.

She looked younger asleep.

Less guarded.

The sharpness left her face temporarily, replaced by exhaustion she tried too hard to hide while awake.

Adrian stood near the kitchen window with a cigarette burning slowly between his fingers and watched the street below instead of looking at her again.

Distance remained necessary.

Especially now.

The problem was that distance stopped meaning much the second she touched his hand earlier.

Nobody touched him gently anymore.

Not without wanting something afterward.

His jaw tightened slightly.

Dangerous thought.

He crushed the cigarette into the sink and forced his attention back toward the rain-soaked street outside.

A black sedan passed slowly beneath the apartment windows.

Not surveillance.

Too clean.

Too obvious.

Still, his body reacted automatically.

Pulse slowing.

Breathing controlled.

Exit routes mapped instantly.

The wolf underneath never really slept either.

Adrian moved quietly toward the surveillance monitors near the kitchen and checked camera feeds again before finally sitting down across from the couch.

Valentina shifted slightly beneath the blanket but didn’t wake.

Good.

He preferred her unconscious to curious lately.

Because curiosity would eventually destroy everything.

His eyes drifted toward the old scar crossing his left forearm.

Thin white line.

Knife wound.

Mariupol.

Winter.

Another life.

The memory came back before he could stop it.

Snow.

Smoke.

Children screaming somewhere beyond collapsed apartment blocks while mortar fire shook the streets hard enough to split concrete apart.

Adrian sat inside an abandoned school building cleaning blood from his rifle while radio chatter crackled through the dark classroom around him.

Private military contractors.

That was the polite term.

Mercenaries sounded uglier.

More honest.

His team leader, Viktor Sokolov, crouched beside the shattered window smoking cigarettes while artillery burned half the city outside.

“We move at sunrise,” Viktor muttered.

Adrian checked the magazine calmly. “Civilian extraction?”

Viktor laughed once.

Cold sound.

“No civilians left.”

Lie.

There were always civilians left.

That became the problem.

The mission itself should have been simple.

Secure the transport route.

Retrieve political assets.

Eliminate resistance.

That was how contracts worked back then.

Money in exchange for violence.

No ideology required.

Just obedience.

Adrian remembered entering the apartment building twelve hours later with snow melting through broken ceilings and blood already staining the stairwells.

Three targets.

Two armed.

One witness.

That part changed everything.

She couldn’t have been older than fourteen.

Dark hair.

Bare feet.

Shaking so hard she couldn’t hold the kitchen knife pointed toward them.

Adrian still remembered her eyes.

Terrified.

Human.

Wrong place.

Wrong mission.

Viktor raised his gun immediately.

Standard procedure.

No witnesses.

Adrian moved before thinking.

He shoved the rifle barrel downward just as Viktor fired.

The bullet hit the wall instead.

Silence exploded afterward.

Viktor stared at him in disbelief. “What the fuck are you doing?”

The girl ran instantly deeper into the apartment.

Adrian followed without answering.

Another mistake.

He found her hiding beneath a collapsed doorway seconds later, crying too hard to breathe properly while dust and snow drifted through broken windows around them.

“It’s okay,” Adrian said in Russian automatically.

Lie.

Nothing was okay.

Not anymore.

The girl looked up at him with terrified eyes and asked the question that still haunted him years later.

“Are you here to save us?”

Us.

Plural.

Her younger brother appeared moments later from beneath the kitchen table clutching a stuffed animal covered in ash.

Adrian felt something inside himself fracture quietly then.

Because soldiers could kill enemies.

Mercenaries could kill strangers.

But children looked at you like monsters afterward.

And eventually you started believing them.

The memory twisted sharply.

Gunfire.

Shouting.

Viktor screaming over comms.

Then the explosion.

The entire west side of the building collapsed inward before Adrian reached the stairwell.

Concrete.

Fire.

Dust thick enough to choke lungs instantly.

When Adrian finally clawed his way back into the ruined apartment afterward—

the children were gone.

Not dead.

Gone.

No bodies.

No blood.

Just emptiness and smoke.

He spent three weeks afterward searching refugee routes through eastern Ukraine trying to find them again.

Never did.

Viktor called him unstable after that.

Maybe he was right.

Adrian blinked hard once and forced himself back into the present.

Brighton Beach.

Rain.

Safe house.

Valentina sleeping quietly across the room.

His chest felt tight suddenly.

Not from memory.

Recognition.

Because the same instinct that made him protect those children now made him protect her.

Same mistake.

Same weakness.

His phone vibrated softly against the kitchen counter.

Unknown encrypted number.

Adrian answered immediately but kept his voice low.

“What?”

Static crackled briefly through the line before another voice responded.

“You’re losing objectivity.”

Adrian’s expression hardened instantly.

Roman.

Of course.

“You called too early.”

“You disappeared with the target.”

“She’s not a target.”

Silence followed.

Bad silence.

Then Roman spoke again. “That sentence alone is a problem.”

Adrian looked toward Valentina sleeping beneath the blanket.

Peaceful for once.

Human.

Real.

“She found the basement,” Adrian said quietly.

Another pause.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Yes.”

Roman exhaled sharply through the phone. “Then extraction needs accelerating immediately. We’re running out of time.”

Adrian’s jaw tightened. “I know.”

“What about Luca?”

“He suspects movement but not identities yet.”

“And Valentina?”

That question lingered longer.

Because Adrian suddenly realized he didn’t know how to answer honestly anymore.

Roman noticed immediately.

“You’re attached.”

“No.”

Lie.

Even worse because both men recognized it instantly.

“Adrian,” Roman said carefully now, “remember Odessa.”

The warning landed like a knife beneath old scars.

Children.

Smoke.

Bodies buried beneath collapsed buildings because Adrian hesitated emotionally instead of operationally.

Mission failure.

Civilian casualties.

The reason he stopped believing he deserved normal things afterward.

“I remember,” Adrian said quietly.

“Then don’t repeat it.”

The line disconnected moments later.

Adrian lowered the phone slowly onto the counter and stared at the rain outside again.

Don’t repeat it.

Too late.

Because somewhere between protecting Valentina and lying to her—

he already had.