Page 66 of Fractured Allegiance
The buyers are already inside. Serbian, maybe. Or Polish. Hard accents and twitchy hands. The kind who laugh too loud and sweat through their collars.
A crate sits between us. Guns wrapped in black plastic. An offer on display.
Dom enters first. Then her.
She’s calm. Still. Like a woman who walked through fire and came out daring it to burn her again.
Her eyes flick across the room once. Don’t land on me. Good.
Because when they do, I’ll forget everything I’m supposed to remember.
Drazen doesn't bother with real introductions. Just gestures toward her with casual ownership.
"This is Lydia," he says. "If we don't like your numbers, she'll make you like ours."
It's a power move—showing her off while making it clear she's more than just window dressing. A threat wrapped in elegance.
The men laugh. One stares too long. I clock him. He's armed.
I look at Lydia.
She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t shift. Just says, “Numbers don’t care what you like. They only care who writes the final one.”
It silences the room.
That’s her power. She doesn’t raise her voice. She raises the floor you’re standing on.
Drazen looks satisfied. For now.
The deal begins. Talking. Paperwork. Currency codes. Weapon specs. The kind of language that says: someone here is lying, and someone’s about to die for it.
I scan the exits. One in back. Two up high. Sniper angles blocked by dust-caked glass. Bad terrain. Worse odds.
I edge closer to the crate, playing muscle. One of the men shifts wrong. Hands too fidgety. I see the moment before it happens—
He twitches.
And all hell fractures.
The twitch is small.
Not even a full gesture. Just a pinky sliding down the side of a jacket, brushing the edge of fabric that shouldn’t be hanging loose.
But I know that kind of reach. It's not nervousness. It’s calculation. And I’m already moving when the first shot cracks.
It hits Renzo. Not a kill shot. Shoulder, high. He staggers back and knocks into the crate, tipping it halfway open. The metal clangs are deafening. The whole room seems to convulse.
Bishop fires wild. Dom ducks.
Lydia doesn't scream.
She seems to move by instinct, her movements smooth and agile.
Her heels skid once on the concrete as she drops behind the nearest rusted support beam, the hem of the red dress trailing just enough for me to clock her position before smoke blinds my periphery.
My gun’s already out.
I drop the twitchy one first with a clean shot through the throat. No drama, no noise. Just a sick, wet collapse. One of the others turns, yells in a language I don’t need to understand. His weapon’s raised, but he makes the mistake of holding it up too high. Center mass exposed.
