2:17 AM
The palace slept the sleep of the wealthy: shallow and comfortable, punctuated by the distant whispers of servants and the choked groan of an air conditioner struggling like a trapped insect.
Alex Volkov slipped through the service door: the entrance the rich forget, but the poor remember.
The cold metal key found the lock in silence, as if returning home.
The young guard: perhaps in his twenties, in a black suit so tight it almost choked him: was slumped on a carved wooden chair, head bowed to his chest.
Alex hadn't struck him.
Unnecessary violence was chaos, and chaos was like shouting in a profession that worshipped silence.
An hour earlier, as the guard drank his final coffee of the shift, Alex had added three drops of a colorless, odorless liquid to the cup.
He'd wake in six hours with a mild headache and a foggy memory of a quiet night.
His principle: Elegance over force.
Precision over violence.
He breathed deeply in the white marble corridor, which absorbed his footsteps like a giant sponge.
On the walls, in faded gold frames, hung portraits of the Rossi family: men with eyes that knew no mercy, women with smiles painted on like golden locks.
An empire built on an unbeatable trifecta: wine that clouds the mind, flesh that steals the heart, and smuggling that fills pockets until they tear.
He stopped before the double doors of dark mahogany.
His right hand touched the cold handle.
He breathed.
Emptied his mind like a professional shooter before the decisive shot.
He listened.
The sound of a single breath.
Soft.
Steady.
A rhythm as precise as a Swiss watch.
Not the breath of a sleeper, but of someone waiting.
The breath of one who knows they are being watched.
Beneath his black wool jacket, his fingers curled around the grip of the Beretta 92FS.
The suppressor was pre-attached.
The first round in the chamber, the remaining nine in the magazine.
One bullet between the eyes ends everything.
One shot.
One ending.
He pushed the door.
----------
2:33 AM
A wave of warmth hit him first, then the heavy scent of jasmine: thick, suffocating, mixed with something sharp and metallic, like the smell of gunpowder right after a shot.
The room was a cave of golden light: dozens of candles in silver candelabras, their flames dancing on gold: leafed walls, glittering in large mirrors, casting long, moving shadows like ghosts awaiting their cue.
And at the heart of this illuminated stage:
Isabella "Bella" Rossi.
Completely nude on a sofa of deep purple silk, the color of night before dawn.
Her skin gleamed under the candlelight like silk wet with silver water.
Her long black hair cascaded over her bare shoulders, ending at the curve of her breasts.
Her legs were crossed, every detail exposed, unhidden, as if saying: Here I am.
His heart skipped a single beat: not because she was nude, but because she was unafraid.
And that was the most terrifying thing in his profession: a target that doesn't tremble.
A target that meets death with a smile.
She turned a page in an old leather: bound book without looking up.
"Sixteen minutes and forty-three seconds."
Her voice was like the rustle of ancient paper in a deserted library.
"My bet was exactly fifteen minutes, I just lost one point eight million."
His finger tightened on the trigger.
The world turned upside down: fifteen years of training, dozens of missions, all his meticulous plans, collapsed in a single second before a naked woman turning a page, deciding his fate before he could decide hers.
"Put the gun down, you won't need it tonight."
"An assassin without a weapon is like a pianist without keys."
She smiled, the light playing on her slender face, which bore prominent cheekbones revealing an inherited legacy of power.
"And a lady without a husband is like a ship without a sail in a storm."
She raised her hazel eyes to him.
Her eyes scanned him like a machine scanning a classified document: every detail, every weakness, every possibility, every counter: possibility.
"I propose a marriage."
A heavy silence fell between them like a corpse from a high ceiling.
Only the flicker of flames and the sound of his heart, which had now returned, beating faster than it should, like war drums pounding in his chest.
Every sense in him was on high alert: this was a woman who thought like he did: coldly, precisely, with unblinking eyes.
"Repeat that."
"A marriage of convenience, one week only, seven days, one hundred and sixty-eight hours."
She repeated the words slowly, as if teaching him a lesson.
"Then, you carry out your mission as planned."
He took a step into the room.
His black shoes made no sound on the antique Persian rug with its complex patterns.
His feet touched the final softness before ascending the gallows.
"Death is a cleaner solution, faster, less complicated."
She rose from the sofa with a slow grace, as if rising from her throne.
The purple silk she picked up from the floor in one fluid motion, like a snake shedding its skin.
"Death is always easier, life... gets complicated when your uncles are wolves waiting for your first stumble, your only moment of weakness."
"You have money, a lot of it, pay them off and they'll leave you alone."
"Money isn't enough for them."
She took a step, then another.
Her scent now enveloped him: sweet jasmine mixed with something sharp, metallic, sulfuric.
Her breath touched his face: each exhale like a poisoned arrow piercing his armor, one by one.
"They want legitimacy, a legitimate husband to inherit, to sell them everything for a pittance, and then... disappear forever, and you... you're perfect, no family, no traceable past, no ties, and after a week... no trace."
A strange feeling pierced his icy exterior: a terrifying admiration, an unwelcome respect.
She was plotting betrayal like he plotted murder: with cold calculation, a mind unswayed by emotion.
And for the first time in his life, he felt he was facing an opponent worthy of the title.
"You're asking the hunter to guard the prey."
"I'm asking him to keep the other wolves away... until it's time for his own meal."
She smiled that smile he understood immediately: the smile of a cat playing with a mouse before eating it.
"After all, who wants to see his meal stolen before he eats it?"
A dry laugh escaped his throat.
It came out hoarse, unlike his usual laughter.
As if a part of him: a buried, suppressed part: had started to believe this meticulously crafted madness.
"This is insane, and that's what makes it convincing."
"The price?"
"Twenty million, dollars, half now, cash, anywhere in the world you want, the other half upon... completion."
She paused, her eyes flashing in the candlelight.
"Plus ten percent of the sale deal to the uncles."
An amount that could buy permanent disappearance.
An image flashed in his mind: a remote island in the Pacific, a white beach, a glass house overlooking the waves, endless silence.
A life where he'd never have to look over his shoulder again.
"Why me? Why risk a professional assassin when you can buy a husband from anywhere?"
"Three reasons."
She raised three slender fingers.
"First: because your reputation precedes you, 'The Silent Devil' the man who never fails, who always finishes the job."
Another step, she was very close now, he could see the faint freckles on her nose.
The heat of her body radiated toward him like an open furnace on a freezing winter night.
"Second: because you're free, you don't belong to the Rossi family, nor to a rival one, you're an independent asset, that's rare in our world built on loyalties and alliances."
She paused.
The third finger remained raised between them like a barrier.
"And third..."
Her voice dropped deliberately, like a knife being slowly drawn from its sheath.
"...because I know that, in the end, you'll pull the trigger, you won't hesitate, you won't weaken. And you won't betray the agreement, and you know why?"
He didn't answer.
He knew the answer.
"Because a professional assassin remains an assassin until the end, and that's what I need: a man who knows who he is, and doesn't try to change himself."
Something stirred deep within him: a killer's curiosity, a mad desire to see how this game would end.
And a fear: rare, strange, unsettling: that it might end in a way he didn't expect, a way that would erase all his old plans and write new ones with his own blood.
"The terms?"
She raised four fingers, one after the other, as if counting the new laws of their microcosm.
"First: a civil marriage tomorrow morning, city courthouse, my witnesses."
"Second."
"Second: we live here, in this palace, in this very room, together, in front of everyone: servants, guards, visitors, and especially the eyes of my uncles."
"Third."
"You prove to the uncles that this is a real marriage, not just a paper contract."
"And that means?"
he asked, though he already knew the answer.
She smiled that feline smile again.
"It means you sleep in my bed, It means you touch my waist in public, It means you look at me the way a man looks at his woman."
She paused, her eyes staring steadily at him.
"It means... the full performance, from beginning to end."
"And the fourth?"
"The fourth..."
She stopped.
Looked toward the large French window, where the night fog enveloped the city, then back at him.
Her voice dropped to a whisper, but it reached him as clearly as a bullet.
"...that you protect me."
He laughed again, but this time it was a bitter laugh, like that of a man knowingly walking into a trap of his own choosing.
"I'm here to kill you, that's my job, that's my identity."
"And I'm asking you to kill anyone who tries to kill me... before your turn comes."
She didn't blink.
"To be a personal bodyguard for your own quarry."
"You're insane."
"Dangerous."
she corrected him calmly.
"There's a difference."
"Guarding the meal... from the competitors, until dinner time."
"Exactly."
He looked over her shoulder through the large French window, at the city sleeping under the thick night fog.
A night black as Chinese ink, hiding everything except his choices, his potential mistakes, his unknown future.
He breathed.
"Agreed."
The word left his lips, and inside him, a silent warning roared: the next seven days would be a war with no clear front lines, no flags, no rules.
And any one of them could be the last for either of them.
----------
3:07 AM
In sharp yet strong feminine handwriting, she wrote the contract on a sheet of fine vellum: the very paper used for important documents in the Middle Ages.
The golden pen etched the paper like a bullet engraving a victim's name on a tombstone: final, irrevocable, without repentance.
He signed with a pseudonym chosen in the moment: "Marcus Antonius."
A name from a historical novel he'd read in a holding cell years ago, while waiting for a trial that would never come.
"And now?"
His voice was low, almost a whisper in the darkness that began to creep toward them, swallowing the corners first.
"Now..."
She walked among the candles, extinguishing them with soft puffs from her lips.
The flames died slowly, surrendering to death with a majestic silence, like soldiers falling in a lost battle whose outcome they knew from the start.
"...we sleep."
Darkness enveloped the room piece by piece, a living black creature swallowing colors, erasing outlines, leaving only basic shapes: the bed, the window, two strangers in one room.
"I have a room, I can take the sleeping guard's room."
"This is our room."
Her voice came from the direction of the large bed in the middle of the room.
It came like an echo from a distant grave, from another world.
"A real marriage begins on the first night, and eyes are watching, even when we can't see them, and ears are listening, even when we think we're alone."
"I don't share my bed with anyone, that's a rule."
"And I don't trust anyone outside my direct line of sight, and that's a higher rule."
After a moment's hesitation: a rare moment for him, the hesitation of a man accustomed to choices between life and death, not between pride and mission: he lay down on the far edge of the wide bed.
His back to her, facing the door.
The pistol under the pillow he lay on.
His small knife in his pocket.
His shoes still on his feet, laced tightly, ready to flee or attack.
A long silence stretched in the room, filled with their intersecting breaths.
Seconds passed like hours, minutes froze like years, and each moment carried a question: Will she attack? Will I sleep? Is this a beginning or an end?
Then, in the pitch darkness, where he couldn't see his hand before his face:
"Alex?"
"Yes."
"When the seventh day comes... when the 168 hours have passed... when you reach the moment we agreed upon..."
She paused, as if choosing her words carefully.
"...will you pull the trigger? Will you kill me?"
A heavy silence filled the room, weighing down the air until breathing became difficult.
In the pitch darkness, he closed his eyes.
He saw her face before him: her hazel eyes, her lips, a small scar on her chin he hadn't noticed before.
He saw his finger on the trigger.
He saw the blood that would flow like ancient rivers from wounds he hadn't yet inflicted.
He breathed.
"Yes."
In her chest, beneath her left breast, where the heart beat at a steady pace, she felt a small, sharp prick: not fear, but a stark reality accepted like the stab of a cold knife entering flesh without resistance: death comes at its appointed time, and this is the only unchanging rule in the game she's played since birth.
"Good."
she whispered, as if telling herself a bedtime story.
"The only lies that truly hurt... are the ones we believe ourselves."
----------
3:44 AM
Lying in the thick darkness that choked the room, his eyes open, watching the shadows on the high ceiling: shadows with no source, ghosts of the mind.
Her warm, regular breaths on his back: a living point of heat in his icy world, a sign of another human being close to him for the first time in years.
Each breath carved a small groove in his ice, each exhale melted a layer from years of isolation, each inhale reminded him that he wasn't alone tonight.
The phone in his pocket vibrated.
The silent vibration cut through the room's silence like a muffled scream in a deserted cathedral.
Victor.
He slid from the bed like one of the shadows themselves, one smooth motion devoid of any sound.
Crossed the room, opened the French door lightly, stepped onto the cold balcony where the biting night air awaited him like an invisible guard.
A light drizzle began to fall from a starless black sky, touching his forehead like cold tears crying for something lost.
"Yes?"
"Three hours and twenty-seven minutes."
Victor's voice was coarse, like sandpaper on bare skin.
"Where's the report? Where's the photo of the body? Where's the proof of completion?"
"The mission... is more complicated than expected."
"Complication is weakness, and weakness is death, Where's the body?"
"No body yet."
The words left him as if they belonged to someone else, another man, another killer.
"The target is unexpectedly protected, there are new variables that weren't accounted for."
"The only variable allowed is your bullet in her skull."
A short pause.
"You have 24 hours, no more."
"I need a week, seven days."
Silence on the other end.
A silence as heavy as an old tombstone.
He could hear Victor's heavy breathing, like a wounded bull dragging itself toward water, knowing it would never reach it.
"Seven days."
Victor repeated the words slowly, as if tasting their bitterness.
"And on the eighth day, at exactly 8 AM... either the mission is over... or you are."
The old script.
The same threat, the same words, the same tone.
But this time, it felt different.
This time, it felt real.
The call disconnected.
He stood alone on the white marble balcony that gleamed under the city lights.
The rain wet his short black hair, falling on his shoulders like the sky's tears.
The city spread beneath him like a glowing carpet of yellow lights: each light representing a life that knew nothing of him, sleeping in its safe slumber.
Behind him, through the cold glass, a woman he was supposed to kill slept.
Before him, across oceans and continents, a life that might finally begin.
And in between, seven days that might be enough to change everything... or to prove that nothing ever changes, and that a written fate remains the only fate.
----------
Inside the room, on the wide bed where purple silk met the darkness of night, Bella quietly opened her eyes.
Her ear had been pressed against the silk pillow, and every word he said on the balcony had traveled to her through the cold glass, the thick stone, the dense darkness.
Every syllable, every pause, every angry or calculated breath, every whisper of suppressed fear.
She smiled in the pitch darkness, a smile seen only by the shadows themselves, heard only by the silence, felt only by her.
The game had begun.
The cards were dealt on the table.
The rules were written in blood before ink.
And in the end, one of them would discover that the blood spilled in the finale... might be the blood that had been flowing in their own veins since the beginning, waiting only for the right moment to emerge into the light.
And for the first time in her long life in this bloody world she had chosen or that had chosen her... she was no longer sure she would be alive to see that blood dry under the sun of the eighth day.