The muffled sound of gunfire still echoed through the narrow alleys of Venice as Kael felt the blood trickle from the cut on his rib. The early morning sky was a dark veil over the calm waters of the canals, a brutal contrast to the chaos he had left behind.
He shouldn't be there.
But orders were orders.
"You should've waited for backup," the agency director had said hours earlier. "She's not your target. Just observe."
Kael was never good at just observing.
Now, with a silent radio and a bleeding body, he crawled behind crates on the old pier, trying to steady his breathing. His eyes scanned the night until they landed on the impossible: she was there.
Aria.
Wearing a dark coat, hair tied back, gaze alert like a cornered lioness. But there was no fear. There never was. Only resolve.
She saw him. Walked toward him slowly, unhurried. Like someone who knows the world might be collapsing around them, yet still holds control.
"You should be dead," she said, her voice low and firm. "They want you eliminated."
Kael tried to smile, but the blood in his mouth didn't help.
"And you? You here to help or finish the job?"
She hesitated. A second. Just long enough for him to see in her eyes that the answer still hurt.
"Depends on what you came here to do, Kael."
The memory hit like a bullet: their past, training together at the agency, the mission in Prague that nearly cost them both their lives. And after that, silence. Two years. She vanished.
Now she was back. Not quite as an ally. Not exactly an enemy either.
"I'm after Karimov," he said, breathless. "He's selling nuclear secrets. And you're in the way."
"Or protecting something you don't understand," Aria replied, kneeling beside him.
Their eyes met, and for a moment, time stopped. The tension wasn't just bullets and blood—it was unspoken stories, broken promises.
"Give me one reason not to turn you in right now," she said, hand on her weapon.
Kael looked at the ground briefly, then back at her.
"Because if you do… the next target will be you."
Aria froze.
Before either of them could react, a distant explosion lit up the sky. Karimov's boat was leaving. They had seconds.
"Get up, agent," she said, grabbing his arm and pulling him. "If you're going to die, die fighting."
Kael chuckled through the pain.
"That your way of saying you missed me?"
Aria didn't answer. But the way she held his hand said more than words ever could.
They ran. Through shadows, gunfire, and secrets. Two agents who once loved each other, now fighting not just a common enemy, but everything they still felt—or pretended not to feel.
And deep down, between one ragged breath and the next, Kael was certain: this mission was more than politics, more than orders.
It was personal.
Flashback – Three Years Ago, Budapest. International Intelligence Agency Secret Base
"One more round," Kael said firmly, sweat dripping from his brow, eyes locked in challenge.
In the training ring, Aria rolled her shoulders, light on her feet, breathing steady. Her loose hair fell over her face like a dark curtain hiding something more dangerous than any weapon.
"You're gonna end up all bruised," she said with a smirk. "Again."
"And you're still underestimating me," Kael shot back.
She moved first. A swift elbow strike, a knee feint—Kael blocked on reflex. He was slower that day—not from exhaustion, but distraction.
Aria. Always Aria.
Since they joined the agency together, there had been an unspoken tension between them. Professional respect disguised as rivalry. And beneath that, a closeness neither dared admit.
"Thinking about me?" she teased, locking him in an armhold and slamming him to the floor.
"Always," he panted.
She laughed. Rare, that laugh. Light. Almost teenage.
But nothing was light at the base.
That night, hours later, between simulations, Kael found her alone on the dorm balcony, staring down at the lit-up city as if the world was bigger than they could ever reach.
"You know what I want?" she said, still watching the horizon. "A place where I don't have to lie all the time. Where my name is really mine. Where I can just… breathe."
"Does that place exist?" he asked, sitting beside her.
She turned her face to him. Her eyes were different in that dim light. No armor. No sarcasm.
"I don't know. But for a second… when we fight… or when you look at me like that… it feels like it does."
Kael leaned closer, his heartbeat quickening for the first time in a long while—and not because of danger.
"Are you afraid?" he asked.
"Of myself. Of you. Of all this ending."
And then, with no warning, she kissed him. Urgent, risky, forbidden. The kind of kiss only people who live between life and death know how to give.
That night, they made love in silence, like two soldiers stealing time from a world that doesn't forgive weakness.
But the world noticed.
Three weeks later: the mission in Prague. They were just supposed to observe. But Aria discovered the agency was using civilians as bait. She wanted to stop. Kael hesitated. Orders or conscience?
"If you go through with this, I'll disappear," she had said, her voice bitter and pained. "And don't look for me."
Kael let time decide. And time took her away.
She vanished that same week. No trace. No explanation. Just a deafening silence.
Back to the Present – Venice
Aria punched Kael's chest to bring him back to reality. He was dizzy, bleeding more, but conscious.
"You with me or not?" she asked, eyes hard.
Kael nodded, breathing deep.
"You disappeared."
"You left me."
"I followed orders."
"I followed my conscience."
A beat of silence. Tense. Painful. Real.
Then Aria pulled the pistol from her waistband and handed it to him.
"The past doesn't change. But what we do now can change everything."
Kael took the weapon. Her hand was still warm on his.
"Then let's finish what we started."
And they ran, together, through a crumbling city—like two ghosts from the past trying to rewrite the present—with bullets, truths, and scars.