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[01]
THE WICKED & THE REAPER
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“What was I to you, Prince Dio?”

Her voice cracked beneath the weight of the question.

“A doll, perfect for a Duke? Am I nothing but my face?”

Reise Worthon raised trembling fingers to her cheek. Her nails dragged across the delicate skin once, then again, harder the second time, as though ruining the face everyone praised might finally prove there was something beneath it worth seeing.

“Why her, and not me?”

Prince Dio merely stared.

There was no pity in his face, no anger, not even disgust. Whatever emotion Reise had once hoped to draw from him was nowhere to be found.

“Perhaps,” he said at last, his voice devoid of warmth, “if you were not so ruthless. So wicked. Then there might be room for you in my heart.”

A liar, Reise thought.

Even if she had been an angel, even if she had devoted herself entirely to the church and spent her life performing every virtue expected of a noblewoman, he would never have loved her. He would never choose her.

Only her.

A scoundrel. A scammer. A user.

Reise smiled at the Prince as though something inside her had finally broken. Perhaps it had broken years ago, and she had simply spent all this time pretending otherwise.

I am peerless. My family rivals the Crown itself, and yet a woman like me is tossed aside for a commoner.

Her smile widened.

What a scandal.

She stepped onto the balcony railing.

The evening wind caught her rose-gold hair and carried the long strands behind her like scattered petals. For the first time, something shifted in Prince Dio’s expression.

Only slightly, but Reise noticed.

It was already too late.

“You once said I was like a rose,” she murmured. “That is why I came to love them. That is why they call me the Wicked Rose.”

She offered him one final, bittersweet smile.

“Thank you for ten years of nothing, my love.”

Then she let herself fall.

For one terrible second, Prince Dio did not move. Horror finally dawned in his eyes as the sound of impact echoed through the palace grounds.

And the Wicked Rose was torn apart.

—SNAP!

G6 shut the book.

“Fucking stupid.”

She tossed it onto the concrete beside her.

Cold night air moved freely through the abandoned building, carrying the distant noise of the city through shattered windows and unfinished walls. Below, glass towers and narrow streets stretched beneath layers of artificial light.

Half a kilometer away, one of the finest clubs in the red district glowed beneath gold signage and tinted windows. Luxury vehicles disappeared through a private entrance while security personnel blended discreetly into the architecture.

Their target was inside.

His reputation had rotted far beyond ordinary extortion, and money was merely the cleanest part of it. Businesses had been bled dry. Women were coerced, traded through favors, or silenced by men whose influence reached far enough to make complaints disappear before they ever became cases. Investigators knew his name. Prosecutors knew his name. Politicians knew his name.

That was precisely the problem.

He had become powerful enough that ordinary law could identify him but not punish him.

Eventually, his file had climbed past investigators, prosecutors, and officials who still required evidence capable of surviving a courtroom. It had reached the level of authority permitted to admit that the public system had failed.

From there, the file went down into the underworld and into GAO jurisdiction.

The Gemcardia Organization was not some random assassination syndicate hiding beyond the reach of governments.

It was something darker and far more organized—a form of governance beneath governance, international in reach and independent of any single country.

The world above had police, courts, diplomats, and prisons.

The world below had GAO.

It regulated the underworld, enforced its own jurisdictions, and accepted cases lawful institutions could no longer resolve without tearing themselves apart. Political immunity, state protection, extreme wealth, institutional corruption—people who had made themselves untouchable beneath ordinary law eventually discovered that there were other laws beneath it.

When legitimate authorities exhausted every visible option, an authorized file could be transferred downward.

Once GAO accepted it, there was no trial left to conduct, no arrest warrant and no appeal.

Only an extermination order.

Tonight, that order belonged to G6.

Beside her, Pisces continued watching the club through a pair of binoculars.

From a distance, the device looked ordinary, but thin streams of data moved across the lenses as the system analyzed faces, heat signatures, body proportions, and movement patterns, continuously comparing every person passing through the club’s rear entrance against the information stored in the target file.

“Your taste in tragic romance creeps me out sometimes,” Pisces remarked without lowering the binoculars.

G6 ignored him and opened the sniper case at her feet.

She inspected the rifle with practiced precision, checking the lens, barrel, magazine, and smart rounds before settling it against her shoulder. Everything was where it belonged. Everything was clean and reliable.

Unlike the protagonist of that stupid book.

“It’s just weird,” Pisces continued. “A Reaper hooked on cheap romance. Or are you just bitter because it’s impossible for yo—”

He stopped.

His posture changed instantly.

“Target’s on the move.”

The book ceased to exist in G6’s mind.

She dropped into position, one knee touching the concrete as the rifle settled against her shoulder. Her finger remained outside the trigger guard while her breathing slowed.

Below, the rear doors of the club opened.

Four men emerged, all wearing dark clothing. Three wore sunglasses despite the late hour, with masks concealing the lower halves of their faces. One stood in the center beneath a black umbrella.

Same height. Same build. Same posture described in the file.

A fourth man followed behind him, his dark coat concealing most of a red suit underneath. From this distance, he looked like nothing more than another guard.

Pisces adjusted the binoculars.

“Visual acquired.”

G6 shifted the scope by a fraction.

“Target for appraisal.”

A short pulse sounded through her earpiece.

The operator answered almost immediately.

“Target confirmed. Proceed.”

G6 narrowed her eyes.

Paranoid bastard.

The masks and sunglasses were not surprising. Their target knew his information had circulated. Someone had warned him, or he had simply bribed the right person.

Either way, he knew assassins were coming and had prepared accordingly.

G6 breathed in and held it.

“Locked in.”

—BANG!

The smart round tore through the distance.

The man beneath the umbrella jerked backward and collapsed onto the pavement, the umbrella tumbling beside him as chaos erupted almost instantly. Security scattered, someone shouted, a woman screamed, and weapons appeared far too late to matter.

G6 remained behind the scope for another second.

The body was down and no longer moving.

“Mission complete. G6 signing—”

“Wait.”

Pisces’s voice cut sharply through her earpiece.

G6 stopped.

Something in his tone was wrong.

“What?”

He did not answer immediately. The binoculars moved as he tracked the surviving men below.

The three guards had broken formation. One stumbled backward in panic and collided with another—the man in red—knocking the sunglasses from his face.

They struck the pavement.

For less than a second, his features were completely exposed.

Pisces’s binoculars caught them.

The device reacted instantly as data flooded across the lenses.

“Shit.”

The operator’s voice erupted through G6’s earpiece.

“MISSION ONGOING! APPREHEND THE MAN IN RED!”

G6’s expression went utterly still as she returned to the scope.

The man in red was already moving toward a waiting vehicle.

“Explain.”

“The deceased individual failed post-impact genetic confirmation.”

G6’s brow lowered.

The smart round had penetrated the body and collected a microscopic tissue sample upon impact.

It had found no match.

“The face matched.”

“Visual similarity remains high. Genetic identity does not.”

“That isn’t an explanation.”

After a brief pause, the operator answered.

“High probability of deliberate facial replication.”

G6 stared at the dead man.

“Plastic surgery.”

“Likely. The deceased subject appears to have been surgically altered to resemble the primary target.”

Pisces continued tracking the fleeing man.

“Same height. Similar build. Same haircut. Even the jaw was reconstructed.”

G6 looked from the dead decoy to the man in red.

The implication was obvious. Their target knew his face was circulating. He could have changed his own.

Instead, he had altered someone else’s.

Someone with a similar enough frame to survive distant inspection had been surgically turned into a disposable substitute, dressed and positioned beneath an umbrella for one purpose—to take the first bullet.

G6’s expression cooled.

So you butchered another man’s face because you didn’t want to ruin your own.

Her finger tapped once against the rifle stock.

Fucking narcissist.

Below, the real target threw open the rear door of the waiting vehicle.

Pisces’s binoculars continued processing.

“Facial geometry against the original file is almost exact. Ear structure too. That’s him.”

The operator confirmed it.

“Primary target probability: ninety-nine point eight percent.”

The man in red glanced back once before climbing into the vehicle.

The car accelerated away.

G6 stood.

“He’s running.”

She left the rifle where it was. Pisces would recover it; there was no reason to drag a long-range weapon through a pursuit.

“Secure the route.”

“Roger.”

G6 ran.

Her boots struck concrete as she crossed the rooftop, gathered momentum, and launched herself from the edge. The grappling gun fired in the same motion.

A black cable shot across the gap and hooked into the concrete of the neighboring building. The line snapped taut, catching her weight and throwing her into a wide arc over the street below as headlights and several floors of empty air passed beneath her.

G6 released at the peak of the swing and landed hard on the next rooftop, rolling once to absorb the impact before rising without losing momentum.

“Pisces.”

“Vehicle heading east. Two blocks ahead.”

She vaulted an air-conditioning unit.

The fleeing car flashed through the street below.

G6 fired the grappling gun again. The hook caught, the line tightened, and she swung across another gap before releasing onto the next building.

The target accelerated.

G6 did not follow the road.

Roads are predictable. Buildings are faster.

She cut diagonally through the district, using each structure only long enough to steal momentum from it before moving to the next. The black cable snapped taut between buildings as she swung, landed, and ran without hesitation.

For a moment, the vehicle disappeared behind a tower.

G6 landed on a narrow ledge.

The rifle was gone now. She needed her own eyes.

“Activate zoom on my left lens.”

“Zoom activated.”

Her vision tightened, pulling the city closer. Headlights sharpened, license plates became readable, and moving silhouettes behind windows resolved into individual bodies.

The fleeing vehicle appeared several streets ahead.

“There.”

She moved again.

Grapple. Swing. Release.

“You’re gaining,” Pisces said.

“No shit.”

G6 landed, sprinted across another rooftop, and vaulted a low wall without breaking stride.

The vehicle turned through another junction.

She tracked it through her ocular zoom.

Direction. Speed. Road layout. Possible escape paths.

After watching one more turn, she understood.

“He’s heading toward the three-way intersection.”

Pisces checked his map.

A moment later, he answered.

“You’re right.”

G6 changed direction immediately.

She stopped following the car.

She intercepted it.

The next grapple caught high on the corner of a glass building. G6 swung around the structure, her body nearly horizontal before she released and allowed the momentum to throw her across the gap.

She landed on the next roof, took three running steps, and jumped again. The building beyond sat lower, allowing her to drop onto it without breaking pace.

Then she saw the church.

Old stone rose between the surrounding modern structures, standing at the head of a three-way intersection. One road approached directly toward the front while two others branched away on either side.

The target’s car was coming down the central road.

Straight toward it.

G6 smiled.

Found you.

She fired the grapple one final time.

The hook caught high against the church structure and the cable tightened, launching G6 from the rooftop and across the street before the reel pulled her upward. Her boots struck stone near the roofline, one hand catching the ledge before she hauled herself over.

The cable retracted with a metallic hiss.

G6 straightened atop the church.

The car was still approaching fast, but she had beaten it there.

She drew her pistol.

“Pisces.”

“Still tracking.”

“Confirm.”

His binoculars locked onto the moving vehicle from farther behind.

The target’s face was visible through the windshield now, with no sunglasses, no mask, and no decoy standing in front of him.