Page 130 of Lethal in Pink

Someone has been in my apartment.

Could it have been—no, not possible.

There's no way Jae would know the grammar of this space. Besides, a handgun in a hidden panel is alarming, but it’s not evidence of anything specific.

This was the underground.

The replacement contractor. The contingency plan. The person they sent when patience ran out and suspicion crystallized into certainty. They came in, they looked, they confirmed what they already knew: Amiyah Lane is stalling. Amiyah Lane is compromised.

The board does not tolerate soft.

I don’t give myself time for rage. I move on autopilot. A quick sweep confirms the hard assets—the Glock, the throwing knives, the burner phone—are untouched. They didn't come to steal; they came to inspect. To leave a calling card.

They are no longer waiting. The replacement is already in motion.

I strip off my school clothes and pull on black jeans, a gray hoodie, running shoes. No makeup. No hesitation. I grab my keys.

I do not let myself think about what I am going to say when I get there. Thinking is what got me here—weeks of running simulations, looking for angles, telling myself lies about moral justifications and clean exits and the possibility that somehow, against every rule I’ve ever lived by, I could have both. The woman who overthought is the woman who hesitated. The woman who hesitated is the woman who is now being replaced.

I head for the door. I don't need to simulate this. I don't need to look for angles. I need the only person who can help me navigate the fallout of a burnt identity.

I’m going to see my father.

The correctional facility sits in the dark, a squat, brutalist scar against the desert floor. My headlights catch the razor wire first, glinting like hungry teeth, then the windowless concrete walls. I cut the engine and let the silence swallow the car. The only vehicle in the visitor lot is mine.

I check the rearview. Red wig on, chestnut-brown contacts in, freckles stippled across my nose with a manic precision. The woman in the glass has my bones but not my soul.

My father taught me well.

Check-in is an autopsy of my person. Clipboard. Alias. Phone. Arms out, palms up, fingers splayed. The guard—the one with the pencil-thin mustache—doesn't look at me; he looks at the uniform of my persona. He waves me through to the metal detector.

The transition is a series of hydraulic sighs. Click. Clang. Seal. Each door leaves me in a corridor of air that is too sterile to be human. My hands press against my thighs, fingers splaying, trying to ground the kinetic jitter under my skin. I force them flat. Force them still.

The visitation room is a tomb of fluorescent light and industrial cleaner.

Marcus is already there. He sits with the spine of a man who has replaced his soul with geometry. His fingers are mid-motion, folding a scrap of paper. He looks up. His eyes, dark and analytical, dissect my disguise in a single, cold pass. He sets the paper down, unfinished.

I sit. I place my hands on the table, palms down, knuckles white. The table is cold, a slab of synthetic ice.

“You look like hell, bug,” he says. His voice is a low, controlled friction.

“Long night.”

“I gathered.”

I start the presentation. I don’t use my voice; I use a script. I lay out the contract, the target, the professional intimacy I was never meant to cultivate. I describe the replacement contractor as if I’m reading a grocery list. I leave out the handgun in the bathroom and the feeling of Jae’s cheek against my palm. I don’t need to say them; the way my heart hammers against my ribs is a neon sign he’s already reading.

I finish. The silence that follows is a physical weight, pressing the air out of the room. A door clangs shut somewhere deep in the gut of the prison—the sound of an ending.

Marcus stares at the paper crane he’s been building. His jaw tightens, a muscle pulsing at the hinge. Finally, he speaks.

“Stop paying for my lawyers.”

The air in the room goes thin. I blink. “I’m not—”

“Stop,” he says, sharper. The word isn't a command; it's a structural beam, holding up the ceiling. “You don’t owe me your life, Amiyah. I made my choices. They were mine to carry. You were never supposed to be the mule for my debt.”

“You’re my father.”