The door closed with a sharp thud that resonated like a gunshot in the Mexican night's stillness. John and Mia barely separated, their labored breaths still mixing in the safe house's dense air. The interior light was dim, filtered through rice paper shades that projected elongated shadows on the white walls.
But they weren't alone.
A female figure remained motionless by the window, silhouette cut against a table lamp's dying glow. Her brown eyes—large, expressive, revealing—blinked with a mixture of surprise and something darker, more personal. Something she didn't expect to feel.
Natalia de la Cruz was twenty-six years old and carried the weight of an inheritance she never asked for. Daughter of Rafael "El Santo" de la Cruz, one of Mexico's most feared capos before being extradited to the United States ten years ago, she had grown up amid luxury stained with blood and broken promises. When her father fell—sentenced to life in a maximum-security prison in Colorado—Natalia made a decision that would have shattered the old capo's heart: she became an undercover agent.
They called her "La Santita" in Albatros Cartel circles. Cruel irony. The Saint's daughter infiltrated in the very organizations her father had dominated.
She was beautiful in a way that didn't ask permission to be: dark skin like burnt caramel, full lips that seemed made to pronounce uncomfortable truths, delicate but firm features, and dark hair so long it fell to her waist like a cascade of black silk. But at that moment, arms crossed over her chest and jaw clenched, there was nothing delicate about her.
"What are you doing?" she asked, voice sharper than intended. "I didn't know you had that kind of relationship."
John tensed. Discomfort ran up his spine like static electricity. He opened his mouth, searching for words that didn't come.
Mia, on the other hand, remained serene. Almost too serene. But something inside her had stirred with that kiss. Something small, barely perceptible, like a spark falling on damp gunpowder. It didn't ignite. But it was there.
She felt an interest she didn't expect to feel. An echo of something she had believed dead fourteen years ago.
"We were being watched," Mia finally said, voice cold and professional, though her eyes remained fixed on John a second longer than necessary. "They can't see my face. We'd ruin the mission."
Natalia frowned, lips pressed in a thin line. The tone of annoyance in her voice was unmistakable.
"And was a kiss necessary?"
John turned his head toward Mia, waiting for her to respond. But Mia said nothing. She just looked at him. Fixedly. Penetrating. As if evaluating something he couldn't see.
The silence stretched, uncomfortable, dense.
Finally, Mia broke the moment with an abrupt wave of her hand.
"Let's get to what concerns us," she said, walking toward the central table where a laptop and several documents waited spread out. "The information. The next mission."
John nodded with a serious expression, internally grateful for the change of subject. Natalia, still with a hint of annoyance on her face, also nodded and approached the table.
⸻
Mia opened the laptop with precise movements, her fingers sliding over the keyboard until the screen lit up with encrypted files. Photographs. Maps. Names.
"I had no idea Damián had a daughter," she commented, almost as if talking to herself.
In that instant, a flash crossed her mind. A fragmented, brutal memory. Damián Corvelli standing in a destroyed place, weapon raised. The gunshot's roar. The choked scream. The blood.
Pain pierced her chest like a red-hot knife. She closed her eyes tightly, clenching her fists until her nails dug into her palms.
Breathe. Breathe. Not now.
She opened her eyes again. Her face had recovered its ice mask.
John observed her for an instant, noticing the almost imperceptible tremor in her jaw. But he said nothing.
"That's right," he responded. "Damián has a daughter. Michelle Corvelli is the Ghost."
Natalia stopped dead, eyes wide open.
"What? Really?" Her tone oscillated between disbelief and fascination. "I didn't see that coming."
"For now we'll just observe her," Mia said. "We need to confirm her movements, her connections. We can't arrest her without solid evidence directly linking the Ghost to the Corvelli organization's crimes."
John nodded.
"That's what I was doing."
Mia closed Michelle's file and opened another. A map of Europe unfolded on the screen, with a city marked in red.
"In thirty-four days," she said, voice firm and controlled, "politicians, businessmen, and mafia bosses will meet in Prague. At a clandestine auction."
She paused, letting that settle.
"Our intelligence suggests Damián Corvelli is an obsessive collector of historical antiquities. Stolen artifacts, mainly. He'll go for the auction's grand prize."
She touched the screen, enlarging the image of an enormous sword. It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time: Toledo steel blade, handle decorated with silver and ruby inlays, black leather sheath with Latin engravings.
"This is The Executioner," Mia continued. "It was stolen twelve years ago from the National Art Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona. It belonged to a royal executioner from the 16th century. Worth millions on the black market."
Natalia whistled low, impressed.
John studied the image carefully, engraving every detail in his memory.
"John," Mia said, turning toward him with an expression that had hardened even more, "you must find out if Damián will really go to that meeting. Because there you'll find your true objective in this mission."
She touched the screen again. The image changed.
An aristocratic-looking man appeared: gray hair combed back, impeccable suit, affable smile that didn't reach his eyes. There was something disturbing about that smile. Something that made skin crawl.
"Viktor Molnár," Mia said, pronouncing the name as if spitting venom. "Hungarian. Sixty-two years old. Officially, he's a high-level art dealer. Represents private collectors at international auctions. Has galleries in Budapest, Vienna, and Zurich."
She paused. Her voice became darker.
"Unofficially, he's one of Europe's largest traffickers in stolen antiquities. And something worse."
Mia's eyes hardened until they became pure ice.
"He's a pedophile. He's linked to the world's largest child trafficking networks. Children disappeared from Eastern Europe. Private auctions where human beings are sold like art objects."
The silence that fell over the room was absolute.
John felt his blood freeze in his veins. He had seen much in his career. He had infiltrated cartels, witnessed executions, walked among mountains of cocaine and rivers of blood-stained money.
But this…
Child trafficking.
That was different. That crossed a line that not even the most ruthless criminals openly dared to cross.
Natalia brought a hand to her mouth, face pale.
"My God…"
Mia continued, relentless.
"Viktor Molnár is your target, John. If Damián goes to Prague, you'll go with him. And that's where you must reach. Molnár. His network. Because if we manage to dismantle that operation, we won't just stop the traffic in stolen art… we'll save lives. Children's lives."
John nodded slowly, jaw clenched.
"Understood."
Mia closed the laptop with a sharp thud.
"That's all for now. Stay in touch. And be careful."
Their eyes met for an instant. Something passed between them.
Then Mia turned and left the room without saying more.
⸻
Two blocks away, inside a black sedan with tinted windows, Michelle Corvelli trembled.
Her hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles had turned white. Breathing stuck in her throat, labored, irregular. Eyes burned with tears she refused to let fall.
But she couldn't contain them anymore.
A tear rolled down her cheek. Then another. And another.
The kiss.
She had seen the damn kiss.
John—her Jon, the man whose face had haunted her dreams her entire life, the man her soul had recognized the instant their gazes crossed—kissing another woman.
With passion. Without hesitation. As if she didn't exist.
What if I was wrong?
The doubt sank into her chest like a rusty dagger, twisting, tearing.
What if Jon isn't John? What if all this… is just my madness? What if the memories are just delusions of a broken mind?
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to contain the sob threatening to escape.
Jon wouldn't do this to me.
She had been faithful to him. For centuries. Without knowing if he existed. Without knowing if she would ever find him again. Even in this life, where she had no right to remember him, her heart had kept that empty space, waiting.
Always waiting.
But he…
A soft voice interrupted her thoughts.
"Calm down, my child."
Michelle turned her head sharply. Alfred sat in the back seat, hands resting on the dark wood cane he always carried. His wrinkled face reflected an ancient calm, as if he had seen too much to be surprised by something as simple as human pain.
"Surely this has an explanation," he continued, voice gentle but firm.
Michelle let out a bitter, broken laugh.
"I'm an idiot," she whispered. "I've known him barely a few days. Nothing's happened between us. I have no right to…"
"You know that's not true," Alfred interrupted, leaning forward from the back seat.
Michelle opened her mouth to respond, but the words died on her lips.
Because at that instant, three black trucks appeared on the deserted street.
They stopped with a screech of tires right in front of the safe house where John, Mia, and Natalia were.
Michelle tensed, heart pounding in her chest like a war drum.
"What the hell…?"
The trucks' doors burst open. Armed men began descending—more than twenty, all with assault rifles, bulletproof vests, faces covered with balaclavas. They moved with the brutal efficiency of soldiers trained in urban combat.
And then, from the central vehicle, descended a man who didn't need a balaclava to be recognized.
Rodrigo "El Roro" Quintana.
Leader of the Veracruz Cartel. One of Mexico's most dangerous men. Thirty-eight years old, robust build, a scar crossing his upper lip like a permanent reminder of a knife fight he'd won at sixteen.
He wore a black silk shirt unbuttoned to his chest, gold chains hanging over dark hair, tight jeans, and leather boots. But what caught Michelle's attention wasn't his outfit.
It was the weapon one of his men handed him.
An RPG-7 rocket launcher.
El Roro took it with a smile that revealed gold teeth.
"This son of a bitch is going to see! Nobody messes with me!"
He rested the rocket launcher on his shoulder, adjusting the sight with expert movements.
Michelle understood the situation in a fraction of a second.
They're going to kill them.
Without thinking, she turned the sedan's key. The engine roared.
"My child, no!" Alfred shouted, but it was too late.
Michelle floored the accelerator.
⸻
Inside the safe house, John, Mia, and Natalia had no warning.
El Roro pulled the trigger.
The rocket launcher roared like a dragon.
The rocket shot out with a high-pitched whistle that tore through the night, leaving behind a trail of white smoke.
And then the world exploded.
BOOM!
The explosion was deafening. An orange and red fireball devoured the house's front half, projecting debris, glass, and twisted metal in all directions. Windows exploded outward like teeth ripped from a jaw. Walls cracked, the roof partially collapsed, and a column of black smoke began rising toward the night sky like a raised fist.
Inside, the impact threw them to the floor like rag dolls.
John felt air expelled from his lungs. The world turned white, then black, then a pulsing red. His ears rang with a high-pitched whine that blocked everything else. The metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. Dust and ash got in his throat, making him cough violently.
He crawled over the rubble, disoriented, vision blurred. Beside him, Natalia lay face down, coughing, hair covered in white dust. Beyond, Mia tried to stand, staggering, blood running from a wound on her forehead.
John managed to get up, leaning against a cracked wall. His survival instincts kicked in hard.
Get out. We have to get out. Now.
"Mia! Natalia!" he shouted, though his own voice sounded distant, muffled by the ringing in his ears. "We have to move!"
The three figures staggered toward what remained of the entrance. They crossed the destroyed threshold and went out to the street, coughing, dirty, covered in dust and blood.
And they found themselves with twenty rifles pointing directly at them.
El Roro stepped forward, the rocket launcher still smoking on his shoulder. His smile was pure evil.
"The albatross!" he shouted, voice laden with triumph. "I finally got you, son of a bitch! You thought you could steal territory from me and get out alive!"
John analyzed the situation with lightning speed. Twenty armed men. Him unarmed. Mia wounded. Natalia barely recovering.
No way out.
El Roro lowered the rocket launcher and pulled a gold pistol from his waist.
"Get ready, bastards!" he shouted to his men. "I want them all dead!"
The sicarios raised their weapons.
And then the world exploded in a second hell.
But this time, the fire came from elsewhere.
A barrage of shots rained on the Veracruz Cartel men from the left. Tracer bullets crossed the night like fallen meteors. Three sicarios fell immediately, with smoking holes in chest and head. Others threw themselves to the ground, seeking cover behind the trucks.
John turned his head toward the source of fire.
And he saw her.
Michelle Corvelli walked toward them with measured steps, lethal, unstoppable. She carried a Glock 17 in each hand, arms extended in perfect combat stance. Her face was a mask of controlled fury. Her golden eyes shone with a light that wasn't entirely human.
Each shot was precise. Each movement, a dance of death.
Another sicario fell. Then another.
John felt something in his chest tighten hard.
Michelle…
Their gazes met for a fraction of a second. And in that instant, John understood.
She was watching me.
She saw everything.
The kiss. The house. Mia.
Disappointment hit him like a punch to the stomach. Not because of the mission. Not because of the infiltration.
But because he knew, at that precise moment, that Michelle had seen something that had destroyed her. And he couldn't explain it. Not now. Not here.
Michelle reached them, not stopping shooting. Her voice came out dry, cutting, laden with cold anger.
"Who else?"
John opened his mouth but found no words.
Natalia, still dizzy from the explosion, tried to pull her weapon from its holster. Her hands trembled. The adrenaline and explosion shock made her movements clumsy, slow.
Mia, on the other hand, had a high-pitched ringing piercing her eardrum. She had been closer to the explosion than the others. The world around her moved in slow motion, blurred, distorted. She could barely stay on her feet.
But she heard the voice.
A female voice. Young. Firm.
Michelle.
The name resonated in her mind like a bell.
Damián's daughter. The Ghost.
She tried to turn her head, forcing her eyes to focus. And when she finally managed to see her…
Everything stopped.
Michelle walked toward them with a Glock in each hand, shooting with lethal precision. Her posture was perfect. Her face, a mask of concentration and fury. Dark hair waved with each movement.
And then Mia really saw her.
The face.
The eyes.
The way she moved.
Something inside Mia shattered like glass under pressure.
Her pulse raced. A brutal cold—more frozen than anything she had felt before—ran through her entire body, from crown to soles. Her hands began to tremble. Breathing stuck in her throat.
No.
It can't be.
No…
And then the memory came.
Not as a flash. Not as a fragment.
But as a brutal, unstoppable avalanche that dragged her underwater and wouldn't let her breathe.
⸻
Fourteen years ago.
A destroyed place. Cracked walls. Rubble everywhere. Smell of gunpowder and blood.
Mia Hartmann—younger, face not yet hardened, eyes still full of hope—knelt on the floor. Her hands tied behind her back. Blood ran down her forehead from an open wound on her scalp.
In front of her, a man in an impeccable suit held a weapon. Damián Corvelli. Younger too, but with the same cold, calculating gaze.
And beside him…
A girl.
Barely five years old.
Dark hair. Golden eyes shining with tears. Dirty, frightened face, but defiant.
The girl looked at Mia. Her lips trembled. And then she screamed with all the strength her small lungs could gather:
"Mamaaaaa!"
Mia felt her heart tear inside her chest.
"Isabella! No! Please, don't hurt her! Do whatever you want to me, but don't hurt her! Please!"
Damián smiled. It was a cold smile. Empty.
He raised the weapon.
He aimed it directly at the girl's head.
"No," Mia whispered, voice broken. "Please… she's just a child… please…"
Damián didn't respond.
He pulled the trigger.
BANG!
The shot resonated like the end of the world.
The girl fell.
Everything collapsed.
Mia's scream was inhuman. Animal. A sound no human being should be capable of producing. She lunged forward, fighting against the bindings, clawing the floor with her knees, trying to reach her daughter.
But Damián's men held her. They dragged her backward. And the last thing she saw before they beat her unconscious was her daughter's small body—her Isabella, her baby, her reason for existing—lying on the floor, motionless.
⸻
Mia returned to the present with a choked gasp.
The world had refocused. Shots still resonated around her. Michelle kept walking toward them, shooting, saving them.
Alive.
The second most brutal tear of her life—because the first had been losing her—pierced her like lightning.
Her legs failed. She fell to her knees on the pavement, hands trembling violently, chest rising and falling in irregular gasps.
Isabella.
My Isabella.
She's alive.
And she doesn't recognize me.
Tears began running down her face. Silent. Devastating.
Because she knew, in that instant, that her daughter—the girl she had mourned for fourteen years, the girl whose empty grave she visited every year—was not only alive.
She was on the other side.
She was the Ghost.
She was Damián Corvelli's daughter.
And Mia Hartmann, Head of the Special Crimes Unit, the woman who had dedicated every second of the last fourteen years to destroying the men who took her daughter…
…had just discovered her daughter was one of them.
⸻
Michelle kept advancing through the rain of bullets, eliminating sicarios with mechanical precision. Her body moved by pure instinct, training engraved in every muscle, every fiber. But her mind… her mind was a whirlwind of pain and fury.
The kiss.
The woman.
Jon kissing another.
Each shot was a release. Each enemy that fell, an escape valve for the rage consuming her from within.
And then her eyes met the woman's.
The one kneeling on the pavement. The one with black hair—wig, it showed—and dark contact lenses that couldn't hide something in her gaze. Something… familiar.
Michelle stopped for barely a fraction of a second.
Where do I know her from?
The thought crossed her mind like lightning, but she had no time to process it. Because at that instant, the woman looked at her with an expression Michelle couldn't decipher. Pain. Horror. Recognition.
Why does she look at me like that?
But the answer didn't matter.
Nothing mattered anymore.
Because Jon—her Jon, the man her soul had waited for centuries—had betrayed her. He had kissed her. This unknown woman who now looked at her as if she'd seen a ghost.
And Michelle, with her heart broken in a thousand pieces and fury burning in her chest like liquid fire, raised one of her Glocks.
And aimed.
Directly at Mia Hartmann's chest.
⸻
The world slowed down.
Mia saw the weapon rise. Saw Michelle's finger—her Isabella, her baby, her daughter—rest on the trigger.
And she didn't move.
She couldn't.
Because part of her—the part that had died fourteen years ago in that destroyed place—wanted it to happen. Wanted her daughter to recognize her, even through a bullet. Wanted, in some twisted and cruel way, for this to be real.
Tears kept running down her face, silent, unstoppable.
Michelle didn't hesitate.
Three shots. Precise. Lethal.
The projectiles struck Mia's chest with brutal force, throwing her backward. Her body hit the pavement with a dull, wet sound.
⸻
John saw everything happen in slow motion.
The weapon rising.
The shots.
Mia falling.
His mind shattered.
It wasn't a gradual collapse. It was instantaneous. As if someone had taken his brain and thrown it against a concrete wall.
"WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?!" he shouted, with a voice he didn't recognize as his own.
He lunged forward, toward Mia, but Michelle blocked his path. Her golden eyes—those eyes that had looked at him with such warmth, such sweetness barely days ago—now burned with pure, crystalline, absolute hatred.
It was the look of someone who has been betrayed in the worst possible way. Of someone whose heart has been destroyed and who now only wants to return that pain to the world.
John stopped dead.
Because what he saw in those eyes wasn't Michelle.
It was Elena.
But not the Elena who had loved him. Not the Elena who had sworn to wait for him in another life. Not the Elena who had died in his arms whispering words of eternal love.
This was another Elena.
A broken Elena. Betrayed. Furious.
And in that instant, the contrast destroyed him.
He remembered the sweetness in Elena's gaze when she looked at him in the hall. He remembered how her eyes lit up every time he entered the house, as if the sun had decided to shine only for him. He remembered the warmth, the trust, the absolute devotion he had seen in those same golden eyes.
And now…
Now there was only ice. And hatred. And pain so deep it had no name.
John felt something inside him break.
Not physically. Not in his body.
In his soul.
Because he understood, in that terrible and perfect moment, what he had done.
He had lost her.
Not through death. Not through time. Not through destiny.
He had lost her through his own actions.
Elena—Michelle—looked at him as if he were a stranger. As if all the centuries of love, all the promises whispered on deathbeds, all the intertwined lives… had been lies.
"Michelle…" he whispered, voice broken. "I…"
But he couldn't finish.
Because she turned her face, looking away from him as if she couldn't bear to see him for one more second.
And that gesture—that simple act of looking away—hurt him more than any bullet ever could.