Of course, Nightingale had wondered why a man with godlike tricks still needed bodyguards; but with his taste for courting death, even a legion would be a paper umbrella in a monsoon.

Cold hope pricked her tongue. “Our original agreement should include me putting him down, right?”

Nightingale set the violin case on the table like a quiet coffin and spoke, voice rimed with frost.

It wasn’t her place to decide the Boss’s partners—she was staff, a hired blade. But even blades have terms. Years ago he’d signed a contract with her, rights and duties inked under winter light.

“Nightingale, Nightingale, easy.” His tone was warm, but cool water ran under it. “I’m as by-the-book a merchant as they come. When did I ever break a deal, especially with our own? This visitor surprised me too. After that civil war, he should’ve taken everything he wanted. No reason to come knocking again.”

The Boss patted her shoulder, strolled to the bar. His fingers—long, like a sculptor’s—tapped the counter, tap-tap like light rain on bamboo. The tropical loudshirt on that handsome face made his calm look absurd, like a snow fox wearing hibiscus.

And anyone who mistook him for a clown ended as mud under his wheels, breathing through teeth.

“That war leveled my hometown,” she said, ash in her chest and sparks in her eyes. “I watched my family die under shells, all thanks to that gilded fraud. And he still sits high. I don’t know your plan, Boss—but in my head, for years, over and over, I’ve rehearsed one thing. Killing him.”

Her fury twisted, then smoothed, like stormclouds settling over a silent lake. Fire and grief had cooked her heart black. She’d mapped assassinations, sketched suicide runs with bombs tied like iron fruit. But before she finished her duty to the Boss, she kept her code like a lantern in wind.

Old Xu sighed, heavy as a worn boot. He set down his glass and went into the kitchen to wrestle the fresh produce, steam rising like morning mist. A career soldier turned elite mercenary, he’d seen too many souls eaten hollow by revenge. Living beside Nightingale, he knew the past behind the gentle smile, and it hurt him like a sand grain in the eye.

His daughter, Xu Xiaolou, was the same age. But a girl who crossed a battlefield alone after her family fell—no youth matches that winter. He’d watched them both grow, two saplings in the same yard. He counted both as daughters. All the more reason he didn’t want Nightingale to burn herself to ash for vengeance.

For now, this knot was hers to untie.

The Boss nodded. He knew the weight she carried; that’s why he’d inked the contract.

“Of course.”

Her gaze was winter glass. He laced his fingers, propped his chin, studied her like measuring a blade, then smiled.

“He’s here to trade, Nightingale. And what’s our rule for trade?”

“If you gain… you pay a price.”

Her eyes stilled. A wild possibility fluttered like a moth at a lantern. Her heart drummed, a war drum under silk, and she looked at him with a bright edge of hope.

He grinned and snapped his fingers. “The price-collecting? It’s yours. If he reopens old business, he pays the matching cost. Honestly, that last deal left a pebble in my shoe. As for the price… Nightingale, I trust you’ll make me happy.”

Ice thawed to spring. She burst into a blossom of smiles, threw her arms around him, and pressed him into a soft avalanche. He wheezed like a fish on shore.

“Thanks, Boss~ Knew you were the best~”

“Kh—cough—let go, Night. I—I can’t—breathe—”

While the Boss fought for air, a luxury hotel in a tropical resort hummed with lazy aircon. There, a middle-aged man labored over a girl in a rhythm best left off the record. The girl was blond, brown-eyed, a mirror-smudge of Nightingale.

She choked her voice down, white hands strangling the sheets like sails in gale. The restraint only stoked the man’s hunger. After a hard rush, he spilled his not-so-precious seed. The girl collapsed on her stomach, panting, still as a cat in sun.

“So, done having fun?”

The ceiling spoke. The middle-aged man jerked, nerves snapping like drumskin. He grabbed his radio, face souring like old milk.

“If it’s not urgent, don’t disturb me. Did you process the intel I handed you today? Is the intel department a bunch of freeloaders? Year after year, fat budgets, and I never see you solve a single thorn for me.”

His jowls bunched like meat into a boar mask, ugly and mean.

The resort’s heat stuck to him like wet cloth, already foul. A voice from above meant the intel boys were glued to his back again, mosquitoes at dusk.

Before power, he’d envied the big countries’ security and intel shops—the famous ones, the Bureau and the Agency, your f-x-i, your c-x-a. They swagger through movies, which hints at their steel off-screen. So once he took the throne, he built his own.

But it was born from dust, no elder roots, no hand-me-down pipes. Methods were antique, knives dull. Next to true infiltrators, they were too young—ripe fruit for other hands.

To kickstart growth, he gave them huge authority. The branch bent crooked. They could even leash him. Like now—they doubted his source, called him lust-drunk.

What a joke.

He was a head of state. Even if not monk-clean, he’d seen enough silk and skin. Lust-blind? Not him.

“Heh, don’t be mad,” the handler chuckled, a cat batting yarn. “Your rule says we can doubt your source when needed. It protects you, and the country. We’re verifying. Special Ops should already be at that village. Half an hour, you’ll have the result. Then we’ll know if your source holds water.”

If anyone else talked to him like that, they’d be shoveling Siberian frost by dawn. But he’d put his best comrade at the helm to keep the leash tight. In private, talk ran loose. Still, it grated. He’d just finished his business; could they not talk smooth for once?

“Hope so. I’ll wait for your report.”

He tossed the radio aside. From under his pillow, he fished out a box of cheap cigarettes, lit one, let the smoke coil like snake-silver. Eyes cold, he slid off the bed, opened his laptop, keyed the password, and checked the fresh batch from the trade.

Nothing in this world can’t be traded. He knew it. The Boss knew it. Ten-plus years ago, on a blood-soaked, ice-crusted line, he’d walked out of a burning trench and bought himself an “ascent” from the Boss’s hand.

He hadn’t believed it then: such a young Boss promising a seat at the top. Now? He’d undersold himself. Why ask to lead Russia? He should’ve asked to lead the world.

From civil war’s first shell to the last, he’d climbed from hope-starved prisoner to national leader. That wasn’t luck. Without the Boss, he would’ve bled into Russian snow.

He’d seen the Boss’s miracles, so he believed in the man. Back on the line, the Boss looked twenty. A decade rolled by, and the face hadn’t aged a day. Time refused him, like a clock with its hands torn off.

“Strange. Half a world away, yet he knows my country like the lines in his palm.”

He opened a folder—names and branches tied to rebels and the state’s inner organs. This file, he never piped to intel. The laptop never touched a network. It came straight from the Boss, safe as iron under sea.

Familiar names flashed. He smiled, thin and cold. Who goes to Siberia to dig potatoes, who catches a bullet? Your wife and kids? I’ll “take care” of them.

He could stomach noise inside the nation. But noise must not bend the road. Not now. Not ever.

These people held high seats; many wore uniforms. They skimmed arms deals for fat profit. Every year he pinched pennies for the military budget. After the split, the nation rose fast, yes—but science doesn’t move by will alone. Without funds, words are feathers.

He understood what science meant. He’d been driving it hard, like a whip over steel, year after year.