Page 59 of Kill Feed

He exhales sharply but moves behind the bag anyway, bracing it with both palms, planting his feet wide on the mat.

“Toying,” he repeats, like the word offends him.

I throw the first jab. It lands clean and direct before the bag snaps back. It rebounds into his hands, and he shoves it toward me. I pivot and drive a cross into the centre mass.

“He’s not your toy,” Marcos continues over the rhythmic thud of leather against padding. “He’s a liability to the corporation. And to you.”

I shift my weight and add a hook to the ribs of the bag, then another, building momentum.

“Selene doesn’t know about Adrian,” I reply evenly. “No one does.”

“Not yet,” he exclaims. “For fuck-sakes. He’s the photographer. How long until she finds out? If it gets out that you didn’t finish the job the night you killed Xavier,” Marcos continues, voice lower, heavier in tone, “Selene will not find it charming.”

I don’t stop punching. “She won’t hear about it.”

“And if she does?”

I feint left and slam my right into the bag hard enough that it jolts Marcos backward half a step.

“Then I’ll handle it,” I claim. “Besides, it will look very suspicious if her new photographer just goes missing.”

He scoffs, “Selene isn’t one to fuck with, especially if it involves her systems.”

I throw in another combination of jabs, crosses, hooks, and repeat as my breath steadies, heart rate controlled. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Do you?” he shoots back. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you lost focus.”

I step in closer and deliver a brutal uppercut to the underside of the bag. “I don’t lose focus,” I reply, gaze still fixed on the punching bag in front of me.

Marcos's expression shifts from annoyed to stern. “This isn’t a joke. You don’t get to improvise with something like this.”

I grab the bag with both hands and shove it aside, breaking the rhythm.

“I’m not improvising, Marcos.”

“You didn’t kill him, Dante.”

“I chose not to.”

His jaw tightens. “And that choice can get both of us killed.” He continues before I can respond. “It was my contacts that tweaked the security feeds at Nightfall,” he says. “My people rerouted camera angles, so you had blind spots to chase your little toy. My people who dug up Adrian’s file when you asked.”

I hold his gaze as I say, “I’m fully fucking aware of that, thanks.”

“If Selene finds out that you didn’t do your job properly,” he presses, “you know what she’ll do. If this blows back, it won’t just land on you. I vouched for you. I put my name behind this.”

I strike the bag again. “And I’ll make sure it never comes back to you.”

“That’s not how this works.”

“It is if I say it is.”

Marcos studies me for a long moment, weighing something, then claims, “You’re changing the plan,” like this was all part of some grand scheme.

Xavier was never supposed to be complicated.

He was a curious fuck who started digging where he wasn’t supposed to. Curiosity around Phantom Productions tends to shorten lifespans, and I made sure he met his maker that night. He had been circling for weeks with a camera in hand, asking the wrong questions in the right places. Digging into Kill Feed under the guise of a documentary. Poking at infrastructure he didn’t understand, and Selene doesn’t condone curiosity when it turns investigative. So, she erased him.

It could’ve been anyone, yet she chose me due to last year's success and the fact that I always get the job done. I don’t make messes I can’t control. I don’t linger, and I sure as fuck don’t improvise.