Falter and he dies

Six hours later,

Kaia regained consciousness. Her eyes opened to the pale light of the bedside lamp. She lay flat on her back, the mattress cold beneath her.

She groaned and forced herself to sit up as her brain replayed the morning’s horror. A sharp, sizzling pain throbbed at the right side of her skull and made her clamp her eyes shut. She sat there, palms pressed to her temples, trying to ride out the ache.

Everything felt unreal. Kai’s kidnapping. Rodriguez. The task.

Then the video of Kai flashed in her mind, and she shot up from the bed.

She ran out of her room, desperate for the nightmare to dissolve. Her footsteps pounded down the hallway as she raced toward Kai’s door.

“Kai!!” she cried, voice breaking. No answer came.

She pushed the door open and was hit by the familiar scent of his cologne. The room looked exactly as she’d left it that morning—everything in place, as if he had only stepped out to play. The normalcy mocked her.

It dawned on her with a cold, splitting clarity: this was not a dream. This was her life now.

Kai was gone, in Rodriguez’s hands, and she had been given a task.

She slid down the door and pressed her back against it until the wood steadied her shaking legs. Her gaze fixed on Kai’s photo on the wall as if it were an altar.

“Seduce Vittorio Caruso, and gather every detail about his business, properties and manpower. Then… poison him,” Rodriguez’s voice reverberated in her skull like a verdict.

Her eyes gave way. Tears spilled and she let them fall.

“It’s all my fault,” she wailed, fists smashing the marble floor. “I shouldn’t have chosen that life. I should have gotten a decent job.” Her words were ragged between sobs.

Guilt settled on her like a stone. Kaia had come from nothing. Her parents had struggled just to keep food on the table and send the twins to school. At sixteen, Kaia and her twin sister, Kiara, had been orphaned, and left with no safety net, no future, only survival. Debts closed in like vultures. Bills multiplied. The one thing their parents had left was their old house, and it was unwise for them to sell it as it was the only roof they had.

They hardly ate at all. Hunger became a constant companion, gnawing and humiliating.

Kaia’s life as a con artist began on a night when starvation had become unbearable. Kiara slipped out searching for scraps. She rifled through dumpsters, found nothing, then saw a small food store whose owner had stepped away. Hoodie up, face covered, Kiara crept inside and stole vegetables, canned meat, and two loaves of bread.

She returned and handed the food to Kaia, who sat hollow-eyed and near collapse. Kiara lied that a friend had given it to her, so Kaia did not press further. They ate to their hearts content that night.

The next day Kiara confessed. Kaia’s disappointment flared, but it was later swallowed by the primitive need to survive. All attempts to get a job were futile as the few who offered work wanted something else more than labor. Hunger pushed them into theft. They learned quick: how to take without being seen, how to make an exit look like an arrival. Store owners were cruel, demanding free labor in exchange for promises that never materialized.

From petty theft they evolved into something sharper. They stole, saved, and perfected the craft. They became excellent at it.

Two years later Kaia saw a billboard advertising a modeling competition. She filled out the form with naive hope as she had the looks, the figure, and her skin still glowed with the one trait she’d inherited from her mother, a glow Kiara lacked. At the competition she met Luca, Kai’s father. Luca helped them financially for a while. Everything seemed to tilt toward something better, until the results were announced. Despite excelling, Kaia was not placed among the winners.

In a bathroom stall she overheard the event manager and the crowned winner’s conversation. The manager bragged about removing Kaia’s name from the top and replacing it with the other girl’s; and in return the girl satisfied him sexually. Worse, they laughed at how Kaia was eager to win.

Kaia’s blood went hot and hard. She wished she had a phone to capture them. That day, something in her snapped. She buried any softness she still owned toward the wealthy.

She stalked the manager, she learnt he had a habit of womanising. And of course, she learned about his favorite hotel. When the hotel held a masked party, she took the opportunity. She went Masked, controlled, and seduced him. He followed, like the Moron he was. In his suite she drugged him, emptied his pockets, and left with twenty thousand dollars in cash. It was intoxicating—the thrill of turning shame into survival. There she had found her calling.

Kiara was thrilled. Together they created new faces: plastic masks, forged IDs. They infiltrated high-class parties and preyed on wealthy perverts. They seduced, drugged, and stole. Kaia made a rule—she never slept with their marks, but Kiara did not always follow it. After each job they sold the jewels under false names, and kept the cash. Night after night they took in sums that felt unimaginable. They sold their childhood house and moved to a bigger apartment.

They were ghosts in velvet rooms; no one caught them. The men woke up to missing belongings and flustered memory gaps. Kiara made sure the hotels’ security footage showed nothing as she released a gas that put the guards to sleep and slipped in and out like a phantom.

Their lives sped toward wealth and ease—until the day Kaia discovered she was pregnant. The obvious father was Luca. Hope, bright and naive, pushed her to tell him. But her joy didn't last for long as she walked into his home unannounced and found him in bed with another woman. He denied her like she meant nothing and turned away, because the woman he lay with was from a rich family and he couldn’t afford to lose her for Kaia. The humiliation was raw and complete leaving Kaia heart broken.

Kaia decided then she would raise the child alone. She quit the gigs as she didn't want to bring a child into that kind of life. Kiara railed, begged, and argued, but Kaia had made up her mind. She moved to New York and left Kiara behind. A few months after Kaia relocated, she heard the devastating news: Kiara had been involved in a plane crash.

Now that past she’d tried to bury had resurfaced like a bad tooth.

“I don’t care what it takes. I’ll get my son back,” Kaia muttered, wiping her face until the skin burned.

She stood to her feet and walked out of Kai's room, shutting the door behind her.

She walked back into her bedroom with eyes rimmed in red, her expression hardening into the calm of someone going into battle.

Immediately she stepped into her room, her eyes caught sight of a brown envelope laying on her beside table.

She shut her eyes trying to remember if it was there earlier in the morning. Her head gave no answer so she walked up to the table and snatched it up with shaking hands.

“Task 1” was written on the front in bold, certain strokes.

She knew instantly it was from Rodriguez.

Her fingers trembled as she opened it. Not from fear, but in curiosity.

Inside the envelope was a flight ticket, a plastic face mask, a dinner invitation card, and a photograph of a tanned young man. On the back of the photo, a short, brutal note:

“Substitute target, kill him tonight and your son gets to sleep in a comfortable bed with care. Default or get caught and he sleeps in the cold room.”

The words landed like a blow. Kaia felt the world tilt. Her heart hammered against her chest. Her breath caught and her knee gave way.