The house outside Geneva sat behind a wall of pine trees, tucked into the hillside like something designed to be forgotten.
Valentina studied it through binoculars from the back seat of Marco's car, parked a careful half-mile down the private road, and felt her pulse climbing despite every effort to keep it steady. Seven years of imagining this moment had never prepared her for how ordinary the house looked — pale stone, dark shutters, smoke curling faintly from a chimney like something out of a postcard rather than the place where a woman had spent seven years hidden from her own daughter.
"Two guards visible," Damien said beside her, studying his own set of binoculars. "Front entrance and the east corner. There will be more we can't see."
"How many, do you think?"
"For a man moving t
