Amelia Vance (The Unknown Series)

Chapter 4

The man's scar was a match striking tinder. A thousand fragments of her past, once sealed behind a wall of amnesia, ignited at once. The serene face she had presented to the world for months crumpled in a silent scream. Leo's name, the taste of coffee, the feeling of sunlight on her skin—all of it was still there, but now it was a gentle tune lost in a roaring maelstrom of memories.

She remembered the relentless training, the cold steel of a weapon in her hand, the sterile silence of a mission debrief. She remembered the man at the door, not as a stranger, but as Silas, her handler and mentor, the one who had sent her on her final mission, the one who had also… betrayed her. The scar under his eye was the proof. It was the mark of a blade she had meant to end him with, but had only grazed before the explosion.

Her body, which had been so relaxed and trusting, now tensed into a weapon she hadn't known it was. She slammed the door shut with a force that rattled the frame, her back pressed against it as if to hold a dam from breaking. Her knuckles, once scarred from an unknown past, now throbbed with the fresh pain of a memory she had just reclaimed. Leo reached for her, his brow furrowed with alarm.

"Amelia?" he asked, his voice full of the quiet concern she had grown to love.

She didn't answer. She was fighting a war inside her own mind, a battle between the girl who loved old books and the operative who had forgotten nothing. The gentle warmth of their shared life felt like a ghost against the cold, hard reality of her former existence. She looked at the apartment, at the chessboard, at the potted plant, and it all felt like a beautiful, fragile lie she had been living.

"He's here for me," she finally said, her voice a hollow whisper. "He's here for the Echo. And to finish what he started."

Suddenly, her movements were fluid and decisive. The serene barista was gone, replaced by a ghost of the woman Leo had seen on the pier. She grabbed a kitchen knife, her fingers wrapping around the handle with a terrifying, practiced ease. "Get behind me, Leo," she ordered, her eyes, once soft and grey, now sharp as shards of glass. "Now."

A loud, insistent pounding began on the door. Silas's voice, calm and unyielding, came from the other side. "Don't make this difficult, Amelia. The organization wants you back. We can do this the easy way."

The last piece of her memory clicked into place—the sound of her team's screams, the explosion that had cost her everything. The easy way was a lie, a trap. She looked at Leo, whose face was a mixture of fear and unwavering loyalty, and she knew she couldn't let her past destroy the one thing that was real.

"I won't let him take you," Leo said, stepping forward, ready to stand between her and the danger.

But she pushed him back gently, a new kind of resolve in her gaze. "No," she said, her voice low and steady. "I won't let him take *me*." The pounding on the door intensified. Amelia took a deep breath, the woman from the coffee shop and the ghost from the past merging into a single, formidable entity.

"He wants a war," she said, "and he's just brought a knife to a gunfight."