My Rouge Luna

Chapter One Time to Work Christa’s P.O.V. Sunlight threaded through the curtains and found me before my alarm did. I blinked against the glow, rolled onto my back, and let the mattress sigh beneath me. “Another day, another dollar,” I muttered, stretching until my shoulders popped. Through the floor-length windows the street below was waking — a dog walker, a couple of delivery trucks, the ordinary Brooklyn churn. Then the neighbor across the way snapped her curtains shut as if she’d been scorched. I looked down, remembered I was naked, and laughed — loud and bright. People were so predictably uptight. My phone rang before I could get out of bed. I kept one eye on the windows while I reached for it, a practiced little shuffle so the neighbor couldn’t claim she’d seen anything worth closing her blinds for. The screen read Papi. I smiled reflexively; we hadn’t spoken in weeks. “Hola, Papi. How are you?” I answered. “Hola, niña,” his voice came back, clipped and cold. “This is not a social call. There is work to be done.” Two words I didn’t need translated. Work meant contracts, meant travel, meant danger wrapped in deadlines. “Understood. We’ll be there.” I hung up, snapped the phone in half, and dropped it into the toilet. The water closed over plastic with a soft, final sound. Habit more than ritual: I didn’t want anything tracked back to me. Hot water hit my skin the moment I turned the shower on. It was a small comfort. My wolf — the part of me they always joked I inherited for stubbornness and appetite — stirred like a caged animal. She’d never fully agreed with the life I chose; most days she slept low and companionable. Lately, though, there was an edge to her: restless, coiled, as if she smelled a storm on the horizon. I scrubbed harder than necessary until the heat rendered the thought away and dressed with intent. Black lace bra. Tight leather pants that hugged the curve of my hips. My biker vest — the one I wore when I wanted to make a point. It was more than clothing: embroidered across the back was our crest, a sun split down the middle by a black mamba. Under it the patch read Devoradores de Hombres — man eaters — a joke and a promise among my girls. I braided my hair into twin ropes, slid on gloves, and shouldered my duffel. From it I extracted the only object I never travelled without: a silver Glock 19, polished and familiar at my hip. The brownstone’s owner was where I had left him the night before: bound to a chair in the living room, duck tape across his mouth, pale under the antique chandelier. I crouched, letting my weight settle into the chair beside him, and tilted my head with a smile that did not reach my eyes. “Hey, boo,” I said. “I missed you in bed last night.” He squirmed, the sound small and animal. “I’m gonna take this off you,” I promised, fingers already finding the edge of the tape. “But if you scream, I’m gonna shoot you between those damn sexy green eyes, okay, Collin?” He nodded; the motion was barely more than a tremor. When I peeled the tape away, his lips looked softer than I remembered. There was a history between us — a messy, overlapping knot of nights and transactions — but business is business. “Why are you doing this to me?” he asked, voice breaking. “Because I was hired to find you,” I said, looping my arms around his neck in a mock embrace to hide the professional distance I kept. “You made bad investments and you stole from men who don’t forget. You can give it back and live, or keep it and die.” “How did they find me?” he whispered. “It’s been years.” “Oh, don’t flatter them.” I stood, pinching his cheek with more tenderness than I felt. “They gave me a picture and a name. You were… convenient.” Convenient. The word tasted like rust and adrenaline. He began to plead then — promises, explanations, the soft, useless litany of a man who’d gambled everything and lost. My stomach growled in a sound that belonged to both me and the wolf under my skin. She whined at the edges of my patience; hunger was a language we both understood. “Where is the money?” I said. There was no point in mercy. We had rules. “It’s behind the painting,” he blurted. Relief and disgust warred in equal measure when I lifted the canvas and found the safe. He tried for dignity, a last pathetic attempt at charm. “It’s your birthday,” he said, which might have been funny if the situation weren’t so far past absurd. I opened the safe, counted nothing aloud before stuffing bills into my duffel. Six months of work, a thousand small deceptions, one final payoff. I screwed a silencer onto the barrel by muscle memory, turned, and watched Collin’s face go empty, like a room after the lights went out. Two shots, precise and brief. The sound was muffled but the consequence absolute. I left the brownstone without looking back, hailed a cab, and put the city’s crooked skyline between me and the life I’d interrupted. The airport was a gray promise at the edge of town. There was more to do — and I had a long habit of answering when the job called. My wolf settled then, a soft, satisfied rumble. We were ready.