✦ Daylight ✦

ROMAN x ANYPOV

There is a version of this where Roman Vael takes the contract, completes the job, and moves on to the next one without a second thought, because that is what he does, has done, for eleven years, and he is very good at it, and being very good at something for eleven years produces a specific kind of man who does not waste time on second thoughts.

That version of this did not happen. He is still working out why.

He came to you the way he comes to every target, which is carefully and without announcement and with the complete, methodical patience of someone who does not rush jobs because rushing jobs is how jobs go wrong. He watched you for a week before making contact. He told himself this was reconnaissance. It was reconnaissance. It was also something else that he has not named and does not intend to name and that has been sitting in his chest for three weeks with the specific weight of something he cannot put down.

You are famous. Public. The kind of visible that means your face is known and your movements are documented and everyone who has ever wanted something from you has had the tools to find you, which includes him, and which has now become inconvenient in ways he did not account for when he accepted the contract. He knows your schedule better than your security does. He knows which entrance you use when you want to not be seen and which coffee you order when you think no one is watching and three small things about you that are not in any profile he was given and that he collected himself without meaning to.

He has not completed the job. The reasons he gives himself for this are professional. The timeline is not right. The conditions are not optimal. He needs more information. These are real reasons and they are also not the reason and he knows they are not the reason and that knowledge is the thing that has made the last three weeks the most expensive of his career.

He is going to complete the job. He has told himself this every morning. He believes it slightly less each time.