The Recoil

Chapter 11: The Recoil

Heira didn't flinch anymore.

The kickback of a Glock 19 no longer stung her wrists. The echo of each shot, once deafening, now registered as nothing more than punctuation. Clean. Predictable. Controlled. On most mornings, she reached the shooting range before it opened, hands wrapped in athletic tape, hoodie zipped tight over her lean frame. Her wolf-cut ginger hair peeked from beneath a beanie. No makeup today, just the eyeliner smudged around her lids, glasses sliding slightly down the bridge of her nose.

She stepped into lane six and loaded her magazine with practiced ease. Slide forward. Safety off. Breathe.

Target: fifteen feet.

She fired three rounds. Each landed dead center.

This, at least, she could control.

It started as a habit—muscle sharpening, discipline. The warehouse shifts gave her cash, but nothing else. It was at the range she felt closest to something that resembled power. Not fame. Not elegance. But precision. Force. She rented firearms in cash, cleaned up after herself, and left without a word.

Until the man started watching.

At first, she assumed he worked there—maybe security, maybe another regular. He never approached, never asked her name. Just lingered three lanes down, eyes fixed ahead, shooting paper targets in slow, even bursts.

After two weeks of silence, he approached.

"You ex-military?" he asked.

She slid her glasses back up her nose. "No."

"You move like it."

Heira didn't reply. She set down the gun and began wiping it down.

"You got a grip like you've done this under stress," he added. "That's not something you can teach."

Still silent, she packed up.

"I run a group. Freelancers. Work comes and goes, but I could use someone with your skills."

"I'm not interested."

"Think about it."

She left without turning around.

The next day, he was there again. And the next.

On the third encounter, she paused by the vending machine. He stood beside her, quiet at first.

"I go by Cole," he said. "Don't have to give me your name."

"I wasn't planning to."

"You're good," he said. "Better than good."

She cracked open a soda can. "Not for sale."

He nodded once, then stepped back.

But he wasn't finished.

The fourth time, he met her outside the range.

The street was wet with last night's rain, the sky smeared gray like unwashed linen. Heira stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets, one thumb grazing the small folding knife she never left home without.

"Why me?" she asked without preamble.

Cole leaned against a parked sedan. "Because I've seen a hundred shooters and none of them work like you. You're methodical. Unsentimental."

Heira raised a brow. "You mean cold."

"I mean reliable."

"What's the job?"

He smiled. "That depends on the week."

She turned to leave.

"You're not a civilian," he called after her. "You've been through some kind of war."

She didn't stop walking.

He didn't follow.

By the sixth offer, she said yes.

Not because she trusted him. Not because she was desperate. But because something in her needed to move again—forward, even if through fog. She'd been hunted, humiliated, left for dead. She couldn't waste time waiting for justice to come through official channels. It never had. It never would.

Still, her terms were simple.

"Nothing that'll put me back inside," she said. "I work clean."

Cole didn't argue. "Of course."

She knew better than to believe him completely. But the job offered pay, tools, anonymity. And she'd decide when the line got too close.

Training under Cole was brutal. He didn't coddle. He didn't praise. But he observed everything. In the first week, he tested her endurance—long-distance running with weight, navigating abandoned buildings, simulations of extraction scenarios. Heira passed them all, but just barely.

The second week was tactical: hostage retrieval, timed escapes, firearm rotation drills. She was efficient, deadly with a sidearm, unnervingly accurate under pressure.

By the third week, she ran solo drills with a team she wasn't allowed to meet outside of practice. They moved in shadows, faces half-covered, names withheld. Cole simply called them "operatives." Heira didn't care.

Ask no questions, leave no trace.

She wore a dark vest with her fake name—Mara Quinn—stitched near the chest. The ID badge was scannable but fake. Her identity had vanished into smoke, tucked inside decoy USBs and locker combinations she changed weekly. Her burner phone pinged only from secure towers. Her backpack always packed the same: spare clothes, cash, blade, documents.

Cole's work felt gray. Legal enough to function. Shady enough to feel real.

"Your hands ever shake?" one of the others asked once, breath heavy after a timed course.

"No," Heira said.

But she didn't tell them why. She didn't say the worst things had already happened to her. She didn't explain that fear was a past life, left behind with a red dress and her father's cold smirk at the gala.

One night after drills, Cole tossed her a manila folder.

"Target. Overseas. Double fee."

She flipped through it. Photo. Name. Location. A face she didn't recognize.

"What'd they do?"

Cole shrugged. "You don't need to know."

Heira held the folder open for a beat too long, then closed it.

"Alright."

She'd kill. She already had. No ceremony, no lingering thoughts. If the job asked, she would deliver.

But somewhere deeper, something remained intact. Not soft, not naïve—just…still whole.

She couldn't explain it. It was like her bones remembered a version of herself that once tried to play by the rules.

She would do the job. But she would not become like them.

She started saving every paycheck. Quietly. Meticulously. Rent was kept low, her lifestyle beneath notice. No luxuries. Just basic comfort and a growing sum in a private crypto wallet under the name Eda Quill.

She had a plan. Not just revenge.

A business. A life.

Start small—coffee shop, maybe, or courier services. Clean money. Clean record. And over time, expand. Legitimate contracts. Maybe even her own firm one day.

Because Heira wasn't built just to destroy. She was built to endure. And building something of her own—that was the real rebellion. That was the long game.

In the middle of her second month with Cole's team, she overheard something she wasn't meant to.

It was early, barely dawn. The others were still arriving. She stepped past a half-open office door and paused.

Cole was inside, speaking low on the phone.

"She doesn't suspect a thing… No, she's efficient, doesn't ask questions… We'll bring her in deeper next phase… Yeah. She thinks it's just freelance."

Heira walked away before the call ended.

Later that day, she practiced in the mirror.

Voice firm. Expression unreadable. Movements tight.

She was still under someone's thumb. Still being fed a version of the truth. But she wasn't powerless.

She still had her own war to wage.

And in that war, Cole was just a stepping stone.

That night, she sat on the rooftop of her apartment building, boots dangling off the edge. The city buzzed below—sirens, music, electricity thick in the air.

She pulled her hair into a small knot at her nape, ginger strands reflecting the pink of a nearby neon sign. Her eyeliner smudged slightly from sweat and rain. Her glasses were fogged.

Below her jacket, her sidearm rested snug at her ribs.

She wasn't innocent. But she wasn't lawless either.

She'd been to prison. She'd taken lives.

But she still had rules.

She didn't kill civilians. She didn't frame innocents. She didn't touch children. And she'd rather die than serve another man's throne.

The city had a heartbeat, and she matched its rhythm.

Danger didn't rattle her. Uncertainty didn't faze her. Because Heira had learned the most important lesson of survival: you don't wait to be rescued. You carve the exit yourself.

Even in shadows, you could make your own light.

She lay down on the cold concrete of the roof, arms crossed under her head.

Stars blinked faint above the smog.

One day, she'd take down the Darnells. Not with just blood, but with exposure, proof, humiliation.

One day, her name would rise again—not as the heir in red silk, but as something harder. Realer.

And when that day came, they wouldn't recognize the woman who walked into their empire.

But she'd remember them.