Finley didn't walk into Rafferty Rampanda's world.
She let it close around her.
It started with the right rumor, placed in the wrong mouth. A whisper in a dockside bar where men pretended not to listen. A name—Hellfire—spoken carelessly, as if it were just another syndicate instead of a furnace that swallowed people whole.
She became useful before she became visible.
By the third night, a man with a crooked nose and too-clean shoes sat across from her in a basement lit by a single bulb.
"You don't look like someone who knows Hellfire," he said.
Finley smiled faintly. "That's why I'm still breathing."
She slid a folded paper across the table. Not documents—coordinates. Old access routes. Burned channels. Half-true, half-useless, but convincing enough to make a man curious instead of dismissive.
He took it.
Two hours later, a van with blacked-out windows picked her up.
No questions. No explanations.
Just movement.
The building they brought her to wasn't Hellfire-adjacent—it was Hellfire-aware. Concrete corridors. Controlled air. Cameras hidden behind reflective panels. This was where people came when Rafferty wanted to know how much pain truth could survive.
They took her phone. Her watch. Her jacket.
They didn't take her shoes.
That should have warned her.
She was led into a room with a metal table bolted to the floor. Three chairs. One already occupied.
Rafferty Rampanda didn't stand when she entered.
He didn't have to.
He looked ordinary in the way predators often do—pressed shirt, silver at the temples, eyes too calm for a man who ordered deaths before breakfast.
"You said you know Hellfire," he said mildly.
Finley met his gaze. "I said I know how it bleeds."
One of the men behind her laughed.
Rafferty raised a finger.
Silence snapped into place.
"People who talk like that usually die," Rafferty said. "Slowly."
Finley shrugged. "Then let's skip the pleasantries."
That was her mistake.
The first blow came from behind—fast, precise, meant to disorient, not kill. She hit the floor hard, breath ripping out of her lungs. Hands hauled her up again before she could recover.
Rafferty watched the whole thing like he was assessing a tool.
"You don't come here making claims," he said calmly. "You come with proof."
Finley coughed, tasted blood. "You want proof?"
Another nod.
This time, the pain was methodical. Controlled. A lesson, not a punishment. Enough to test her limits. Enough to see if she'd beg.
She didn't.
That unsettled them.
She spoke through a split lip. "Hellfire's east docks rerouted power three months ago. Not for efficiency—for isolation. Whatever's down there isn't meant to be traced."
A pause.
One of the men glanced at Rafferty.
That wasn't public knowledge.
Rafferty leaned forward slightly. "Continue."
"Holding cells aren't where you think," Finley said. "And your assumption that Hellfire answers only to money is wrong. They answer to leverage."
Rafferty studied her now. Not impressed.
Interested.
Then he stood.
The room seemed to tighten.
"You're either very informed," he said, "or very well rehearsed."
He circled her once. Slow. Appraising.
"And either way, you're dangerous."
A gun was placed on the table.
Finley's pulse kicked hard—but her face didn't change.
Rafferty picked it up. Checked the chamber.
"You could be useful," he said. "But I don't trust desperation dressed as confidence."
He turned to the men. "Take her outside."
Her heart dropped—not from fear, but from calculation. Outside meant disposal.
They moved fast.
That was when Finley ran.
She waited for the door. The half-second lag when procedure met complacency. She slammed her heel into a knee, tore free, crashed through a side corridor she'd memorized on the way in.
Shouts followed.
Gunfire did not.
She vaulted a railing, hit concrete hard, rolled, and kept moving. Alarms flared—but she was already gone, bleeding, limping, alive.
By dawn, she was back where she started.
By noon, the message came.
Not to her.
To the broker who'd first mentioned her name.
Rafferty's words were precise.
She's not what we need.
Women complicate operations that require silence.
Send her back where she came from.
No pursuit. No blacklist. No suspicion.
Rafferty dismissed her as an inconvenience—clever, reckless, and ultimately irrelevant.
Which was exactly what Finley needed him to believe.
That night, she stood in Luke's shadowed office, bandaged and exhausted.
"He almost killed me," she said simply.
Luke studied her injuries. "But he didn't."
"No," Finley replied. "Because he thinks I was bluffing."
She smiled then. Thin. Sharp.
"And he thinks I'm gone."
Luke poured her a drink this time without asking.
"You're in," he said quietly.
"Not officially," Finley answered. "But close enough to smell the doors."
She looked out at the city, eyes hard with intent.
"Rafferty doesn't trust women," she added. "That's his blind spot."
Luke nodded. "Then we aim straight for it."
Far away, Hellfire burned steadily.
Rafferty slept soundly.
And Finley—dismissed, underestimated, alive—began planning how to walk back into the fire without ever being seen again.