Chapter 191: Learning To Shoot
The armory room was only the first door.
Nicholas crossed to the far wall, pressing his palm flat against another concealed drywall panel. A second seam opened where none had been visible moments before, revealing a narrow, reinforced stairwell descending into the darkness. He flicked a heavy toggle switch beside the frame, and overhead strip lights hummed on one after another down a long concrete shaft.
"...There’s more?" Selena said, her eyes widening.
Nicholas led them down the steps.
The basement at the bottom of the stairwell was enormous—far larger than the actual footprint of the residential apartment building above suggested. It was a long, soundproofed concrete gallery lined with individual firing lanes. At the far end of each lane stood a heavy tactical mannequin, weighted and battered. Some had red vital targets painted over their chests and heads; others were pocked with tight, deliberate clusters of old bullet holes. It was a private shooting range built directly into the earth beneath a family home, carrying the quiet, pristine look of a facility that saw regular visits from exactly one person.
Selena walked down the center aisle, her eyes sweeping over the scale of it.
"Marina doesn’t know about this place, does she," Selena said softly. It wasn’t really a question.
"Neither does Katie. This whole subterranean level doesn’t exist as far as they are concerned." Nicholas walked to the nearest shooting lane, unhurried and calm. "It’s much better for them that way."
Selena turned in a slow circle, taking in the sheer scope of the range, the target lanes, the mannequins, the heavy racks of tactical gear, and the staggering financial cost of such a setup hidden right beneath a quiet apartment.
"So this," she said flatly, pointing a finger at the concrete walls, "is where all your money actually goes. I always wondered about that. You win major tournaments, you take the absolute highest-paying contracts available, Dr. Cho bleeds you dry for medical care every other week, and somehow you’re always completely broke." She waved a hand toward the gallery. "It’s this. You’ve been pouring your entire income into a secret murder basement."
"I have a refined taste for weapons," Nicholas said smoothly, adjusting a set of ear defenders. "Guns, custom blades, fine mechanical craftsmanship. A man is allowed a hobby, Selena."
It was, of course, a complete lie, and not even a particularly believable one. The underlying reality was much simpler and far colder: an assassin’s lifelong habits did not simply vanish because he changed his official job title. His hands still required the weight of a physical weapon to feel grounded. His mind still relaxed in a facility like this in a way it never quite could anywhere else, except when sitting at the dinner table with his sisters.
Though, to be completely fair to the lie, it wasn’t entirely false either. He genuinely did appreciate the fine craftsmanship of weapons. That part was real. He simply left out the exact reasons why he appreciated them.
Selena looked at him with the flat, unamused stare of a woman who could see straight through his excuse and had decided it wasn’t worth arguing about right now.
"Uh-huh. A ’hobby.’" She didn’t push the issue. "Fine. Give me a gun then, hobbyist. Let’s see if your secret murder basement is actually good for anything."
He selected a standard 9mm pistol from a side rack and handed it to her. In a few clipped, precise sentences, he walked her through the core mechanics: safety release, magazine load, slide rack, and proper grip. Then, he stepped back to let her take a shot.
Selena raised the weapon, squared her shoulders, squinted down the line at the mannequin, and pulled the trigger.
CRACK!
The shot echoed sharply through the concrete gallery. To her own visible surprise, the heavy round punched cleanly through the mannequin’s left shoulder.
"Ha!" She turned back to face Nicholas, a proud grin breaking across her face. "See? I told you I knew how to—"
"You’re standing completely wrong."
Nicholas stepped in directly behind her.
He didn’t do it with any theatrical flair. It was purely practical instruction—the exact way he would correct any student on a firing line. But the concrete gallery was dead quiet, and when his hands came up to adjust hers on the firearm’s grip, when his chest settled firm against her back and his arms bracketed her shoulders to square her stance, Selena’s entire brain performed an abrupt, catastrophic shutdown.
"Your feet are positioned far too close together," Nicholas explained, his voice low and right beside her ear. She felt the subtle warmth of his breath brush down the side of her neck. "One good recoil, or one physical shove from an enemy, and you’re on your back with your weapon skittering across the floor. Widen your base. Shift your weight into your forward foot. Right here."
His boot nudged her feet wider apart. His hands guided hers upward, steadying the pistol into a solid, level firing line.
"Now you’re anchored properly. Now you keep control of the gun even if someone strikes you," his voice was calm, even, and entirely focused on the mechanics of the lesson. "You had the initial aim. That was never your problem. The problem is that you were standing like someone who has only ever fired at a paper target that couldn’t shoot back."
Selena did not register a single word of the second half of his speech.
Because his breath was brushing her neck, his arms were wrapped right around her, his chest was warm and solid against her back, and a wave of heat had already rushed up from her collar to set her ears completely on fire. Her heart was hammering against her ribs with mortifying speed. She stared fixedly down the lane at the plastic mannequin as though it might somehow save her from the situation, hyper-aware of every single point of physical contact. Her internal thoughts were a chaotic, useless static roar.
’This is fine. This is just a practical lesson. He is TEACHING me. This is completely normal and I am completely fine, so why is he so warm?! Why does he smell like that?! Focus, FOCUS! You are a professional, A-rank supervisor! He is a BRAT! He is an insufferable, money-obsessed BRAT, and his arms are—no, STOP thinking that!’
"Try taking another shot," Nicholas said, still standing right there, completely unmoving.
Selena made a small, strangled sound in the back of her throat that was not a real word.
"...Selena?"
"FINE! I’m fine!" Her voice came out about an full octave too high. "Perfect! Great teaching! Very informative! You can step back now, thank you!"
Meanwhile, across the basement, an audience had quietly gathered at the bottom of the stairs.
Marina stood at the base of the steps with a dish towel still clutched in her hands, having come down to call them up for food only to stop dead in her tracks. Julie stood right beside her, both hands pressed tightly over her mouth, physically vibrating with the sheer effort of not screaming out loud. And Katie stood between them both, watching the scene at the far firing lane with the frank, innocent curiosity of a six-year-old child.
Katie tugged firmly on Marina’s apron sleeve.
"Big sister," Katie asked loudly, her childish voice carrying straight down the gallery, "when is big brother gonna marry Selena?"
The words echoed off the concrete walls with flawless acoustic clarity.
Selena’s soul briefly departed her body.
She lurched out of Nicholas’s arms as if she had just been zapped by a high-voltage wire. She spun around on her heel, her entire face flushed bright scarlet right to the tips of her ears, the loaded pistol waving wildly in a gesture that made both Marina and Julie reflexively duck.
"THAT IS NEVER HAPPENING!" Selena shrieked at the top of her lungs. "EVER! NOT IN A THOUSAND YEARS! HE IS A BRAT! I am his official SUPERVISOR! It’s a professional relationship! It is STRICTLY professional! We were doing GUN SAFETY!"
"You two were standing awfully close for a gun safety lesson," Julie observed from the stairs, finally losing her internal battle and dissolving into giggles.
"IT’S A TWO-PERSON RECOIL CONTROL TECHNIQUE!"
"Is it, though?"
"NICHOLAS, TELL THEM!"
Nicholas, who had already turned back toward the main weapon rack to calmly select the next piece of training gear, glanced over his shoulder with an expression of complete and utterly infuriating neutrality.
"If she widens her stance, she stops dropping the firearm under pressure," he reported flatly. "That’s all that happened down here."
"THANK you!"
"Whether she marries me later is a separate logistical question."
"NICHOLAS!"
Katie, meanwhile, had completely made up her mind. She turned up to Marina with the satisfied, confident nod of a professional matchmaker whose work was officially complete.
"I like her," Katie declared plainly. "Big brother should definitely marry her. She’s really funny when she turns red."
Marina, at last, let out a long, warm laugh—her first genuine laugh since the terrifying broadcast—and shook her head fondly as she turned back toward the stairs.
"Come upstairs when you’re finished, you two," she called back, her voice full of amusement. "Or three. Or four. Whoever is staying for dinner tonight." She paused, a gentle smile in her tone. "Bring your future wife, Nick."
"HEY!"
Selena buried her burning face directly into her free hand, the training pistol dangling forgotten in her other grip, and made a solemn, silent vow to herself that she would walk directly into the doomsday dome tonight and never, ever speak of this evening again.