The buzz of the crowd was a muffled background, a hum of excitement and greed that mingled with the acrid scent of precious metal and leather. Vicenzaoro. The thieves' paradise, Anya thought, gripping her small taser in her gloved hand. It was the first day, and the smell of opportunity was almost palpable.
The operation was simple, surgical. Two accomplices, Marco and Leo, experts at neutralizing guards and creating distractions, had identified the target: an elegant Mercedes Class S, bearing the insignia of a well-known jewelry store in Florence. Inside, two grizzled men with weary expressions, probably fatigued from their journey and loaded with precious goods.
Marco had blocked the car with a precise and silent move. Leo, with his ability to blend into the crowd, kept them under observation. Anya, on the other hand, was tasked with retrieving the bag.
With a swift movement, she yanked open the rear door. The face of one of the jewelers, a man with an olive complexion and dark, penetrating eyes, was just inches from hers. For a moment, his hand brushed against her skin as he ripped the bag from her. It was an unexpected sensation, an electric contact, stronger than the jolt of the taser she held tightly. It wasn't fear, but something... different. A wave of warmth coursed through her, a sudden and intense emotional shock that left her disoriented. The scent of sandalwood and men's cologne invaded her nostrils, momentarily erasing the smell of sweat and metal that usually surrounded her during heists.
In that millisecond, as the jeweler's dark eyes locked onto hers, Anya saw not just a victim. She saw a man. A man who, for an instant, had interrupted her cold and calculated world, creating a breach in the wall of cynicism she had built around her heart. The bag, filled with sparkling diamonds, suddenly seemed less important than the fleeting contact, the quickened heartbeat, the sudden and strange emptiness she felt inside. The heist, the plan, the accomplices... everything had blurred, leaving room only for that moment of contact, intense and disconcerting.
It was only when Marco called her to run that Anya, with a start, regained her senses and threw herself back into the reality of the criminal world she lived in. But that contact, that thrill, that emptiness... she would carry it with her, an unexpected shadow in her heart of a thief.
