Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
“You didn’t.”
“But you expected me to die. You were waiting for it.”
The accusation lands like a blade between my ribs.
“I was. Then I was waiting to see if I’d finally found someone who could survive me,” I explain.
Now he turns. His brow is furrowed, lines creasing on his forehead.
“And I did.”
“You did.”
Another long pause. I’m acutely aware of my own heartbeat, the way it thuds against my ribs like it’s trying to escape, knowing he can hear it too. My palms are damp. My mouth is dry. Every instinct I have is screaming at me to stop talking, to retreat, to give him nothing else.
But I’m so tired of silence.
So tired of hiding.
“I’m like you,” I say, though I know I won’t throw my parents under the bus by telling him the whole truth. “Engineered. Enhanced. Made into something more than human.” I pause. “Or less, depending on how you look at it.”
His expression changes. “What do you mean?”
“I wasn’t born this way by accident. I was modified. At a genetic level.” The words feel like pulling teeth. “Turned into a weapon.”
“By who?”
I shake my head. That door stays closed. I’m not ready—may never be ready—to talk about the people who should have protected me.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
“Then it matters to you.” I raise my chin. “But I’m not going there. Not tonight.”
He seems to understand that, nodding imperceptibly.
“Your team,” he says, moving on. “The ones at the safehouse.”
“Bayo and Kat,” I tell him, though I know I’m breaking a pretty sacred rule here. “Bayo’s my handler—been with SOE longer than anyone I know. Runs comms, coordinates logistics, yells at me when I go off script. Kat’s Russian. Defector. Long story. She handles extraction, cleanup, the dirty work nobody else wants.”
“SOE…”
“Special Operations Executive. British intelligence. The ones who assigned me to go after you. Our motto is Reap What You SOE. It’s on our mugs.”
He processes this. I can see him filing it away, adding it to whatever mental dossier he’s building. We are way too alike.
“And the mission,” he says. “The real one. Tell me about that.”
Here’s where it gets harder.
I pick up my whiskey again, mostly for something to do with my hands. Take a sip. Let the burn steady me.
“I wasn’t lying when I said what I said in London. Other countries think you’re a weapon. That someone with all your power can’t be trusted, doubly so for the company that created you. My mission was to evaluate you. Determine if you are an actual threat to British interests, and if so, what kind. Gather intelligence on Global Dynamix and their involvement with Paragon.” I force myself to hold his gaze. “And if London decided you were too dangerous to let exist…”
“You were to take me out.”
“Yes.”
“With a kiss.”
“That was the plan.”
“But you didn’t,” he says after a moment.
“Obviously not.”
“Even though you could have. Even after you found out that your kiss couldn’t poison me. Any time we were together, well, I suppose you could have picked up a shotgun and blown my damn head off so long as I wasn’t wearing my suit.”
He says this like it amazes him.
“I know what I could have done,” I say sharply. “I also know that the longer I was with you, the more likely that wouldn’t have happened.”
He frowns, wiggling his jaw back and forth. “You mean to tell me that if you discovered I was a weapon, if I started killing innocent people, that you wouldn’t have found some way to kill me?”
I go quiet. “I’m saying, that if London put in a directive to take you down, right now, as of today, I wouldn’t be able to do it.”
He lets out a dry laugh. “Well, today is my lucky fucking day isn’t it.”
I take another sip. The whiskey is starting to hit, warming my chest, loosening some of the tightness. “I still don’t know why you’re different, why the poison doesn’t work. I assume it has something to do with your ability to not catch diseases or whatever. You can’t be poisoned, at least not by me. You survived me. You keep surviving me.”
“And you keep not killing me.”
We stare at each other. The air between us feels charged, but not with desire, not the way it was before. This is something else. Something vulnerable and more uncertain.
He sets his glass down on the windowsill and walks toward me. Slowly. Carefully. Like he’s approaching something that might bolt.
He stops a few feet away.
“I don’t trust you,” he says.
“I can tell.”
“I don’t know if I can ever trust you.”
“And I don’t blame you.”
“But I don’t want you dead, as much as you don’t want me dead.” He crouches down so we’re eye level, and the earnest look on his face makes my stomach flip despite everything. “I had you falling, and all I could think was catch her. Even after everything. Even knowing what you are. I had to catch you. I couldn’t lose you.”