“You can’t be dead when Rowan gets here,” he says as an afterthought. “Without you as a bargaining chip, they’ll kill him. And you’ll have both his blood and Magnus’s on your hands. Do you understand?”
I want to scream at him, but no words come out. The more he tells me, the more paralyzed I feel. Instead of calming me down, his presence stirs up more turmoil than I can handle. All I know is I want him gone.
“Get some rest and eat something. And don’t do anything stupid. We’re watching you.”
ten
Dove
Iwake up to the smell of food somewhere around me. Real food. Bacon, eggs, and something sweet, like donuts. My mouth waters and I swallow into my still-aching throat, but don’t get up.
I turn on my other side, my shirt riding up and exposing a few inches of my skin beneath the blankets. Something rough and foreign scratches that exact spot.
Blindly, I extend my hand behind me, halting when my fingertips feel the object. It’s paper. Neatly folded, small, and thick. I take a sharp breath in, remembering it must be what fell from Cole’s hand yesterday when he came into my room.
My immediate instinct is to get up and open it, but… why would he leave it like this and not give it to me directly? My eyebrows furrow as I think through it. Maybe, justmaybe, Cole knows I’m being watched here, and he didn’t want them to see what he left me.
“We’re watching you,” I recall him saying before leaving.
I know he said he’s working for them now, but I wonder… did he even have a say in it? Is my brother plotting something theEFW can’t know about? Magnus said the reason he gave me that knife was because Cole asked him to. Maybe all isn’t lost. Maybe my brother isn’t really who he showed me he is.
Slowly and as quietly as I can, I take the paper and open it in front of me under the blankets. It’s a standard letter size filled with what I recognize to be Cole’s handwriting, albeit rushed and more chaotic than I remember it. As if he didn’t have time to write it, or… he didn’t want to get caught doing it.
My eyes shift across the paper rapidly, confirming it.
“Don’t get out from under the covers to read this. There are cameras in your room.”
I cover my mouth with my empty hand, staying still like a mouse hiding in a long field.
“When you’re done reading, scrunch this letter in your hand and flush it down the toilet.”
I nod, a kernel of hope blooming somewhere in the depths of my pain.
I was right.Oh my God, I was right.
“I’m going to assume Rowan told you what I was really doing in the military and what we were striving for. All of that is true. I was going to climb my way up to a leadership role in the FBI. The reason is simple, though I know it will be hard for you to believe right now—but it truly was for you and Mom. All of it. I wanted you to have a better life in this country, and with the war looming over our heads, I didn’t want you to worry about anything as you grew up.”
I clutch the paper tighter, warm tears running down my fever-streaked cheeks. My eyes are hurting from the lack of light under these blankets, but nothing could stop me from finding out what really happened to my brother.
“Five years ago, I went out one night to take care of a loose end. I didn’t think much about it until I arrived and the EFW were there waiting for me. I tried fighting them off, but thetrap had been set specifically for me. I practically ran straight into it and stood no chance to escape it. They faked my death—switched bodies with someone they had already prepared to imitate mine… my tattoos, everything. The only difference was my face, so they took care of that by crushing his until it was unrecognizable.”
The memory of that day hits me—of how they wouldn’t let us open the casket because of how disfigured Cole’s face supposedly was. My mom insisted on seeing it. They let her, and then she couldn’t sleep for weeks after that. I let out a shaky breath, and I keep reading.
“I was brought to one of their outposts—I couldn’t tell you which—and tortured almost to death. They took their sweet time to break me, and I was a stubborn motherfucker. For an entire year, I lived like a rat between pythons, beaten and brought back to life more times than I can count. There was no escaping. God knows I tried. I tried… and I couldn’t do it.
“And I was so mad, Dove. There was so much anger inside me for falling into their trap. No one knew I was here or that I was still alive. It was so lonely… and I kept shouting into the fucking void. They might as well have buried me alive. As time went on in that basement cell where they kept me, eventually I learned to turn that rage into something useful. I let them think they broke me, then used the next few years to start a rebellion behind their backs.”
Footsteps approach my room and I panic, folding the paper back into my hand. I spend a few moments in complete silence, holding my breath and only hearing my heavy heartbeat pound in my ears. I resume reading when I know they’re gone.
“I wasn’t allowed outside of their outpost at first. They had eyes on me everywhere. Every word I said, every breath I took, it was all under constant surveillance. So I gave in… for a while. I figured if I proved myself, they would gain moreand more trust in me. I’ve done things I’m not proud of, Dove. Things that I’d be ashamed to tell you about.
“But they all led here, to this moment, to this phase, when everything is about to come crashing down on them. It took me two whole years until I started going up in their internal ranks. The more things I did for Salister, the more he believed in me, and he started giving me a bit of free rein. I could go outside the walls… but I still couldn’t come back to you, to the life we had.”
My heart is thrashing so hard against my skin, I can barely contain myself.
I slide the paper higher in my hands, continuing.
“They went with me everywhere. I tried fighting them off once or twice, which only landed me back in my basement cell for another six months, until Salister gave me another chance. This time, I took it. One, because I didn’t see another way out, and two, because I figured out how to beat them at their own fucking game. I became one of them, hoping I could take them down from the inside.
