Then he left to join the DEA ten years ago, when his superiors decided he was more suited to posing as the enemy than analyzing them.
My own background reads less impressive, more embarrassing.
“She was a beauty queen, runner-up Miss America in the nineties.She got me into child pageants.I hated every second of it.”
He nods, unsmiling as I place the gauze over the wound.“That’s why you work best under pressure?You grew up on display.”
The memory surfaces sharp and unwelcome—hot stage lights burning my eyes, the scratch of sequined dresses, my mother's perfectly manicured nails digging into my shoulder as she hissed last-minute instructions.Smile bigger.Stand straighter.Don't you dare cry.
“That and trying to hide forgeries I was selling under threat of discovery by my father.”
My bedroom was the perfect training ground.Every creak of the floorboards outside my door made my heart stop.
“They were far too busy hating each other to notice me or the fake IDs tucked between textbooks anyway.”
“Not together, I take it?”
I shake my head.“They divorced when I was ten."
“Explains a lot,” he says."Half the time you had to be a princess.The other half, a tough girl."
I glance up at him.“You make it sound like a survival tactic.”
“Isn’t it?”he asks quietly.
I don't argue.He's right.Itwasa matter of survival.I couldn’t please both of them, so I learned how to fool one while making the other feel like I was just like them.
It wasn’t until I started working for Silas Hightower and he led me to Christ that I realized I’m not likeeitherof them.
For a long while, he’s quiet as I work, trying to remember every piece of field medicine Axel drummed into us.
"Is your faith going to impede your cover?"
My fingers pause over his chest as I meet his eye.It’s the question I’ve been asking myself ever since Silas called and told me Deliah might die because of the drugs she’d been given.
“I’ve worked undercover before.”
“Have you ever had to compromise?”
I mentally scroll through all the ops I've been in since I joined Hightower.
I reach for a bandage.“No.”
Before I can slap it on his burly chest, he snags my wrist, forcing me to look at him.“Will you?”
I hold his gaze, unwilling to blink.“There’s a line I won’t cross.”
His fingers slip up my wrist, his body shifting closer until he's right in my face."Then you'll hesitate.And in three seconds, you're made.They don't give you time to think about your soul, Adena—they watch for the blink.One slip and you're done."
The intensity in his voice isn't anger—it's something rawer, like he's trying to warn me away from a cliff edge he's already fallen off.
"I won't hesitate," I say.
His grip tightens fractionally."You will.Because you've still got something to lose."
His eyes search mine with an almost desperate edge."I don't even recognize the guy who took this assignment."
The confession hangs between us, unfiltered.I tap one of his darkest tattoos, a coiled snake wrapped around his forearm.“This is all covering.God sees the man inside.You’re not beyond His grace.”
