I can’t find rage now. Rage requires a target you can hit. All I can see is structure. Layers. A machine built around me long before I had teeth.
“You expect me to accept this,” I say.
Valentine’s expression softens by a fraction again. Not warmth. Something colder. Final.
“I expect you to recognise it,” he replies. “Acceptance is optional.” He takes a small breath, then says the thing he came to say, the thesis he’s been carrying like a stamped document. “You were never meant to escape,” Valentine says. “Not really. Not forever. Calloway reallydidintend to help you, it would seem. But she just put her faith in the wrong person, and the Director intervened. Because once he knew you were pregnant, he knew you were too great an asset to lose.”
My body goes still. Not by choice. By instinct. The kind of stillness that keeps you alive when movement becomes a liability.
Valentine’s voice remains calm, almost relieved, like he’s been waiting a long time to stop pretending. “You were meant to understand.”
The silence that follows is complete.
Too quiet. Too ordered.
And I can’t tell whether the hotel has always been this sterile, or whether the world has simply rearranged itself around a truth I can no longer unsee.
The silence stretches.
Not the brittle kind that demands to be broken, but the heavy, institutional quiet that feels designed. Like a room after a verdict has been read and no one’s quite sure what they’re allowed to do with their hands.
Valentine doesn’t move. He doesn’t press. He doesn’t soften what he’s said. He stands there with the patience of a man who believes time will do the rest of the work for him.
Honey is the first to shift. Just a fraction. A subtle adjustment of weight that puts him closer without crossing a line. He doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t speak. He’s there in the way you brace a wall before it cracks.
Hatchet’s gaze never leaves Valentine. His pen is still clenched between his fingers, white-knuckled now, but the pad remains blank. There’s nothing left to clarify.
Ghost watches me, not Valentine. Like he’s checking for signs of fracture. Like he knows what stillness like this usually precedes.
Valentine finally exhales.
“I did not come to threaten you,” he says, as if anyone has accused him of it. “I came because you were approaching a conclusion that would have cost you time.”
I blink once. It feels deliberate, like I have to remind my body how to perform basic functions.
“Time for what?” I ask.
“For understanding,” Valentine replies. “Before you return.”
The word lands differently now.
Return.
Not go back. Not infiltrate. Not confront.
Return.
“You assume I’m going,” I say.
Valentine’s mouth curves, almost imperceptibly. Not a smile. Recognition. “I am aware you are,” he says. “There have been discussions.”
So the walls have ears.
Something sharp moves under my ribs. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“I don’t need to,” he says calmly. “You already have.”
I open my mouth to argue. Nothing comes out. Because the truth is sitting there, heavy and undeniable: the island is no longer just a place. It’s the only remaining archive. The one place that holds answers Valentine has chosen not to give me here.
