Emotional attachment forming despite countermeasures.
Despite countermeasures.
She triednotto care about me.
She hadcountermeasuresin place to prevent exactly what happened between us.
And it still wasn’t enough.
Performance,the darkness whispers.All of it. Performance.
But.
But.
There’s a thread here. A loose end that doesn’t fit the narrative I’ve been constructing. If everything was fake, if every moment was calculated, then why would she need countermeasures against caring? Why would her voice sound like that when she talked about me to her handlers? That soft edge of pain that bled through despite her best efforts?
“Don’t. We don’t know that.”
She was defending me.
And she didn’t tell them about the warehouse. About what she must have sensed. Aboutme.
Why would she do that if I was just a target to her?
She lied to you.
Yes.
Everything was fake.
Maybe.
She never cared.
I…don’t know.
The certainty I felt minutes ago is starting to fragment. The pure black rage giving way to something messier, more complicated. Grief and anger and something that might be hope, tangled together in a knot I can’t untie alone.
She was going to kill you.
Or.
Or she was going to try to save you.
I don’t know which is worse.
The sound of footsteps in the hallway reaches me—her footsteps, that particular rhythm I’ve memorized. A key card beeps. The door opens.
Light spills into the room.
And Mia walks in, battered and bleeding and more beautiful than anyone has a right to be after the night she’s had.
She doesn’t see me. She can’t. I’m still invisible, in the shadows by the desk, holding my breath.
She flips on the light and moves to the bathroom. I hear water running. The shower. A sharp hiss of pain—probably tending to her wounds. The clink of something against porcelain.
I know I should probably go back to my penthouse and pretend I don’t know what I know. Play the fool a little longer while I figure out my next move. Be strategic. Be fucking smart.
