“British?”
“I was going to say calm.”
“He’s always calm. Even when everything’s falling apart.” I lower myself onto the couch, exhaustion hitting me like a delayed wave. The six-hour flight, the cold, the constant low-grade terror of being hunted—it’s all catching up. “It’s bloody annoying, actually.”
Nate sits beside me. Close, but not touching. We’ve gotten good at that particular geometry, for better or for worse.
My father returns with biscuits and three mugs on a tray—tea for him, coffee for us. He sets them on the table and takes the armchair across from us, sitting back with an ankle crossed over a knee.
“Right then,” he says, lifting his mug. “Tell me everything.”
So we do.
We tell him all of it, skipping over the stuff he already knows from the mission reports to Mank and filling in the rest—including the kiss that should have killed Nate but didn’t. Here he stops me and makes me repeat myself. He seems genuinely emotional that I’ve been able to kiss Nate without killing him, like this somehow makes up for what was done to me, absolves me of my poisoned years.
I ignore it and continue, launching into the growing suspicions, the confrontations, the warehouse in Red Hook. The facility in Jersey, the torture, the test. Nate’s hands around my throat and the moment he broke through.
By the time we’re finished, my father is leaning back in his chair, blinking slowly, processing.
“Marsh is dead,” I say finally. “Nate killed him.”
“I know. And it’s been all over the news.” My father takes a measured sip of tea. “Not Nate’s involvement, but ‘tragic accident at a private facility.’ Very convenient narrative if you don’t know the truth.”
“And Julia Van Veen,” I continue. “I kissed her. She should be dead, too, though no one has reported it.”
My father goes very still, his brows raised.
“What?” I ask him.
“She’s not dead.”
I stare at him, certain I’ve misheard.
“What do you mean?” Nate says, leaning forward.
“Dr. Van Veen is alive.” He sets down his mug with careful precision. “In hiding, from what my contact at Global tells me. Recovering somewhere off the grid. But very much not dead. Very much alive.”
“That’s not possible,” Nate says, his whole body rigid beside me. “Mia’s poison?—”
“The poison takes four minutes,” I hear myself say. “It’s always four minutes. But it works. No one’s ever survived.” I eye Nate. “Except for you.”
But even as I say it, I remember how I spit on her when I was getting tortured, the way she wiped it off with her handkerchief and put it back in her pocket, how she told me she would try and use it.
“She has a sample of my spit,” I say, explaining to them what happened. “Could she have made an antidote? That quickly?”
“Possibly. It’s hard to say.” He picks up his tea again, not meeting my eyes. “We’ve never been able to develop one ourselves, and I—” He stops abruptly.
Nate looks between us. “You what?”
My father doesn’t answer. Instead, he looks at me, and in that glance is a question:He doesn’t know, does he? About my involvement?
I give a tiny shake of my head.
Nate catches it. Of course he does. “What am I missing here?”
“Nothing,” I say quickly. “Old family history. Not relevant right now.”
He doesn’t look convinced, but he lets it drop. For now. He’s a stubborn bastard so I’m sure he’s going to bring it up later.
