Mac whistles. “She must be good, then.”
“She’s mybestspider,” I correct, feeling oddly proud on her behalf.
“You don’t want to kill her,” Dimitri assumes.
“Wewon’tbe killing her,” I correct again, trying to control my tone so it doesn’t sound combative. I succeed—barely. “No one will.”
Dimitri’s scowl is deeply etched on his face after all these years. He cocks his head, lost in thought. “If the General wants her dead and we do not take the hit, he will send her name to another,” he points out.
“I know.” I nod and take a deep breath, sitting back in my chair. My resolve is made of steel, but my stomach flops over anxiously. Every second I wait is another that she’s unprotected. “I won’t risk another hitman coming after her—I won’t allow that kind of danger to her life, or anyone important to her. I want to tell the General we’ll take the hit. It’ll buy us some time.”
At that, Dimitri’s scowl deepens. “Hmm. I suppose a skilled informant is an asset worth protecting. Though, the repercussions will be challenging to manage. Will you—”
But the expression on Mac’s face shifts slightly, and he cuts in, “Wait a minute, D. I don’t think she’sjustan asset. Wes… do youlikeher?”
“What is this, primary school?” I return, raising a brow at him.
“You do!” Mac realizes, eyes rounding as a grin settles onto his lips. He looks to Dimitri, wanting to share in this newfound excitement and enthusiasm, but finds only the usual emotional wall. Rolling his eyes at Dimitri’s impassive face, Mac digs in his pocket for his phone. “What was her name again? Madison something?”
“Cooper,” Dimitri helps.
I grit my teeth. “What are you going to do, look her up?”
“I’m gonna friend her on Facebook,” Mac shoots back, rolling his eyes. “Of fuckin’ course I’m looking her up. I gotta see the girl who finally caught your eye. I bet you like ‘em wild, huh? Or are you more of a lady-in-the-streets kind ofbloke—”
“You like her?” Dimitri repeats the question, but in a far more accusatory way that implies my decision-making abilities are compromised.
He doesn’t know the half.
“Yes,” I admit, grimacing when the word falls so woefully short of describing my feelings.
The part of me that’s primitive and instinctual wants to take her—to claim her as loudly as I can so everyone knows. But old habits die hard, and there’s a much louder part of me that guards the truth—even about this, even to them. It’s a deep, dark fear I can’t rationalize away: that bad things happen when people know the truth.
“She’s much more than just a spider to me, if I’m honest,” I say, and even that truth still feels like a compromise. “But even if that weren’t true, she’d never pass our test. She sells information to me and, I assume, others—but she’s not hurting the innocent. She’s not a bad person who deserves her fate at the end of your knife. She’s…”
My mermaid. My Madison, now.
Sure, I just learned her name, but you don’t need to know someone’s name to know who they really are. I know her heart. I know hersoul. And I don’t care if she’s good or bad—it doesn’t matter to me. She’smine.And if I’m honest, I’ve been hers ever since that first message.
Already several steps ahead, our fearless leader spears me with a meaningful, almost understanding look. “She will never be safe,” he points out, refusing to let me ignore the very thing I’ve been trying to. “Even if you fake her death, she will live the rest of her life with a target on her back. And if he finds out we defied him, so will we.”
I heave a sigh and lean forward onto my elbows, rubbing my face harshly. It’s time for another piece of the truth.
Because he’s right. There’s no trying to reason with a man like the General—to convince him not to kill her. It’s not as if we can pay him off, and I doubt he can be threatened effectively. If he lives, he won’t be satisfied until she’s dead.
It was never the plan to let him live.
I grind my jaw. “As far as I’m concerned, the General just signed his own death warrant.”
Mac reels back, blinking in surprise at the vehemence in my voice. A muscle in Dimitri’s jaw ticks, but he doesn’t look shocked. The words sit heavily in the air. From their perspective, it’s a declaration of war against the man who brought us together. A man who, for all intents and purposes, has never done Mac or Dimitri any personal wrong.
“Look, this isn’t your fight—either of you,” I say, giving them each a serious look in turn. Do I want their help? Of course. But I can’t ask it. Not after everything I’ve done and kept from them. “You don’t have to—”
“Oh, fuck off with that selfless bullshit,” Mac cuts me off, slashing his hand through the air. “Like I’d let you do this on your own. I was all for collecting inteland being careful, since we don’t know jack shit about the General, but frankly the wait-and-see approach gives me the scratch anyway. I’m all in and ready to take this fucker down. What about you, Big D?”
Dimitri casts his eyes skyward and mutters something in Russian, too low for either of us to hear—I catchstupid decisionandall be killed. He sighs. “The General will become a problem eventually, I suppose. As he claims more power, he will go after anyone who threatens that power. Your spider is likely the first of many innocent targets, and I will not work for a dictator. Still, making a move on someone protected by anonymity is incredibly dangerous...” He scrubs at his scar, up through his short hair.
“I know you have other people to think about,” I start. Everyone in the house knows that he and Nicole are trying for a baby. “I wouldn’t blame you—”
