“Both.”
Silence. Then Chris again, quieter: “Deep cover means becoming someone else completely. Letting the op reshape you until you’re not sure where the cover ends and you begin.”
“I understand?—”
“No. You don’t.” Not angry, just factual. “You’ve run ops. But you’ve never—” He stops. Starts again. “With Vicente, it wasn’t just pretending to be loyal. Wasn’t just feeding him what he wanted to hear. He made me into something. Someone who craved the control he had over me. And I let him. Because it’s what the op required.”
My breath catches. I press closer to the wall, heart hammering. Pieces fall into place. I could kick myself for not figuring out sooner that Chris’s deep cover op was Vicente.
“He broke you down to build you back up,” Wyatt says, understanding threading through the words.
“He broke me down to remake me into something useful to him. And the fucked up part is how good I got at playing that role. How much I wanted what he was giving me, even knowing it was poison.”
“That’s not your fault. That’s what trauma bonding does?—”
“I know what it’s called.” Chris’s voice hardens. “Doesn’t make it any less true. Doesn’t change the fact that some part of me still?—”
He cuts off. I hold my breath, willing him to finish.
“Still what?” Wyatt prompts gently.
“Nothing. Forget it.”
“Chris—”
“I said forget it.” A pause. “The point is, I can’t talk to Nina about this. She’s his therapist. The professional boundaries alone?—”
“She’s your girlfriend, Chris. At some point that has to count for something.”
“Does it? Because clearance issues aside, telling her any of this compromises her ability to do her job. Contaminates every session she has with him. Makes her second-guess her instincts.”
“Or it gives her context she needs to protect herself.”
“From what? Vicente’s not going to hurt her. Not while she’s useful.”
“And when she stops being useful?”
The silence that follows is answer enough.
The right thing to do is walk in, get my water, face whatever consequences come from obviously eavesdropping. But I’m frozen, trying to process what I just heard.
Chris and Vicente. A relationship that went beyond operational necessity. Trauma bonding. Control. Something Chris still craves despite knowing it’s poison.
“She’s going to find out eventually,” Wyatt says. “Better it comes from you than from someone else.”
“Maybe. Or maybe it’s better if she never knows the full picture. If she can keep seeing Vicente as just a complex man trying to redeem himself, instead of understanding what he’s capable of. What he turned me into.”
He stops. The silence stretches taut.
I take a breath. Step out of the shadows.
35
Nina
Both men turn, identically startled.
“Nina,” Chris says. “How long have you been?—”
