“And he’ll break. Everyone breaks eventually.”
“Yes.”
He opens his eyes. The man looking at me is not the Petrenko heir. He is not the creature who learned to crave my presence. He is something new.
“I want to be alone,” he says.
The request is unexpected.
“Your condition should be monitored?—”
“I want to be alone.” His voice is harder. “Please. I need time. To understand what I’ve done.”
I stand.
“I will return in four hours. The IV should remain in place.”
He doesn’t respond. He has already turned his face away.
I walk to the door. At the threshold, I pause.
“The men who died,” I say. “They were soldiers. They knew the risks.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“No,” I agree. “It does not.”
I exit the room. The door seals.
In the corridor, I stand motionless. The mission is progressing. Ivan has received valuable intelligence.
But the man in the chair is damaged in ways my methods did not intend. And the damage extends to me.
I treated him because I could not bear to see him die.
I transmitted his disclosure because I could not override seventeen years of training fast enough to stop myself.
Both impulses are genuine. Both impulses are incompatible.
I walk back to the observation room to draft my after-action report. I try not to think about the tears on his face or the names of the men who died because I did exactly what I was built to do.
I fail.
Chapter Twelve
NIKOLAI
Approximately two days without contact.
I know you can hear me.
I know you are watching.
The IV drip counts time now. One drop. Two drops. Three. A rhythmic, unrelenting metronome that measures the silence in seconds. I have watched enough of them fall to know it has been almost forty-eight hours since I asked to be alone. Since I told the only person keeping me alive to leave me in the dark.
He didn’t come back.
The door opens at irregular intervals now, but it isn’t him. The footsteps are wrong—heavy, indifferent, lacking the precise cadence I memorized. The person who brings the broth wears a generic gray uniform and avoids looking at my face. They check the restraints with mechanical efficiency, ignoring the way the leather chafes my wrists raw. They don’t adjust the angle of my headrest. They don’t touch my skin unless absolutely necessary.
