“I’d do it again.”I let the confession hover.
He watches me, seeing everything, and somehow still staying right where he is.
“You know all my secrets.I’m fully exposed.”His mouth tips.“You have the advantage, because I don’t know yours.”
“Dove told you everything, I’m sure.”
“Only what she knows.I wantyourstory.”
“There’s too much to unpack.”I lean back along the sofa, air leaving my lungs.“None of it happens with Russians on board.”
“Then start with the past ten days.”He softens his tone.“Tell me about the kill room.”
The engine hum fills the space between us.I close my eyes for a second, seeing concrete and chains and torture that never turns off.
Then I open them and meet his patient gaze.
“All right.”I shift on the couch and open my arms.
He moves in, careful at first.We adjust without speaking, twisting our too-big frames in the narrow space.I stretch along the seats with my back to the wall, and he settles on his side against my chest and between my legs.His head fits just right in the crook of my shoulder, and I rest my arm around him.
Dove is the only person I’ve ever held this way.That long-lost familiarity burrows inside my chest, old and warm and quietly devastating.
Christ, I miss her.
Closing my eyes, I let myself sink beneath the heat of Wolf’s body.Then I tell him about the kill room.
I don’t linger on the beatings.Those were crude and predictable.I move past them and go straight to the part that mattered.
“The screen never turned off.They unhooked the rig sometimes so it wouldn’t damage my eyes.But when I closed them, she was still there.That was part of the torture.Let me think I escaped for a minute.Then find her again inside my head.”
Wolf stays still, breathing steady, listening.
“I refused to cooperate.”I run the backs of my fingers along his arm.“I told Crowe I’d do nothing until I saw her in person.Not on a feed or through a camera lens.Something felt wrong.I couldn’t explain it, but my gut kept telling me the video wasn’t right.How did you know it was a fake?”
“Mikhail said the shadows didn’t line up.So I looked closer.”
“That’s when you noticed the missing beauty mark.”
“One of my favorite parts of her.”He smiles.
My chest flutters.Not with jealousy.With contentment.
“I couldn’t see that detail from across the room.The distance was deliberate.No audio, either.Crowe wasn’t taking any chances.He knew I was suspicious.Thought he could frighten me enough to override that instinct, and maybe, if he pushed hard enough, I’d do anything he asked.”My hand tightens in the fabric of Wolf’s shirt.“I was close.Closer than I want to admit.Maybe a day.Maybe only hours.I don’t know how much longer I would’ve held.”
“You held longer than I did.When Frankie killed Denver and sealed our fates, I didn’t last a day before I broke and chose the cliff over starvation.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“You’re right.Lasting ten days in a kill room?That’s brave.Jumping off a cliff?That was weak.”
The anger slams into me fast and unbidden.
“No.”I tighten my arm around him and lean down, mouth close to his ear.“You don’t get to say that.”
He stiffens.
“It’s unacceptable.”I pull back enough to look at him.“You didn’t fail.You survived.That isn’t weakness.”
