Tonight, wanting feels like permission.
I breathe in his wild wolf scent, energized and oddly calm, as I drift off, thinking about his plus-one plus-one fairy tale.
The Ghost and Mikhail are already gone when I wake.One less thing to manage.
I’ll send gift baskets to thank them for their service.Later.
Today has one priority.Learn the inner circle’s innies and outies.
I start after breakfast and read until my eyes cross.Then I keep going.
Profiles stack on profiles.Faces blur until I force myself to slow down.I learn the rhythm of them, their habits, their tells, who trusts whom, and who sleeps with whom.I memorize tattoos and scars, the way mouths tilt when they lie.I build a mental lineup and walk it again.And again.
Nine of them were kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery.
Nine human beings broken under Van Quiso when he was at his worst.The details make my jaw ache.I wouldn’t have believed redemption was possible if the file didn’t trace the arc all the way back to Van’s childhood.Neglect, coercion, and cruelty I know too well.The trauma doesn’t excuse it.But it explains a lot.
This inner circle is a nightmare split down the middle, monsters on one side, and the people they hurt on the other, all bound together in a tribe that shouldn’t work.
The world’s worst criminals stand shoulder to shoulder with their victims.It makes my brain itch.
I scroll back to Van Quiso’s photo.Scar down his face.Eyes like steel blades.A man who learned too late what his hands had become and chose to use them differently.
Against my better judgment, a grin creeps in.
I want to meet him.
Across the room, Jag is chained to his keyboard, the keys ticking and chair shifting.He shaved today and pulled on his new clothes with an inappropriate amount of appreciation in his eyes.
I haven’t had time to explore that appreciation.We pass each other for water.Food appears and disappears untouched.We trade looks, not words.
Everything funnels toward the call.
The hours crowd in, dragging and pressing.The waiting gnaws.I feel it in my teeth, my hands, and the way my leg won’t stop bouncing.By the time the sun sets, I’ve chewed a hole in my cheek.
Jag finally lifts his head.“Time.”
I cross the room and sit beside him, letting our knees touch.My nerves light up the second I stop moving.My shoulders tense.My hands don’t know where to land.My pulse keeps skipping even though nothing has happened yet.
Jag, meanwhile, might as well be made of stone.His face gives nothing away.No tension around his mouth.No tell in his eyes.
He reaches for equipment, swaps phones, flips a switch on a small box, types a string of nonsense, pauses, deletes, and starts again.
The laptop screen fractures into windows within windows, timers, hashes, and a map that isn’t a map.Numbers roll and invert.Fucking witchcraft.
Then he waits exactly long enough for my skin to crawl.
I hook my fingers together to keep them from shaking and lean back in the chair, trying to match his stillness.It doesn’t work.My leg starts up again.
Jag glances at me and sets a steady hand on my knee.
Then he presses a button.
The call begins.Not with a ring, but with silence.Thick, waiting silence.
I hold my breath.
Then…
