"I expected someone who would cooperate out of self-preservation."
"Oh, I'm absolutely cooperating out of self-preservation. I'm just being annoying about it." I grin. "Multitasking."
Something flickers across his face. If I didn't know better, I'd call it amusement.
But I do know better. Men like Jagger Harrison don't get amused. They get strategic.
"We'll start there tomorrow," he says, redirecting. "Project Omega. See what else surfaces."
"Can’t wait, Daddy J. Can't wait to have my brain picked apart by the guy who scrambled it in the first place." I force a smile. "This is really a beautiful captor-captive relationship we're building. Very healthy. Very normal."
"Go back to bed, Jonah."
"Is that an order?"
"It's a suggestion. You look like hell."
"Charming. You really know how to make a guy feel special." I push off from the counter, heading for the door. "Thanks for the water. And the existential dread. Both very refreshing."
I'm almost out of the kitchen when his voice stops me.
"Jonah."
I turn. He's still standing there, coffee in hand, backlit by the dim glow of the appliances.
"What?"
"The humor. The constant deflection." His eyes meet mine. "I know what it is. I know you're using it to cope."
My throat tightens. "And?"
"And it's not going to work on me. I see through it. I see through everything."
"Good for you." My voice comes out harder than I intended. "But here's the thing, dickwad. I spent years with nothing but my own broken brain for company. The jokes are all I have left. So you can see through them all you want, but I'm not going to stop. Because if I stop laughing, I start screaming. And I don't think either of us wants that."
He's quiet.
"Good talk," I say. "Really bonding. Same time tomorrow?"
I leave before he can respond.
Back in the bedroom, I lie on the expensive sheets and stare at the expensive ceiling and think about all the ways this could end badly.
Most of them involve me dead or broken. Again.
But here's the thing Jagger doesn't understand, the thing none of them understood when they strapped me to that table and poured chemicals into my brain…
I was a journalist. A good one. The kind who got death threats and kept digging anyway. The kind who slept with a recorder under his pillow and a go-bag by the door. The kind who learned early that the truth is worth more than safety, more than comfort, more than anything.
They kept me alive for three years because they thought they'd erased everything that made me dangerous.
They were wrong.
The memories are coming back. Piece by piece, fragment by fragment, the person I used to be is clawing his way out of the chemical fog they locked him in.
And the man who broke me is about to find out exactly how wrong they were.
I think about Jagger standing in his kitchen in his sweatpants, looking almost human. I think about the way his eye twitched when I sat on his counter. The way he said'please'like it cost him something.
