But it's a start.
And right now, held in Asher's arms, his heartbeat steady against my ear, his skin warm against mine, that start feels like everything.
"I love you," I whisper against his chest.
"I love you too. My fuck, do I ever." He pulls me closer, impossibly closer, like he's trying to absorb me into himself. "Now rest. We've got a long flight tomorrow."
"The children?"
"Safe. On their way to Geneva. Jace and Marlee are with them. Now sleep, sweet pea.”
Sweet pea is growing on me…My eyes close as he murmurs affirmations in my ear, his arms tight around me, warding off the demons who try to infiltrate my mind as sleep claims me.
Chapter Sixteen: Asher
Jinxsleepslikethedead.
Not the restless thrashing I've gotten used to over the past weeks, the nightmares that make him twitch and mutter and sweat. This is different. Deep and still, his chest rising and falling in a slow rhythm, his face slack with something I've never seen on him before.
Peace.
The Singapore safe house is quiet in the early morning light. Gray dawn filtering through grimy windows, the hum of the old air conditioning unit, the distant sounds of a city waking up. We're on a narrow cot that wasn't built for two grown men, tangled together in a way that should be uncomfortable but isn't.
His head is on my chest. His arm is draped across my stomach. His long black hair spills over both of us, tangled and unwashed, smelling like sweat and sex and death. The blood is gone, scrubbed away in a shower that lasted an hour, but I can still see the shadows of it in the lines of his face.
Helena Cross is dead. All of the Custodians involved are dead…
We wiped the darkest parts of corruption off the face of the Earth.
I watched him walk out of that office with blood on his hands and nothing in his eyes. I held him while he fell apart afterward, while thirty years of pain came pouring out in ugly sobs that shook his whole body. I fucked him slow and tender because he needed to feel something other than violence, and then I held him while he cried some more.
Now he's sleeping. Actually sleeping. And I don't want to move, don't want to breathe too loud, don't want to do anything that might shatter this fragile moment.
The burner phone on the floor buzzes. I reach for it slowly, carefully, trying not to jostle him.
Jagger's name on the screen.
I answer, keep my voice low. "Yeah."
"Children landed safely. Elliot has them settled. Medical team is doing initial assessments." Jagger's voice is clipped, efficient, but I can hear the relief underneath. "Lily's been asking for Jinx."
"Lily?"
"The girl from cell twelve. She chose a name. Wouldn't answer to Twelve anymore, said that was a number, not a name." A pause. "She said Jinx told her she could choose."
Something warm blooms in my chest. The girl who held a knife to a hostage's throat, who'd been conditioned to kill without hesitation, who looked at Jinx with empty eyes and recited mantras about pain and purpose. She chose a name. She's starting to become a person again.
"How is she?"
"Attached. Won't let Elliot out of her sight, but she keeps asking when Jinx is coming. When the man who saved her will be there." Another pause, longer this time. "There's something else."
"Tell me."
"Song delivered. Everything she promised and more." Jagger's voice drops, goes hard. "Full documentation on Project Omega. Financial records, authorization signatures, internal memos. We have names, Asher. Every Custodian who funded the program,every Ministry head who approved the protocols, every piece of shit who signed off on torturing children for profit."
I go still. "Who?"
"Abernathy. Oswald. Webb. All the Ministry directors, all complicit from the beginning. They've been running the Foundry as a joint venture for forty years, rotating children through facilities around the world, selling the finished products to the highest bidder." Jagger's disgust is palpable even through the phone. "Helena Cross was the architect, but she had plenty of builders."
