I stand. My legs hold.
Thorne waits until the kitchen empties. Then he crosses the space between us in three strides. His hand closes around my arm, hard, the grip I know, the grip that will leave marks, and he's pulling me toward the hall.
"Walk."
I walk.
The corridor is empty. Our footsteps strike the concrete, his heavy and deliberate, mine trying to keep pace. He doesn't slow down. His grip doesn't loosen. The safe room door appears at the end of the hall, and he keys the lock one-handed, shoves it open, and drags me through.
The door closes behind us with a pressurized click.
He releases my arm. Steps back. His chest is heaving, his eyes burning with something that's been building since the moment his daughter did math for strangers.
"Four thousand." Thorne's tone cuts like a blade. "You absorbed that number, and you didn't even flinch."
"I flinched."
"Not where anyone could see it."
"I don't perform my guilt for an audience."
He moves closer. I don't step back.
"You sat in that kitchen." His voice is low. Dangerous. The flat affect that means the anger is real. "You told them yourstory. The defection. The cage. The six months of building your case. And they looked at you like you might be a person."
"I might be."
"You're not." He's close enough now that the heat radiates off him. "You're the reason my daughter has poison in her blood. You're the reason I spent six months watching her struggle with numbers that should have been easy, not knowing that something was eating her from the inside. You're the reason I have to look at her every morning and wonder how much time we have left."
"I know."
"Do you?" His hand comes up, not to my arm this time, but to my jaw. Gripping. Tilting my face up. "Because from where I'm standing, you look like a woman who's made peace with what she did. Who's found a way to file it under necessary losses and move on."
"I haven't made peace with anything."
"Then why aren't you fighting back?" His thumb presses into the soft skin beneath my chin. "Why do you just take it? Every time I put my hands on you, every time I …" He stops. His jaw works. "You should hate me. You should be screaming, fighting, trying to get away. Instead, you accept it."
"Because I deserve it."
"That's not?—"
"But I do." I hold his gaze. "Because every mark you put on my body is one more payment toward a debt that will never close. Because when you hurt me, the pain eclipses the weight of four thousand names. Because you're the only person who hates me as much as I hate myself, and there's something clean about that. Something honest."
His breathing has changed. Heavier. His hand is still on my jaw, but the grip has shifted, still hard, but searching now.
"You're sick." The words are a quiet accusation in the dim cell.
"Probably."
"This is sick. What happens in this room."
"Yes."
"And you want it anyway."
"Yes."
Something breaks behind his eyes. Not the wall, something else. Something that's been holding him in check, telling him to stop, telling him he's the good guy and good guys don't do what he's about to do.
