‘You were drugged too?’Jules asks.Lachlan nods.‘My father told me the photographer was the one who led the attack, that he dosed the champagne, but I didn’t know you were drugged.You never drink.’
‘Just one glass, but like I said, the effects didn’t last as long.’
Jules frowns, likely sensing something isoff.
Lachlan still hasn’t told him it was his father who ordered the botched extraction.He doesn’t know if he can tell Jules without Alistair knowing, so for now, he lets it go uncorrected.Jules is stroking Lachlan’s skin, fitting three fingers over the stab wounds that became scars.He does that sometimes, Lachlan has noticed.It seems almost unconscious.
‘OK, what else did they teach you in this place?’
‘ARC.Advanced resistance conditioning.It’s essentially pain tolerance training, designed to keep operators functional so they can hold up.’
‘Hold up under what?’
‘Nothing ever taught me to hold up against you, though.’
‘Don’tswerve.Hold up under what?’
‘Baby—’
‘I want to hear you say it, Lachlan.’
‘Why?’
‘So I know you.’
‘You already know me.’
‘Not like this.’
‘It’s ugly shit you shouldn’t have to know.’
‘Iwantto know it so that when I say I love you, it gets hooks in more of you and that way, you can’t ever think of going away again.’
‘I won’t go away.’
‘Then say it.’
Lachlan exhales roughly.‘Hold up under torture.’
‘Torture,’ Jules echoes with gentle emphasis.‘You were tortured.RB, CTT, ARC, all those fancy letters to hide the fact that you were trained to be tortured and not break.’
‘I was trained to kill too.’
‘I already knew that.I didn’t know this.What kind of torture?’
Lachlan shuts down, can’t help it.‘Pain control, stuff like that.’
‘I’m not akid.I can handle it.’
‘OK, well, Ican’t,’ Lachlan blurts out before he can stop himself.‘Some things are better left buried.There’s a lot of ways that people break and we were trained to withstand all of them, but not all of us got through it.Two dropped out.One never came back.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Lachlan closes his eyes.‘No, I’m sorry.I want to tell you, but it’s just hard.There’s ugliness in the world you’ve never seen, and I want to keep it that way.’
‘Does my father know this about you?’
‘RB doesn’t exist on paper, but probably.’
