Afterward, he pulled me up into his lap, his arms wrapping around me with a possessiveness that shouldhave felt like ownership but instead felt like an acknowledgment. "You're extraordinary," he murmured against my hair. "You know that, don't you? Absolutely extraordinary."
"I know." I rested my head against his shoulder, my mind already cataloguing everything I'd learned. The layout of the church. The security systems. The panic room access code. The files he'd shown me, the information he'd shared, the vulnerabilities I could exploit if I needed to.
"I love you," Gabriel said quietly. "I know you don't believe me. I know you may never believe me. But it's true."
I didn't answer. Couldn't answer. The wordlovewas too complicated, too compromised, too tangled up in everything that had been done to me. But I let him hold me, and I let myself feel something that might have been the beginning of forgiveness, or might have been just another layer of the performance.
The lines between truth and manipulation had blurred so completely that I wasn't sure I could ever separate them again. But maybe that was the point. Maybe the only way to survive in a world built on lies was to become fluent in them—to speak the language of deception so well that you could use it to tell the truth.
Tomorrow, I'd continue the counter-agent treatment. Tomorrow, I'd keep gathering intelligence. Tomorrow, I'd keep playing the role of Gabriel's perfect girl whileI figured out how to become something that belonged to no one but myself.
Tonight, I just let him hold me in the ruins of a church that had witnessed far worse sins than ours.
16
Returning as the Rabbit
The apartment smelled like home.
I stood in the doorway with my bag heavy on my shoulder and my heart a cold, steady drum in my chest, breathing in the familiar scent of Nathan's cologne and the lavender candles I'd bought to make the place feel like ours. Everything was exactly as I'd left it—the throw pillows arranged on the couch, the dishes drying on the rack, the wedding magazines fanned across the coffee table like promises I'd stopped believing.
I'd been gone for six days. Six days of counter-agents and conditioning sessions and the slow, painful process oflearning to distinguish my own thoughts from the programming both men had carved into my skull. Six days of Gabriel's hands and Gabriel's voice and Gabriel's truth, which might have been just another lie but felt, at least, like a lie I could work with.
Now I was back. And I had a performance to give.
I didn't have to wait long. Nathan emerged from the hallway at the sound of the door, his expression cycling through relief and concern and something sharper—suspicion, maybe, or the beginning of it—before settling into the careful worry he'd perfected over months of managing me.
"Bunny." He crossed the room in three strides and pulled me into his arms. "God, I was so worried. Your tracker went dark, your phone stopped responding—I thought something had happened."
"Something did happen." I let my voice tremble, let my body sag against his. "The contact—he was a setup. Someone from Mercy Logistics. He knew I was coming."
Nathan's arms tightened around me. "What happened?"
"I had to run. I ditched the phone, the tracker, everything. I've been hiding out for days, trying to make sure I wasn't followed." I pulled back to look at him, letting tears well in my eyes. "I was so scared, Nathan. I thought I'd never see you again."
The lies came easily now—more easily than they should have. But I'd spent six days with Gabriel, learning to recognize the difference between authentic emotion and conditioned response, and I'd discovered that the line between them was thinner than I'd ever imagined. I could be genuinely afraid and completely manipulative at the same time. I could love Nathan and plan his destruction in the same breath.
Gabriel had taught me that compartmentalization was a survival skill. Nathan had reinforced it without realizing he was giving me the tools to destroy him.
"It's okay." Nathan's hand stroked my hair, his voice dropping into that soothing register he used when I was fragile. "You're home now. You're safe. I won't let anything happen to you."
"I know." I pressed my face against his chest, breathing in his scent. "I know you'll protect me."
The words were poison wrapped in honey, and he swallowed them without hesitation.
I told him the story in fragments, the way a traumatized woman might—halting sentences, sudden silences, details that emerged out of order. The contact had been a trap. Men had been waiting. I'd barely escaped. I'd spent days hiding in a motel on the outskirts of the city, too afraid to reach out, too paranoid to trust anyone.
"It was Gabriel," I said, letting my voice crack. "He's working with Mercy Logistics. He has a contact in theVolkov network—someone high up, someone who knows about the Institute and the conditioning and everything."
Nathan's expression flickered—surprise, then calculation, then a cold satisfaction that he masked almost instantly. "The Volkov network? You're sure?"
"I saw the documents." I let fresh tears spill down my cheeks. "He's been planning something. Something big. He wants to rebuild the Institute, Nathan. He wants to start the conditioning program again."
The lie was beautiful in its simplicity. Gabriel had told me enough about the Volkov network for me to construct a plausible threat, and Nathan's paranoia would do the rest. He'd been hunting his brother for months; the thought that Gabriel was not only alive but actively rebuilding would be unbearable.
"That's not going to happen." Nathan's voice was steel wrapped in velvet. "I won't let him touch you again. I won't let him rebuild what we destroyed."
We.The word hit like a slap. Nathan still thought of us as partners, as a team, as two people fighting on the same side. He had no idea that I'd spent the past six days learning the truth about what he really was. Or at least the current version of the truth. To be honest, who knew the difference anymore. The only thing I truly knew was, undoubtley, I needed to sell this act like nothing else i had ever done. If I was doing this, now was the time to do so.
