Page 122 of Damsel in Disguise

No guilt or weight behind it. Just a fact.

“Left the other one alive,” she adds with a careless shrug. “Memories are important. Someone has to carry the story, right?” a small smile tugs at her lips. “Besides, she told me the truth. I’m not completely heartless,” she blinks with feigned innocence.

A genuine laugh tears out of my heart—one that I believed was dead and mechanical—before I can tamp it.

I lean back into the wall, letting my full weight rest against it as the sound rips through my chest. My body doubles over, hand slapping my thigh once, twice—breath hitching, vision blurring.

The deep, unrestrained, almost feral laughter claws its way out of me like it’s been waiting for an excuse to let out all these years. It’s been a long time since something—someone—has amused me like this.

Tears prick at the corners of my eyes, blurring the sterile white of the room into something distorted.

I always have a smile on my face, but I never laugh like this. The unknown feeling settles in my lifeless heart, bringing it back to life.

I drag a hand down my face, trying to steady my breathing, but the laughter doesn’t leave. This girl…

I clear my throat, the sound cutting clean through the lingering echo of my laughter. “Fifteen.”

She blinks, tilting her head slightly. “What?”

My hands slide into my pockets, fingers closing around the small device I came prepared with.

A press. The jammer hums to life—silent, efficient, sealing the room in a bubble of isolation.

No ears. No interruptions.

Timer starts now.

At best, they’ll need two minutes to realize something’s wrong. Two minutes before security storms in under the pretense of “my safety.”

That’s all I need.

“My body count,” I say calmly, watching the confusion flicker across her face. “According to what they counted, I’ve killed fifteen pathetic, oxygen-wasting excuses of humanity when I was twelve.”

A flicker of something feral passes through my gaze.

Every failed iteration of creating the perfect Synthète out of the deadliest criminals, every broken thing that shouldn’t have been allowed a second chance—I made sure they didn’t. The world is already rotting under the weight of creatures like them on the loose. I’m simply accelerating the process as much as I can.

Well, the majority of them who survive? Like Delilah Crosswave? Sometimes you need to prove your loyalty by doing the worst shit.

Besides, they make excellent regenerative spies or assassins, each sold over fifty million, some exceeding a billion.

“And that’s only the count that mattered. The rest?” a soft exhale. “Let’s just say I learned early how to turn failure into waste management.”

I don’t tell her that my actual name is only Alistair Benette—the last name Hertley is not mine. It’s something the Triarch Dominion decided for me. Just like Delilah Crosswave.

The name flashes through my mind like a stain I can’t scrub out. Loyalty sometimes demands proof. Even if that proof comes with a ring and a contract, I despise it.

“Then why aren’t you locked in but—” Ariella’s voice cuts in with disbelief. “But you’re a professor at the Oxford—”

I let out a low chuckle, watching it sink in. “Triarch Dominion.”

Her brows knit, confusion turning into curiosity. “What do you mean Triarch Dominion?”

For a moment, I don’t answer.

I let the silence stretch while contemplating for a second. Then I close my eyes briefly, inhaling slowly and deeply. The memory comes whether I want it to or not.

“When I was twelve,” I begin. “I came home with a scholarship.”