Page 232 of Damsel in Disguise

He once said in one of his lectures that emotions are simply chemical reactions misinterpreted by poets.

Then there goes the bandage across his shoulder, the place where I stabbed him in the heat of emotions.

And still he’s the same person who stepped between me and the bullet without a single calculation.

People believe monsters stop being human. I believe monsters are simply humans who discovered kindness hurts.

Alistair just forgot that lesson for one second.

With devastating certainty that I can finally see him.

Not as the professor. The manipulator. Or the Dominion’s perfect creation.

Only as a lonely man who spent his entire life believing he was incapable of love, and still chose to stand between me and death.

He’s still a human underneath it all.

The doctors assured us that no vital organs had been damaged. The first bullet had missed everything that mattered by what they called a miracle and what Alistair would probably call a statistical inevitability.

I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours discovering that miracles are much louder than what people imagine.

They sound like heart monitors.

They smell like antiseptic.

And they look like the man sleeping while the one who loves him waits for proof that he intends to wake up for her.

A knock sounds against the door. I don’t answer.

Adrian walks in anyway. Asher follows behind him, carrying two folders.

Neither of my brothers looks particularly rested, even though it’s been a whole day since we had that conversation.

They stop beside the bed.

Asher studies the sleeping man for a long moment. “He looks terrible.”

“He was shot twice.”

“Uhh… I think I preferred him more when he was trying to dismantle international organizations instead of collecting bullets.”

“He still dismantles international organizations.”

“Yes, but now he does it while creating paperwork for me.”

I look at the folders in Asher’s hand. “What are those?”

“Recruitment packages,” he says.

I blink. “For him?”

He nods.

By the time the sun came up, every television channel in the country was talking about the fall of the Triarch Dominion.

News anchors called it the largest criminal network dismantled in decades.

Financial analysts called it the collapse of a shadow empire.