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“Spirit’s fine when it knows its place.” Ryder didn’t break stride. “She forgets sometimes. We’re working on it.”

Laughter came from the crew.

He moved her down the hallway, and she let him because the cover required it, the mission required it, because the alternative would help no one. But she felt every second of his hand on her arm. The torturer handling his subject, moving her where he wanted her with the same smooth control the Diehls had just spent ten minutes gushing over.

He opened the door to their room. She walked in ahead of him. He followed. The door closed.

The room was the same as this morning, when she’d woken with her face against his chest and her legs tangled with his. The bed was the same one where she’d had to cover her face with a pillow so no one could hear her crying out his name in pleasure.

She stood in the center of the room and did not look at him.

The revelation sat between them like a detonation.

Chapter 21

She was facing the far wall. Arms at her sides. Absolutely still.

Ryder closed the door and turned the lock. His hands weren’t steady. His jaw ached from holding it clenched, his pulse was still running hot, and something behind his ribs felt like it had come loose.

Goddamn it. Arlo and Heath had fucking peeled his past open in front Cassandra, and there hadn’t been a single fucking thing he could do about it without blowing the entire operation.

And the worst of it was that every detail had been accurate. Every story had been true. They’d told it all like a tribute, which was the part that made his stomach turn. They’d thought they were honoring him. They’d thought that the things he’d spent four years trying to bury were accomplishments worth celebrating.

In their world, in the world where he used to live, they were.

He’d watched the exact moment when she’d truly understood. The freeze in her shoulders. The stillness that went deeper than anything the cover required.

Then he’d had to be the monster the Diehls had just described in order to stop her when she’d done what any normal person would want to do when she’d found out the man she’d been intimate with was scum: get the fuck out.

Kneel now. Or believe me, you will regret it.

His words might have saved the mission, but they’d pretty much put a bullet in the head of any future he and Cassandra might have had.

He’d known he would have to tell her sometime. But he’d thought he would get to choose when she found out. Back at Zodiac, when their lives weren’t at stake, when there was more time. When she could scream and rant and call him a bastard and he could try to ease her through it.

Or maybe he’d just been a fucking coward. Maybe he’d hoped he’d never have to tell her, afraid to let himself think about the disgust he’d see on her face when he told her what a monster he’d been.

He was. What a monster he was.

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

That he was a monster? Fucking yes.

Her voice was barely above speaking volume. Controlled. Precise. He understood the restraint. The walls in this place were thin, and the crew was just down the hall.

She still hadn’t turned around. “You told me you did consulting. That you handled problems.”

Her spine was rigid. Her shoulders were locked. Her hands hung at her sides without a tremor.

Hysterical would have been easier for both of them. If she’d been crying, he could have worked his way through it. But this quiet, controlled demand meant she’d already processed what she’d heard and arrived at her conclusion.

“What were you exactly before you worked for Zodiac Tactical?”

He owed her this. Every ugly syllable. He’d chosen to touch her knowing all of it was underneath, and she deserved to know what her hands had been on.

“Freelance interrogator.” His voice came out flat. Good. She didn’t need his emotion right now. She needed the truth. “No government, no flag, no oversight. I worked for whoever was paying.”

“What does that mean, specifically?”