Chapter 103: Amelia

Amelia

Three days pass before he comes back, and I spend every hour of them planning.

I go over it the way I used to go over an op before deployment. What do I have. What does he want. Where's the gap between those two things that I can actually use. Every single time I land on the same answer, the one that makes my stomach turn, because I've never been the kind of person who uses her body as a weapon. I've always thought that was beneath me. Something other people did, not something I did.

But morals don't get me out of this room. Morals don't get me back to my mother's kitchen or my brother's stupid jokes or a life that doesn't involve a locked door and a man in a mask deciding what I eat and when I sleep.

So when the door finally opens and he walks in, I'm ready.

"You're quiet today," he says, dropping into the chair across from me. "No insults. No threats. I'm almost disappointed."

"I've been thinking."

"Dangerous pastime, in your situation." He leans back, arms crossed, watching me. "What have you been thinking about, Amelia?"

"What you want in exchange for information."

That gets a reaction. Small, but real. His head tilts.

"Information," he repeats.

"Four years ago something happened. Something that made you finally move against Ren after waiting your whole life to do it. I want to know what it was."

He laughs, short. "You want to know. That's cute. What makes you think you're in any position to want anything?"

"Because you like me talking to you." I keep my voice flat, steady, the way I used to brief senior officers when I needed them to take me seriously. "You told me yourself you enjoy this version of me more than the silent one. So let's talk. Tell me what happened four years ago, and I'll give you something back."

"You don't have anything I want."

"Don't I?"

Something flickers behind his eyes.

"Careful," he says, low. "You're playing a game you don't know the rules to."

"Then teach me the rules."

I stand up from the bed and close the distance between us until I'm standing right in front of his chair. Up close I can see the scar again, that thin pale line at the edge of his eye.

He goes still.

"Not gonna happen," he says, but there's less certainty in it than there was a second ago.

I put on the most innocent face I can manage. "What plans?"

He laughs again, rougher this time, and pushes up out of the chair so fast it nearly tips backward, putting himself close enough that I have to tilt my head to keep looking at him.

"You think you're clever," he says. "You think batting your eyes and asking nicely is going to get four years of planning handed to you on a plate."

"I think you're the one who keeps hinting there's a plan at all. If you didn't want me curious, you shouldn't have mentioned it."

"I want you exactly as curious as I decide you get to be." His voice has an edge to it now. "Nothing more."

I take a breath and close the last of the distance between us and kiss him.

He goes rigid for half a second, caught off guard, and I feel a flash of triumph before his hand comes up and fists into my hair, not gentle, pulling me in harder instead of pushing me away. The kiss turns rough fast, more teeth than anything else, both of us fighting for control of something neither of us is willing to name out loud.

He walks me backward until my knees hit the edge of the bed, and we go down together, him catching himself on one arm so he doesn't crush me, his weight settling over me. My hands find his shoulders, and for one second I don't know if I'm about to push him off or pull him closer.

"This is new," he says against my jaw, breath uneven. "Did you actually think I wouldn't notice what you're doing?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Liar." He pulls back just far enough to look at me, and I can feel the weight of his eyes even through the mask, sharp again, the fog of the moment clearing out of them fast. "You're trying to trade this for answers. Sweet little soldier, playing spy."

Heat crawls up my neck. "Is it working?"

"No." He says it simply, but he doesn't move off me, and his hand is still in my hair, thumb tracing slow along my scalp. "But I'll admit, I'm curious how far you were willing to take it."

"Get off me."

"You started this."

"And I'm ending it." I push against his chest, and this time he lets me, rolling off to the side and sitting up on the edge of the bed with his back to me, breathing harder than he probably wants me to notice. I scramble up onto my knees behind him, putting space between us, my heart slamming against my ribs.

For a long moment neither of us says anything.

"You're not as clever as you think," he says finally, steadier now, though I catch the way his hand isn't quite steady when he reaches up to straighten his mask. "But you're not as predictable as I expected either. I'll give you that much."

"Tell me what happened four years ago."

"No." He stands, smoothing down his jacket, though the tension still sitting in his shoulders tells a different story. "But I'll tell you this much for free, since you went to the trouble. Whatever you're trying to build in that head of yours, whatever plan you think you're running on me, drop it. I've been doing this a great deal longer than you have, and I have never once lost a game I decided to play."

"Everyone loses eventually."

He turns at the door.

"Maybe," he says. "But not today. And not to a woman kissing me to get information out of me like she's in some film." He almost sounds amused again, the careful control sliding back over him. "Rest up, Amelia. I have a feeling you're going to need it."

The door shuts, the lock clicks, and I sit there on the edge of the bed with my pulse still hammering, disgusted with myself and furious that it didn't work and unsettled by how much of that kiss didn't feel entirely like an act.

I press the heels of my hands against my eyes and force myself to breathe.

It didn't work. Fine. That's one option gone. But he flinched when I mentioned the plan, and men who flinch are men who have something worth flinching over, and I am not done digging until I find out exactly what that is.

I lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling, running through everything he's given me so far without meaning to. Four years. A brother nobody knew about. A father who never claimed him. That much he handed me for free, days ago, in a moment of anger he probably regrets now. Whatever happened four years ago is connected to that same wound, I'm almost certain of it. Something tipped him from watching from a distance his whole life into deciding Ren had to die for it.

I think about Ren. About the way he used to talk about his father in that clipped, careful tone people use when a subject is closed and they want it to stay that way. I never pushed. I should have pushed. Every question I didn't ask feels like a door I could have opened, and now the man on the other side of it is dead and I'm locked in a room trying to piece together his family history from a masked stranger.

The new maid comes in later with a tray of food, and this time I catch her eyes before she can look away.

"What's his name," I say, quiet, careful. "The man who runs this place."

Her hands go still over the tray. "I don't know his name."

"You've been here longer than three days. You know something."

"I know that asking questions is how Farrah ended up on that dock." Her voice shakes, but she doesn't leave, not yet. "I'm not doing that. Not for you, not for anyone."

"I'm not asking you to die for me. I'm asking if you've ever heard anyone use his name. Even once. A guard talking when they think no one's listening. Anything."

She sets the tray down harder than she needs to, and for a second I think she's going to walk out without another word. Instead she glances at the door, then back at me, and lowers her voice until it's barely audible.

"They call him Falcon," she says. "That's all I've got. That's all anyone's got."

Then she's gone, the door locked behind her, and I'm left staring at a plate of food and a single word that isn't a name but is more than I had an hour ago.

Falcon.

I turn it over in my head, testing it, trying to see if it means anything at all or if it's just another mask stacked on top of the one he already wears. It doesn't matter. It's a thread, and threads are how you unravel things, and I have spent my entire adult life being very, very good at pulling on threads until whatever they're attached to finally comes apart.

I eat because I need my strength, not because I've forgiven him for a single thing that's happened in this building, and I go to sleep with one word sitting in my chest.

Falcon.

Whoever you are under that mask, I am going to find out. And when I do, you are going to regret ever deciding I was worth keeping alive.