Chapter 46

Lina's POV

The hallway was very quiet. Cecelia's bedroom door was still tightly closed, and the line of light leaking from the door crack had disappeared.

I returned to my own room and gently closed the door.

I took off my school uniform. The bloodstain had completely dried, forming a thin layer of dark red on my skin.

The wound was actually very shallow—didn't need stitches or treatment, wouldn't even leave a scar.

But when Luca looked at this wound just now, his expression was like someone had stabbed a knife into his heart.

I opened the wardrobe and took out the two scarves he had given me.

I laid the dark blue one by my pillow, removed the silver rose brooch and placed it next to it, then crawled under the covers and stared at the ceiling.

Outside the curtains, Manhattan's lights were still on. In the distance, the spire of the Empire State Building flashed its usual red light.

The rain had stopped, and there was a slight chill in the air.

I closed my eyes, turned over, and pressed my forehead against the edge of that dark blue scarf. The scarf no longer carried Luca's scent, but its soft texture still reminded me of the warmth when he gently cupped the back of my head on a certain night.

He said seventy-two hours, so seventy-two hours it is.

I lay in bed, chewing over this number in my mouth again and again.

Motive, timeline, technical means, and risk control—Luca had told me all of these.

I should feel reassured about this.

In fact, my rationality was indeed telling me that Luca had a plan, had progression, and only didn't tell me to protect me.

From any angle, Luca's approach had no problems whatsoever. If it were me, I would do the same.

The first rule I learned at Raven was that intelligence is above all else, patience above impulse, success above emotion.

Every decision Luca made precisely stepped on the extension line of these three rules. Without a doubt, he was a perfect strategist, a chess player cold enough to be frightening.

In my fifteen years at Raven, Dmitri made me his ace weapon but never told me the full picture of any mission.

Before each operation, he only gave me a name, an address, a time window.

Why kill this person, what chain reaction would occur after killing them—these were never within my scope of knowledge.

He said weapons don't need to know why, weapons only need to know where to strike.

At that time, I thought this was the standard operating procedure for all superiors toward subordinates—give you the necessary information to complete the task, the rest isn't necessary to know.

I had always taken this for granted.

But today, when I discovered Luca was treating me the same way as Dmitri, I found it unbearable.

Although he had told me all his cards, I was still bothered by why he hadn't told me earlier.

This question spun in my head all evening, producing many possible answers.

Answer A: He worried that after I knew Cecelia's true identity, I wouldn't be able to control my emotions and would show a flaw in front of her, thus alerting the enemy.

Answer B: He needed to ensure Cecelia was one hundred percent convinced she hadn't been exposed. Only then would she continue acting according to Dmitri's instructions and become our tool for counterattack at the critical moment.

Answer C: He didn't trust my self-control. He didn't believe that a girl he had personally tamed from a cold-blooded killer into someone who would cry over a birthday cake could still maintain the necessary calm when facing an undercover agent.

Answer C was the one I was most unwilling to accept.

All of Luca's explanations pointed to Answers A and B. This didn't mean he hadn't conveyed Answer C—he had just deliberately avoided it.

I thought of Dmitri. He had also said I wasn't stable enough.

He had said that a killer whose pillow gets wet from lullabies in dreams can't know too much truth.

Knowing too much means that at the critical moment, your hand might deviate by a centimeter, or you might hesitate.

Hesitation is a death sentence for a killer.

Luca and Dmitri, two completely different people, reached the same conclusion on the same judgment: if Lina knows too much, the operation will have problems.

The difference between them was that Dmitri used this conclusion to tame me, while Luca used it to protect me.

But did this difference really make a difference to me?

This thought churned my stomach with sourness. I sat up abruptly, sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed, wrapped myself in the blanket, but no matter how I adjusted my position, I felt uncomfortable.

Moonlight leaked through the curtain gap, landing precisely on that silver rose brooch on the nightstand.

The dark silver petals gave off an almost invisible faint glow in the cold light. The thorn the size of a needle point on the stem was magnified several times, its shadow cast on the wood grain surface like a real needle.

I knew Luca believed in me, but belief and trust are two different things.

Trust is letting you know all the information and then making your own decision, not making the decision for you and then telling you afterward "this is for your own good."

I looked down at the small red dot pricked on my fingertip and suddenly felt this brooch itself was a metaphor: he gave me a protective charm, but added a thorn to the charm.

He wanted to protect me, yet used protection as justification to draw a line between him and me. This side of the line was what I should know, that side was what he filtered out for me.

This wasn't an equal alliance—this was a kind of control wrapped in love.

I sat in the darkness for probably over an hour.

The thoughts in my head were like overturned chess pieces, black and white scattered all over the floor, impossible to pick up completely.

Finally I pulled the blanket off, walked barefoot to the window, and drew open the curtain.

Manhattan's night sky was very clear. In the distance, the Empire State Building's spire flashed red light. The treetops of Central Park swayed gently in the night wind.

Maggie had told me that Central Park had a lake that would freeze in winter and in summer would have couples rowing those terribly ugly duck paddleboats on it.

She said she would take me rowing next spring.

When she said this, Cecelia was sitting next to us eating ice cream, laughing and agreeing that we should rent the biggest duck.

At that time, I thought I had touched the edge of normal life. Looking back now, perhaps only Maggie was real—

Her laughter was real, her care was real, her bringing me bacon and egg sandwiches every morning was real, her secretly sharing a small portion of lasagna with me was real, her nearly crying when she saw blood on my sleeve was real.

As for Cecelia, maybe in that instant she was genuinely laughing.

I closed the curtain, went back to sit on the edge of the bed, and unconsciously touched that dark blue scarf next to my pillow.

The soft cashmere texture pressed against my palm, identical to that black one from before.

Too bad it didn't carry his scent—the new scarf hadn't had time to absorb anyone's scent yet.

But I still remembered the warmth when his thumb brushed across the back of my hand as he handed it to me.

That night he said "it's getting colder outside, wear this one tomorrow." I had taken the scarf, said thank you, and thought this one was thicker than the black one, the pile was longer, giving the illusion of being wrapped in clouds when pressed against skin.

I folded the scarf neatly and placed it next to the pillow, then lay back down.