Maeve’s thumb brushed my cheek, her touch impossibly gentle against the violence happening inside my skull. “Yes,” she whispered, her face so close I felt the word more than heard it. “You’re Ronan Graves.”
I struggled through the haze of pain, but, for the first time, there was somethingmine,somethingrealI could hold—aside from Maeve. I knew my name. I had fragments of a person I once was back in my grasp.
“Ronan,” she said again, and my name from her mouth sounded right in ways I couldn’t articulate. Hearing it from her lips felt more intimate than our bodies joining—as though she was touching something no one else had reached.
“Ronan Graves,” I repeated, each syllable settling into place like a weapon finding its rightful owner’s hand. My fingers tightened around hers until our hands became a single entity, this connection suddenly more vital than breathing. “My name is Ronan Graves.”
The truth resonated between us like a struck bell, changing everything in its wake. I was no longer just an operative with a designation. I was Ronan Graves—a man with a past, a name, an identity that existed independent of their creation.
And in Maeve’s eyes—in the way she looked at me now—I saw not just who I was, but who I might become. Not Reaper. Not JD-2741. Ronan Graves.
“Ronan,” she whispered once more, and this time when she said it, I didn’t feel pain—only a fierce, burning certainty. A reclamation. A beginning.
Chapter 20
Reaper
“Take your time,” Maeve had said hours ago, her fingers lingering on my shoulder before she slipped outside. That gentle pressure still burned against my skin, an anchor to the present as I excavated my past. I’d needed space to face whatever truths waited in these files without her witnessing my reaction.
The safehouse was unnaturally quiet. Each keystroke echoed against bare walls, matching the accelerated rhythm of my heartbeat. Through the window, I caught glimpses of Maeve lounging under the awning, giving me distance while staying close enough to reach.
I poured another cup of coffee—my third, or maybe fourth. The silence in the house felt oppressive, making each tap on the keyboard sound like a gunshot. My reflection in the black mirror of Maeve’s laptop screen looked haggard, eyes red-rimmed from hours of staring.
Ronan Graves. The name sat differently in my mind now—less like a revelation and more like a weight. For some reason, I expected the mere knowledge of my name to trigger a whole new wave of memories, giving me full access to theman I once was. But it didn’t. My mind remained filled with memories I had put together earlier—one where Brock was my best friend and partner, and then the biggest betrayal of my life. Perhaps it was a good thing, though. What I had seen from back then wasn’t much better than the monster Brock had turned me into.
The two words that entirely shaped my identity still tasted new. Foreign and familiar simultaneously. I repeated them silently as my fingers moved across the keyboard, breaking through encryption after encryption. It wasn’t long before my attention shifted from my name to the endless pile of information that we had to go through.
The first database yielded my criminal records. Not the sanitized personnel file from Oblivion, but actual police reports. Three assault charges in Chicago. Aggravated battery in Detroit. Suspected involvement in a string of protection rackets in Boston.
I pushed away from the table, coffee sloshing over the rim of my mug. My stomach knotted as I scanned the details. This wasn’t what I expected. Not international assassinations or government-sanctioned kills. Just common brutality. Calculated violence for profit. Professional cruelty.
I forced myself back to the screen and dug deeper.
A news article from a Philadelphia local paper read: “Suspected Crime Figure Eludes Charges Again.” My face stared back at me—younger, hair longer, eyes colder. The photograph captured me leaving a courthouse, a smirk dancing at the corner of my mouth.
I was never in the military. Never intelligence. Just a criminal.
The truth hit like a physical blow. Oblivion didn’t break a good man. They simply repurposed a monster.
My throat tightened as I accessed financial records through backdoor channels. Money laundering operations. Payments from small-time crime bosses. Funds moving through shell companies.
A methodical mind. A talent for exploitation. The same skills that made me lethal now were honed breaking people for money then.
Maeve sat by my side. I expected her to comment on my past—to say anything at all, but she didn’t. Almost as if she could sense just how painful this realization was. I wondered what she was thinking about now, but I didn’t dare look at her. Was she disappointed in the man I was? Had her opinion about me changed? Would she still trust me?
I forced myself to chase those thoughts away. For now, I still had a mission to do. If I had been a bad man before Brock got his hands on me, it didn’t mean that other men—like her brother—were, too. They deserved as much of a chance as I got.
I found police interviews with witnesses who mysteriously recanted testimony. Surveillance photos of me entering buildings where people later turned up broken or dead. A psychological evaluation from an earlier arrest described “calculated violence” and “absence of remorse.”
My reflection in the laptop screen looked haunted—a ghost staring back from a past I didn’t remember but couldn’tescape. Was this who I was? Not a weapon perverted from its purpose, but a predator given better tools?
A wave of nausea hit me. I bolted to the sink, dry heaving over stainless steel. Nothing came up but bitter coffee and acid.
“Ronan.”
“I need a moment,” I told Maeve, glancing back at her over my shoulder. Worry lingered on her face, and I didn’t miss the way her hand tremored still. I hated that she had to see all of this—see me like this. I hated that I couldn’t offer a better image of myself. That I couldn’t have been a better man. “This is…a lot. I know you said...”
“I understand,” she interrupted me with a soft nod. I observed her eyes carefully over my shoulder, hands still resting against the sink. “I can’t even imagine what it’s like to learn so many things about yourself. All at once. And to have someone sit next to you as you do it.”
