I appreciated her understanding, though a part of me feared the worst. “Are you going to leave?” I asked, plain and simple.
Maeve stared at me for a long moment. “I’ll just be in the bedroom to give you a moment to yourself.” As simple as that. After a few long steps, she was gone. I splashed water on my face and sighed. When I returned to the laptop, it was with the dread of a man approaching his own execution.
I clicked on a folder labeled “Personal Relations.” Whatever lay inside might be the final nail in the coffin of whoI thought—hoped—I might have been.
It was sparse—tellingly so. No friendships. No lasting connections. Just strategic alliances with other criminals and fixers across multiple cities. Brock as my only steady collaborator. Names and dates, recorded with the precision of business transactions rather than relationships.
A subfolder labeled “Associations” revealed photographs of me with various individuals, mostly at bars or exclusive clubs. In each image, I maintained the same practiced smile that never reached my eyes. My arm draped possessively around whoever proved useful at the time.
Then I found her.
Sofia Byers. The name jolted through me like an electric current. The woman I had called for during my fever.
She was beautiful in a refined way—dark hair swept into an elegant updo, designer clothes, flawless makeup. Standing beside me at some high-end charity event, champagne flute in hand. My arm was around her waist, fingers digging slightly into the fabric of her dress.
Something about the image made me pause. Her smile seemed practiced, much like mine. But there was tension in her shoulders, a slight distance between our bodies despite my grip.
I opened another photograph—a wedding photo. Sofia in white, and I in a tailored suit. The perfect couple. Except for her eyes, somewhere between resignation and fear. And mine were empty.
A document caught my attention: “Asset Assessment: Sofia Byers-Graves.”
My stomach turned as I read. The assessment was devoid of any language suggesting actual partnership or affection. Our marriage was strategic, not emotional. Her father owned legitimate businesses, perfect for laundering money. He’d refused my business proposals. Sofia became my leverage. I married her, used her, and threatened her father to make more money.
I scrolled through more photographs. Sofia and I at restaurants, on a stroll, or in a car. Each showing the same dynamic—me displaying her like a trophy, her expression increasingly hollow over time.
A medical report noted bruising on her wrists and torso. Another document detailed how I used her as social access to potential clients who wouldn’t deal with someone like me directly. I understood that I sold her to gain a contract.
I scanned the images desperately, searching for any hint of genuine feeling. Any flash of the connection I felt with Maeve. There was nothing—only calculation and control.
My fingers froze over a newspaper article: “Businessman’s Daughter Found Dead in Apparent Suicide.” Sofia’s face stared back at me, her official portrait beside the headline. The article mentioned her husband, Ronan Graves, was “unavailable for comment.”
The date was just three weeks after I entered Oblivion.
I slammed the laptop shut, unable to stomach any more. The room suddenly felt airless, walls closing in. I needed space. I needed to be anywhere but inside the skin of this monster I was.
I moved to the window, seeking air.
My reflection ghosted in the glass—the face of a monster who destroyed lives methodically, who treated people as tools, who married a woman and broke her until she couldn’t live anymore.
The calculation happened automatically, a tactical assessment I couldn’t shut off. Physical harm would be the simplest way to destroy Maeve—quick, efficient, permanent. But the true danger lay elsewhere. In how easily I could manipulate her compassion, exploit her loyalty, drag her into darkness until that light in her eyes dimmed. Until she became hollow-eyed like Sofia.
Sofia.
The name landed like a blow. I had failed her. No—that implies good intentions. The truth was worse. I used her, broke her, and when she died, I wasn’t even there.
A cold certainty settled in my chest. Whatever was growing between Maeve and me must end. I couldn’t allow her to become another Sofia—another casualty of my darkness. I would complete the mission: find Xavier, eliminate Brock, dismantle Oblivion. And then I would disappear from her life permanently.
The decision should have brought relief. Instead, it brought only hollowness, an emptiness more profound than anything conditioning ever created.
My face settled deeper into impassivity, muscles relaxing into the familiar blankness of the assassin. What I felt for her was real. That was the cruelest truth. Not manufactured by conditioning or manipulation. But real feelings from amonster would destroy her just as thoroughly as calculated violence.
Protection required distance.
Redemption required sacrifice.
It seemed my time alone was over because I heard a gentle shuffle behind me. Every muscle in my body remained tense. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at her at first.
“What’s wrong?” she asked from behind me. Her coffee mug landed on the table with a soft thud that seemed to echo in the stillness between us. “Whatever it is… we’ll handle it together.”
