She doesn’t understand.
How could she?
“You think I’m okay with this?” I snap, then force my voice to soften. “I don’t have the luxury of losing it, Kruz. Not when there’s too much at stake.” Not when it’syouI’m most likely to lose now.
Her gaze doesn’t waver, but her lips part slightly, as if she wants to argue but can’t quite find the words.
I hate how easily she sees through me. She’s always had this ability to dig beneath my armor, to find the cracks I thought I’d hidden well enough. With anyone else, I’d shut down, retreat. And a lot of times I have had to in order to keep her safe.
But with her, I feel a pull—a force that’s been dragging me under since the moment we met. It urges me to unearth my deepest secrets, my innermost thoughts, and every raw emotion I’ve buried, letting them rise to the surface until they overflow, laid bare for her to take, hold, or destroy as she pleases.
The words come before I can stop them. “That chip you’re so curious about—it’s a video. A file the Assembly keeps on every member. Proof of the worst thing we’ve done. Insurance, so no one can ever leave.”
Her expression shifts, shock mingling with something like horror. Her lips tremble before she speaks. “What’s yours?” she asks, her voice barely a whisper, probably because she doesn’t really want to know the answer.
I sure as shit don’t want to give it.
I want to lie.
God, I want to lie.
But I owe her the truth. If there’s one thing she’s never had from me fully, it’s honesty.
She’s had every other fucking part of me, not that she knows it.
“They filmed me killing someone,” I say flatly.
Her breath catches. The sound tears through the room. “What?”
She knows I’ve killed people. Hell, a few nights ago I killed someone inches from where she sat.
Is it the fact that there’s proof of it out there floating around that has her so shocked?
“I was seventeen.” My gaze fixes on the fire, unwilling to meet her eyes. These are things I would have never wanted to share with her, details I wish I could continue to protect her from. “It was part of my ongoing ‘initiation.’ They said it was necessary, that it proved loyalty. But it wasn’t about loyalty. It was about control. They filmed it to keep me under their thumb.”
Her silence cuts deeper than any accusation.
But then, slowly, her hand reaches for mine. Her fingers thread through mine, warm and soft, anchoring me in this moment. The touch is too much, and yet, not enough.
“It wasn’t someone I knew,” I continue, my voice colder now. “Just some guy. A stranger. A nobody. They handed me a gun, told me to do it, and then they filmed the whole thing.”
It’s a common practice in circles like the one I’ve been forced to run in—a tale as old as time. Why fix something that’s not broken? It works.
But she wouldn’t know that.
Most things that were accepted as normal in my family would make the average person lose their fucking mind.
Her hand tightens on mine, her warmth cutting through the ice in my chest. “Ezra…” she breathes, her voice a fragile thread.
I exhale, the breath shaky. “That chip—it’s the key to taking them down. If it falls into the right hands, it has the potential to dismantleeverything. Their secrets, their leverage—it all unravels. And maybe then, I get to walk away.”With you, I don’t say.
Her eyes search my face, wide and uncertain, like she’s trying to piece together the jagged fragments of who I am. “Where is it now?” she asks, her voice soft but steady.
A ghost of a smile pulls at my lips. “Exactly where it needs to be.”
With certain pieces of data completely wiped from existence.
But I don’t want to give her hope. Not yet.
