He was delivered.
The thought settles heavy in my chest, familiar and sharp. I’ve lived with it for years, turning it over, testing it from every angle. Every version ends the same way: betrayal from inside the circle. A colleague. A handler. Someone who smiled at him and shook his hand and sent him to his death with clean paperwork and a calm conscience.
I glance at the glass again.
Raelyn stirs, murmurs something in her sleep, her brow creasing like even her dreams aren’t safe from impact. She’s holding herself together by instinct now—barely stitched, still bleeding in places she doesn’t know how to name.
If I tell her this—
That her father didn’t just disappear.
That someone he trusted may have sold him out.
That the enemy isn’t only monsters like Markov, but men with badges and briefcases and polished lies—
It will break something fundamental in her.
I know that kind of fracture. I’ve lived inside it.
My jaw tightens.
She’s been asking for the truth. Demanding it. Looking at me like she’s measuring how much of herself she’s willing to lose by believing me. And I have been deciding—again and again—that this truth is too sharp, too deep, too cruel to place in her hands yet.
But what happens when she finds out I knew?
When she realizes I chose what she was allowed to grieve?
My fingers curl into a fist against the desk.
She might forgive my violence.
She might forgive my control.
She might even forgive my lies.
But betrayal—especially the quiet kind—cuts deeper than bullets.
I don’t last five minutes on my own.
The glass wall feels thinner than it should as I cross the room. I open the door quietly and go to her bed, my hand brushing her arm before my mind can argue me out of it.
“Raelyn,” I murmur.
She blinks awake, disoriented at first, eyes too big in the low light. Fear flickers—and then settles when she sees me. That alone almost undoes me.
I don’t ask.
I lift her into my lap, drawing her against my chest, my arms closing around her with more force than necessary, like if I loosen even an inch, she’ll slip through me. She exhales, tired and small, and rests her head against my shoulder without resistance.
Her weight grounds me.
Her warmth steadies the violence clawing at my ribs.
She smells like my soap and rain and something softer I refuse to name.
For a long moment, neither of us speaks. Her breathing evens out, slow but fragile, like it could shatter if I move too fast.
Then she whispers, voice rough with sleep and something worse.