Chapter 69 Managing Me
MANAGING ME
DDDNNNAAA - Crywolf
Kookaburra
No one moves after the lock clicks.
It’s like the sound has pressed pause on the room – pause on breathing, on blinking, on whatever version of reality we were pretending still applied. Valentine’s shape lingers in the doorway even after he’s gone, like an afterimage burned into the air.
I don’t look at Nightshade.
Not yet.
That’s the first thing I take from him.
Bones is standing now. I don’t remember him getting up. Honey’s jaw is tight enough it could crack teeth. Ghost is watching me like he’s waiting for a tremor. Hatchet hasn’t moved at all, pen still in his hand, pad open at a blank page.
Everyone is braced for something violent.
They think this is where I break.
I don’t.
I turn slowly, deliberately, until I’m facing Nightshade at last.
He’s still exactly where Valentine left him. Stillness wrapped tight around him like armour. Eyes on me. Guarded. Careful. Ready.
He’s waiting for permission.
I feel something cold settle into place behind my ribs.
“How long?” I ask.
My voice is steady. Flat. That seems to throw him more than shouting would have.
Nightshade doesn’t answer immediately. His eyes flick, just once, to the others – Bones, Hatchet, Honey, Ghost – then back to me.
“Kayla—”
“No,” I say. Not loud. Not sharp. Absolute. “You don’t get to manage this. How long?”
The silence stretches.
I let it.
Because this is what I took from him. Timing. Control. The ability to decide when truth is released.
Finally, he exhales. “Since the island. The night you were taken.”
A sound leaves my chest that isn’t quite a laugh.
“So you knew,” I say. “All of it? The Director. The return. The fact that this was never over.”
“I suspected.”
“And about my…real…family – you knew that too?”
“Yes.”
The word is clean. Unembellished.
“And you decided not to tell me.”
“I decided to wait.”
That word again.
Wait.
Something in me twists, sharp and precise.
“Why?” I ask.
This time, he answers too quickly. “Because you were barely holding together. Because you were pregnant. Because you were being hunted. Because if you’d known what returning meant before you were ready, you would have—”
“—lost my autonomy?” I finish for him. “Again.”
He stops.
The others go very still.
I tilt my head. “Is that the word you’d use? Or would you prefer Valentine’s?”
Nightshade’s jaw tightens. “I was trying to protect you.”
There it is.
The justification.
The one he’s been carrying, polishing, convincing himself would hold.
I nod once, like I’m acknowledging a report.
“By deciding for me.”
“No,” he says immediately. Too fast. “By buying you time.”
Time.
Understanding.
Waiting.
The words line up too neatly. Like a script I wasn’t meant to see.
I step closer. Not into his space. Just close enough that he has to track me.
“You stood there,” I say quietly, “and watched him tell me my entire life was engineered. You let me hear it from his mouth. You let him frame the terms. You let him decide the moment.”
“I told him to,” Nightshade says.
The room exhales in a collective, horrified breath.
Bones swears under his breath. Honey’s head snaps up. Ghost’s eyes widen. Even Hatchet stills, pen frozen mid-air.
I look at Nightshade. Really look at him now.
“You told him to,” I repeat.
“Yes,” he says. And for the first time, something in his control slips. Not much. Just enough. “Because it had to come from him. Because if I’d said it, you would have doubted it. You would have questioned my motives. You would have—”
“—trusted him more than you?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer.
Because the answer is yes.
I feel it land, heavy and exact.
“That’s what you decided,” I say. “That I couldn’t handle the truth unless it came from someone with authority.”
“No,” he says, and now there’s strain in it. “I decided you deserved the cleanest version of it.”
A laugh tears out of me before I can stop it.
“Clean,” I repeat. “You let him tell me I’m an asset. That my child is a variable. That returning is inevitable. And you’re calling that clean.”
“I let him give you the framework,” Nightshade says. “I was going to help you survive it.”
There it is.
The real confession.
Ownership of strategy.
Something in the room shifts. The others feel it too. This is no longer about what Valentine did.
It’s about what Nightshade chose.
I don’t raise my voice.
I don’t need to.
“You stood beside me,” I say, “knowing the floor was going to drop out. And you told yourself that because you loved me, you could decide when it happened.”
His breath stutters.
That’s when the panic hits.
Not loud. Not dramatic.
Just a fracture in the perfect containment he’s been maintaining.
“I do. I love you,” he says.
The words are too raw. Too immediate. Like he’s thrown them without aiming.
“I love you,” he repeats, stepping forward before he catches himself. “Everything I did was because I love you. I couldn’t let them take you apart before you were ready. I couldn’t—”
“Stop,” I say.
He does.
Immediately.
That hurts more than if he hadn’t.
I look at him for a long moment.
Then I nod.
“I know,” I say.
The room goes utterly silent.
“I know you love me,” I continue. “I’ve never doubted that.”
His face shifts – hope, relief, something fragile cracking open.
And then I finish it.
“And that’s what makes this worse.”
The hope dies where it stands.
“Because you didn’t lie to me out of fear,” I say. “You didn’t hide this because you were weak. You hid it because you believed you knew better than I did what I could survive.”
I step back. Creating distance. Deliberate.
“You didn’t trust me with my own life,” I say. “You trusted yourself with it.”
“That’s not—”
“You waited,” I cut in. “You let him tell me. You let him define the choice. And you stood there and watched.”
Nightshade shakes his head, slow and disbelieving. “I was protecting you.”
“No,” I say. “You were managing me.”
The word lands like a body.
I turn slightly, enough that the others are in my peripheral vision.
“This is public,” I say, calm as ever. “Because what you did wasn’t private. You don’t get to explain it away in a corner this time. I gave you that with the tracker, but not this.”
Nightshade swallows.
I look back at him.
“You don’t get to be here right now. Leave.”
His head snaps up. “Kayla—”
“You don’t get proximity by default anymore,” I say. “You don’t get to stand next to me while I work out what this cost me.”
“I won’t leave you like this,” he says, voice low, urgent.
“I’m not asking,” I reply. “Go.”
For a heartbeat, no one moves.
Then Hatchet steps forward – not toward Nightshade, but toward me. He doesn’t touch me. He just stands there, solid, waiting for instruction.
Bones shifts too. Honey straightens. Ghost’s gaze never leaves Nightshade.
The hierarchy realigns without a word.
Nightshade sees it.
That’s when it finally breaks him.
He doesn’t argue.
He just nods once, tight and contained, and turns for the door.
He stops with his hand on the handle.
“I will wait,” he says. “As long as it takes.”
I don’t answer.
He leaves and the door closes behind him.
This time, there is no need for the lock.
The silence that follows is different. Charged. Watchful.
I turn back to the room.
“No secrets,” I say. “No decisions made for me. If you’re here, you’re here with me. In the open. If you don’t like that, you leave too. Now.”
No one argues.
Good.
I move to the centre of the room and sit down, grounding myself in the solidity of it. The floor. The air. The bodies still here.
“I’m not falling apart,” I say, mostly to myself. “I’m choosing what happens next.”
The words settle.
Outside, the world keeps going.
Inside, the fault lines have shifted.
And I know – deep, cold, unshakeable – nothing is ever going to sit the same way again.