Chapter 24
Delilah Barrinheart
I barely remember walking out of the building.
I know I do. I know my feet move and my hands hold my weapon and my shoulder bumps King’s as we escort Mikhail through the wreckage, but it all feels like it’s happening underwater.
Everything is slow and loud at the same time—sirens, shouted orders, radios crackling, glass crunching beneath our boots, smoke curling through the night in dirty ribbons.
The country club behind us is no longer a place for cake and speeches and polished family pride.
It’s a wound. A split-open thing full of alarms and blood and truths no one can put back.
Mikhail is between us, wrists cuffed, head bowed, blood drying dark on his sleeve.
The man who took everything.
The man who made my nightmares.
The man whose name has lived under my skin so long it stopped feeling like a word and started feeling like a threat.
And somehow… he’s just walking. Breathing. Existing.
My stomach twists so hard I almost taste bile.
King's mouth is a hard line, his knuckles still streaked with blood, his steps heavy and deliberate like he’s imagining ten different ways this could end and dislikes every single one that doesn’t involve Mikhail in pieces. “Almost feels wrong he’s still alive.”
“Don’t,” I say quietly. My voice sounds scraped raw, thinner than I want it to. “We need him.”
“I know,” he sighs, not sounding convinced in the slightest. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
I nod, but I don’t answer. Because I don’t like it either. Because some ugly, furious part of me wants him facedown in the dirt, wants his blood where mine was, wants all the damage to become visible for once instead of living mostly in memory.
King mutters something under his breath in German that I’m pretty sure isn’t a compliment.
Jon walks a few steps ahead, scanning constantly, posture rigid with control that I know is mostly for my benefit.
Every line of him looks locked down too tight.
Every movement says he’s still expecting another wave, another strike, another angle none of us caught in time.
Every time I look at him, my chest tightens.
There’s still adrenaline in my veins. Still fear.
Still something warm and dangerous and confusing from the way he held me in that office after I almost pulled the trigger.
Too many feelings.
Too little space.
Too much blood still drying on all of us for any of it to make sense.
We’re almost to the transport when I hear it.
“Delilah!” My name cuts through everything making me freeze.
My parents push past a line of security, my mother’s heels abandoned somewhere back inside, her hair falling loose around her face, eyes wild with relief and terror. My dad is right behind her, jaw tight, hands clenched like he’s still deciding whether to hug me or yell.
Probably both.
“Oh my God,” my mom breathes, grabbing my face in both hands before I can even brace for it. Her palms are warm and trembling. “You’re bleeding—are you hurt—are you—”
“I’m okay,” I say quickly, because if I don’t say it fast enough, she’ll hear all the places where I’m lying. “I promise. It’s not mine.”
Mostly. The ache in my body argues with that. The split in my lip argues with that. The rawness in my chest definitely argues with that.
She pulls me into a hug so tight it steals my breath, and for a second I let myself be her daughter instead of a soldier. I let my eyes close. I let my forehead fall against her shoulder. I let the smell of her perfume and smoke and sweat tell me she’s real and here and alive.
My dad stops a few feet away.
He just stares.
At the uniform hidden under borrowed pieces.
At the gun.
At the exhaustion carved into my face.
At the fact that every suspicion he had a half hour ago has now been drowned in blood and gunfire and can’t be smoothed over into misunderstanding anymore.
“Come home,” he says finally. “With us. Tonight.”
I pull back from my mother and blink at him. “Dad, I—”
“No,” he cuts in. “Not the base. Not another debrief. Our house. We need time. We need answers.”
I hesitate.
Jon steps closer. “Will, right now she should stay—”
My dad spins on him instantly. “How long?” He snaps.
Jon blinks once. “Excuse me?”
“How long have you been lying to me?” My dad demands. “How long has she been in this? Months? Years?”
“Dad—” I try.
“When did it start?” He presses, anger spilling over the top of control. “When did you recruit her? When did you decide my daughter was expendable?”
Jon’s jaw tightens, but he doesn’t rise to the bait the way I can feel King wanting him to. “She was never expendable.”
“Then when did you start liking her?” My dad fires back. “Before or after you put her in combat?”
The words land like punches.
King clears his throat awkwardly, shifting his weight with all the grace of a tank trying not to roll over a flower bed. “Uh… I’m just gonna… stand over here…”
Mikhail, thankfully, is already being loaded into a transport, shoved hard enough to stumble. He looks smaller now. Not harmless. Never that. But smaller. Mortal in a way I didn’t think I’d ever get to see.
Jon doesn’t rise to it. He just answers calmly, and that somehow makes it hit harder. “She volunteered. She passed intake on her own merit. She outperformed half the recruits in her class. I didn’t ‘decide’ anything for her.”
“And the feelings?” My dad snaps. “When did that happen, Captain?”
Silence.
I feel Jon hesitate. I know him well enough to hear it even in stillness.
Then he says quietly, “When I realized I trusted her with my life.”
My dad scoffs. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only honest one,” Jon replies.
My mom steps between them before it gets worse, placing a hand on my dad’s arm. “Enough,” she says gently, voice firm in the way only mothers can manage when everybody else in the room has forgotten how to be human. “This isn’t helping.”
She looks at Jon then, really looks at him—not as a captain, not as her husband’s old friend, but as the man standing in the middle of the wreckage with my blood and everyone else’s on his shoes.
“You should come too,” she says.
My dad whips toward her. “What?”
“Home,” she continues calmly. “All of us. We talk. We breathe. We figure this out without shouting in a parking lot while the building’s still on fire.”
He opens his mouth.
Closes it.
Runs a hand over his face.
“…Fine,” he mutters. “But this isn’t over.”
Jon nods once. “I wouldn’t expect it to be.”
My mom turns to me, brushing my hair back like I’m twelve again and she’s checking to see if I’ve cried out all the hurt yet. “You’re not doing this alone anymore,” she whispers.
I swallow hard.
For the first time since everything started unraveling, I realize something terrifying and hopeful all at once:
There’s no hiding left.
***
We don’t ride together and that alone feels wrong.
Jon goes with King and the transport carrying Mikhail, disappearing into flashing lights and radios and clipped voices. I go with my parents, wedged into the backseat of my childhood car like I’ve somehow been folded back into a version of myself that doesn’t exist anymore.
No uniform. No weapon. No command.
Just me. In a sundress. With dried blood on my sleeve I forgot to wash off.
The drive is quiet at first. Not awkward quiet–heavy quiet.
The kind that presses on your ribs and makes every breath feel loud.
My mom keeps glancing at me in the mirror, like she’s afraid I’ll vanish if she looks away too long.
My dad stares straight ahead, jaw locked, knuckles white on the steering wheel.
His silence isn’t empty. It’s crowded. Full of questions, anger, grief, guilt, all of it welded together too tight to name yet.
I watch the streetlights blur past and try not to think about what’s waiting.
About Jon walking into our house later. About my father trying to sit in the same room with him without reaching for his throat.
About my mother asking gentle questions that cut just as deep because she doesn’t mean for them to.
Our house comes into view twenty minutes later.
It looks exactly the same.
White siding. Blue shutters. The porch swing Dad fixed three times because it kept squeaking.
The hydrangea bush Mom refuses to let anyone trim because it “has personality.” Warm yellow light glowing through the front windows like nothing inside ever changed.
Like this is still the kind of house where the worst thing that ever happened was a broken dish or a missed curfew.
It feels unreal.
Like I’m walking into a memory instead of a place.
We pull into the driveway.
No one moves.
Finally, my mom exhales. “Okay. Home.”
The word hits harder than safe ever did. Home at least belongs to me in pieces. Safe still feels like a trick word people use when they want me to stop shaking.
Inside, everything smells like lemon cleaner and vanilla candles. There’s a stack of mail on the counter. A bowl of keys by the door. My graduation photo still hanging crooked in the hallway because my dad always said fixing it would make the wall look too formal.
The girl in that picture doesn’t know how to kill someone.
I toe off my shoes automatically, following muscle memory, and for a second it’s like I never left. Like if I turn the corner I’ll see my old backpack by the stairs and hear my mother asking what I want for dinner.
Until my dad clears his throat.
“Jon’s… coming later,” he says stiffly. “He and King are handling reports.”
I nod too fast. “Okay.”
We don’t look at each other.
Then Mom claps her hands once, too bright. “All right. Living room.”
Dad blinks. “What?”
“Living room,” she repeats, pointing. “You and Jon are going to sit, drink coffee, and not yell when he gets here.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Living. Room.”
He grumbles, but obeys with the kind of reluctant compliance that tells me he knows better than to push her when she uses that voice. I almost laugh. Almost.
She turns to me. “Kitchen. With me.”
Relief floods my chest so hard I almost sag.
The moment we’re alone, I whisper, “Is he going to kill him?”
She laughs softly. “No, sweetheart.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.” She takes my face in her hands. “Your father loves you too much to ruin everything tonight. He’s just… hurt.”
I swallow. “He looked like he wanted to.”
“He always looks like that when he’s scared.”
That lands harder than I want it to. Because I know exactly what scared looks like on men who think anger is the only acceptable way to show it. Jon wears it the same way.
We sit at the kitchen table like we used to after school. She makes tea. Real tea. With honey. The kettle whistles. Spoons clink. It should feel ordinary. Instead it feels ceremonial, like she’s trying to welcome me back into a life I can’t fully step into anymore.
My hands shake when I wrap them around the mug. The heat stings a little, and I let it.
She watches me like I’m fascinating. Not broken. Not ruined. Just… new. Like I’ve come back from somewhere impossible and she can’t decide whether to cry or ask for details.
“So,” she starts carefully. “You fight bad guys?”
I blink. “What?”
She grins, eyes shining. “I mean. Obviously. But… really? Like… undercover and stuff?”
“…Yes.”
Her hand flies to her mouth. “That is so cool.”
I laugh weakly. “Mom, I almost died.”
“I know.” She reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. “But still. Wow.”
I stare at her. “That’s your first reaction?”
“Well, no,” she says honestly. “My first reaction was my baby has a gun and apparently a body count. But my second reaction was definitely wow.”
A startled laugh slips out of me before I can stop it. It hurts my ribs, but not enough to matter.
And then she starts firing questions.
What countries?
How long?
Do you jump out of planes?
Have you ever worn disguises?
Do you really speak Russian?
Did you ever have to use poison?
Is King actually as scary as he looks?
Does Jon always look that grumpy or is that just his face?
It’s like talking to a kid who just found out superheroes are real.
And for a while… it helps.
For a little while, I’m not dissecting the fight or Mikhail or what my father has been saying to Jon since the moment he stepped in the living room a few hours ago.
I’m just answering my mother’s increasingly horrified and delighted questions while she stares at me like I’ve stepped out of one of the spy thrillers she secretly loves and pretends are “too unrealistic.”
Then she tilts her head.
“And Jon,” she says gently.
My stomach drops.
“He’s… important to you,” she continues. “Isn’t he?”
“Mom—”
“I’m not mad,” she says quickly. “I just want to understand.”
I look down at my tea. The honey has already dissolved, but I keep stirring it anyway because it gives my hands something to do. “It’s complicated.”
She smiles sadly. “Love usually is.”
That word makes something ache so hard it feels physical. It sits between us, warm and impossible and too close to the truth to be accidental.
I cut in quietly, because if I stay on Jon much longer I’ll say something I can’t take back. “How did you… get over it?”
She blinks. “Get over what, baby?”
“When… when Mikhail took you.”
The room stills.
For a moment, I think I’ve gone too far. Think I’ve reached for a scar she keeps tucked under Sunday dinners and folded napkins and all the practiced softness she built around it.
Then she exhales slowly.
“I didn’t,” she admits. “Not really.”
My heart clenches.
“I survived,” she says. “I learned how to breathe again. How to sleep. How to laugh. But the fear? The memories?” She taps her temple. “They never fully leave.”
“Then how—” My voice breaks. “How are you okay?”
She reaches for my hands, wraps them in both of hers, and looks at me like she knows exactly what I’m asking. Not how she functioned. How she kept living in a body that remembered too much.
“Because of your father,” she says simply. “Because he stayed. Because he held me when I couldn’t stop shaking. Because he didn’t treat me like I was broken.”
Tears burn my eyes before I can stop them.
“And one day,” she continues softly, “I realized that loving him didn’t erase what happened.”
Her thumb strokes across my knuckles.
“It just made it smaller.”
I think of Jon. Of his hands grounding me. His voice in the dark.
The way he never looks at me like I’m fragile, only like I’m worth protecting and dangerous enough to stand beside. The way he held back even when he wanted more. The way he stayed.
It clicks all at once. Slow. Terrifying. Beautiful.
My mom squeezes my fingers. “Whoever you love… make sure he’s someone who stays.”
I nod, because there isn’t anything else I trust myself to do.