Chapter 58 Chris
Chris
On screen, Nina reaches for the tissue box on the side table, repositioning it closer to Vicente. He doesn’t take one. Just wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and squares his shoulders, reassembling himself into something more composed.
But I catch the way Nina’s hand lingers on the box for a moment. The slight tension in her jaw. She’s hearing all of this too, every word Vicente said about ownership and control, every implicit detail about what he did to me. And it’s costing her.
I glance at Wyatt. His eyes are fixed on the screen, but there’s a tightness around his mouth that wasn’t there before. His thumb has stopped moving against my knuckles. He’s just holding on now, steady pressure, like he’s anchoring himself as much as me.
They feel this. Both of them. Not just as observers, not just as people who love me—they feel it in their own bodies, their own hearts. The damage done to me damages them too.
I don’t know why that surprises me. But it does.
Nina clears her throat softly and steers the conversation forward.
“And the household? How are things settling now that you’re back from the hospital?”
Vicente and Arturo exchange a look.
“There’s been progress,” Vicente says carefully. “Rafael’s doing, mostly. He has a gift for negotiating between hostile parties.”
“He’s a lawyer,” Arturo adds. “International law. Apparently mediating between cartel bosses and housekeepers falls under the same skill set.”
“Elena sat with me,” Vicente says. “In the hospital. After the surgery.” He stops. Swallows. “She sat with me. Didn’t say anything. Just sat there for an hour, then left.”
“That’s significant,” Nina says.
“It’s everything.” Vicente’s voice roughens. “I kidnapped her daughter. I terrorized her family. I moved into her home and disrupted thirty years of the life she’d built. She has every right to hate me until the day I die.” He pauses. “And she sat with me anyway.”
“The truce is fragile,” Arturo says. “But it’s real. More than I expected. More than either of us deserves.”
Wyatt shifts beside me, checking his watch. I know what he’s thinking—I have an appointment in less than an hour, and the drive across town won’t be quick.
But I’m not ready to leave yet. Not quite.
On screen, Nina is steering the conversation toward Toni—Elena’s daughter, the one he kidnapped. Arturo’s hand finds Vicente’s knee, steadying.
I was there. I was the one who grabbed Toni from the tattoo convention and delivered her to him.
Then her boyfriend showed up with a hero complex and no plan, demanding I take him too.
Kid had balls, I’ll give him that—storming the castle to save the woman he loved with nothing but audacity and a burner phone.
“She’s agreed to come for Christmas,” Vicente says on screen. “Celeste’s doing, not mine. But she’ll be there.”
“That’s progress,” Nina says.
“Progress.” Vicente’s laugh is hollow. “I terrorized that girl. Used her as bait to lure Celeste to me.” He shakes his head. “I wanted an heir so badly. Someone to carry on what I’d built. I thought if I could just get Celeste in a room, make her understand what I was offering—”
“You thought you could force it,” Nina says.
“Yes.” The word comes out rough. “I’ve spent my whole life forcing things. Taking what I wanted. It never occurred to me that an heir who comes willingly is worth more than one who comes in chains.”
I glance at Wyatt. “I was there, you know. When he had her. Helped coach her through provoking the guard so she and Sam could get out.” I shake my head.
“She had to sit across from that monster at breakfast and make conversation, knowing exactly what was hanging on the walls in the next room. She held it together better than most agents would’ve. ”
Wyatt’s quiet for a moment. “You never told me that.”
“Never came up.” I check my watch. Thirty-five minutes until my appointment. “I have to go.”
Wyatt looks at me. Studies my face the way he does when he’s trying to read what I’m not saying. “You’ve got this.”
“Fill me in if anything else comes up?”
“Always.”
I stand. Wyatt does too, but I don’t move toward the door. There’s something caught in my chest—something that needs to come out before I leave this room and drive across town to sit in a stranger’s office and talk about all the ways I’m broken.
Wyatt watches me. Patient. Waiting.
I turn back and pull him into a hug that surprises us both. Not the quick, back-slapping kind we’ve defaulted to for years. Something longer. Something that lets me press my face against his shoulder and breathe him in—soap and coffee and the clean, familiar scent of his aftershave.
His arms come around me, solid and sure. He doesn’t ask what this is about. He just holds on.
I almost destroyed this. Thanksgiving night, when the ghosts got loose and I hurt him without meaning to—I could have lost him forever.
Could have lost both of them. But Wyatt didn’t run.
Didn’t write me off as broken beyond repair.
He stayed. Gave me grace I hadn’t earned, understanding I didn’t deserve.
Helped me see that healing wasn’t something I had to do alone.
“I love you,” I say against his shoulder. The words come out rougher than I intended. “You know that, right?”
“I know.” His voice is steady. Certain in a way that settles the last of the doubt I’ve been carrying. “I love you too.”
I hold on for another few seconds. Let myself have this—the warmth of him, the steadiness, the way he doesn’t pull back or rush me toward the door. Then I make myself let go.
“Go,” Wyatt says. “Dr. Reiner doesn’t like it when people are late.”
“You know her?”
“Nina’s mentioned her. Apparently she’s tough but fair.” He gives me a small smile. “You’ll be fine.”
I nod. Take a breath. Head for the door.
Behind me, Vicente’s voice comes through the speakers.
“I can’t undo what I did to her. Can’t unsee the fear in her eyes when she realized what kind of monster she was dealing with.
” A pause. “She lost someone to Gustavo too. When we were done with him, we put the gun in her hand. She’d earned that right.
” He exhales. “But it doesn’t erase what I did to her.
I can be patient. I can let her set the pace.
However long it takes for her to see me as something other than the man who locked her in that room—I’ll wait. ”
I pause with my hand on the doorknob.
I wait for the familiar tightening in my chest. The reflexive brace against the sound of Vicente Amador talking about patience and trust like he has any right to either.
It doesn’t come.
I think about Wyatt. About grace I hadn’t earned. About the long road between breaking something and rebuilding it.
Maybe that’s not just for me.
I head for the elevator, already running the math on traffic between here and Dr. Reiner’s office.
The parking garage is cold, that particular Los Angeles winter chill that never quite commits to being real weather. I slide into the driver’s seat and pull the door shut, sealing myself into the quiet.
My phone buzzes before I can start the engine.
I stare at Tatiana’s name on the screen for a beat. Last time I saw her was at the safe house, right in the middle of the chaos. It’s been two weeks of silence since then. Not long by operational standards, but long enough to wonder.
The message is brief:
TATIANA: Going dark. Got my way into the inner circle. Leaving tonight.
My thumb hovers over the keyboard. Two weeks of silence, and now this. She’s done what I asked—what McIntyre demanded—and then some. Delivered enough intel on Dragonov’s consolidation to keep Langley happy for months. Proved every bet I placed on her was worth it.
And now she’s going deeper. Into the belly of it. Where I can’t follow.
CHRIS: You have your emergency line?
TATIANA: Always.
CHRIS: Backup extraction plan?
TATIANA: Three of them. Stop mothering me.
I almost smile. Almost.
There’s more I want to say. But Tatiana’s done this before—gone under, stayed under, came back out with intel and scars in equal measure. She knows what this work eats. Knows it better than most.
I’m the one who’s not sure he could do it again.
CHRIS: Be careful.
TATIANA: Careful is boring.
The typing indicator appears, disappears. Appears again.
TATIANA: I’ll surface when I surface. Don’t come looking.
I wait, but nothing else comes.
The phone goes dark in my hand. I sit with it for a moment, the weight of what she’s walking into pressing against my chest. Tatiana’s good.
Best asset I’ve ever worked with, not that the list is long.
But Dragonov’s organization has swallowed people with more training and better backup than she has.
The Serbs don’t play by rules that leave room for mistakes.
I pocket the phone. Start the car.
File it. That’s what the training says. Compartmentalize. Put it in a box and access it later, when it’s useful, when you have bandwidth to actually do something about it.
But I’m tired of boxes. Tired of the endless sorting and storing and pretending the things I’ve locked away don’t have weight.
Tatiana’s going to be fine. She has to be.
I pull out of the parking structure and head toward Dr. Reiner’s office, the worry folded into a corner of my mind where I can find it later. After.
Right now, I have a different kind of work to do.
Dr. Reiner’s office is nothing like I expected.