18. Lena
Lena
I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a deal I can’t take back.
Like one more word out of my mouth and something invisible is going to close around my ankle and drag me under.
Not because they’re forcing me. That would almost be easier.
This is worse. This is me standing here, fully aware, looking at three men who feel like violence in human form and knowing that if I stay near them, I might live.
And that thought alone feels rotten enough to make me sick.
I drag in a breath and say, “I need to call my friends. I need to see if they’re okay.” My voice sounds thinner than I want it to. Not weak. Just frayed.
Knox answers first. “I checked the news,” he says. “No reported deaths. Minor injuries.”
That should help.
It doesn’t. Not really.
Minor injuries. Reported deaths. The words feel cold and distant, like they belong to somebody else’s nightmare, not mine.
Jess and Mara and the café and overturned tables and people screaming and all of it turning into some neat little line on a screen Knox already read before I even thought to ask.
I stare at him. “That doesn’t mean they’re okay.”
“It means nobody died there,” he says.
“There’s a difference.”
His jaw shifts once, like he knows that and doesn’t have anything better to give me.
I take a step toward the little table by the bed where my bag should be, where my phone should be, where something normal should be waiting for me. “I’m calling them anyway.”
“You probably shouldn’t use your phone,” Knox says.
I stop and look at him. “Excuse me?”
“In case somebody’s tracking you.”
For a second, I honestly don’t know what to do with that sentence.
I let out a laugh, but it comes out wrong. “This is insane,” I say, pointing at myself. “I’m a nobody.” The words come fast now, hot and desperate and disbelieving. “I make coffee. I split bills. I forget laundry in the washer. Nobody is tracking me.”
“No,” Vale says. His voice is quiet, but it cuts through everything.
I turn to him.
His eyes are already on me. “You’re not a nobody,” he says. “Whether you want it or not.”
Fuck.
The word doesn’t leave my mouth, but it tears through my head hard enough to make me feel it in my chest.
I rake a hand through my hair and pace two steps before the motel room walls stop me. The room feels too small, too warm, too full of them. Too full of what they know and what I don’t. My scalp prickles under my own fingers.
I feel like I’m in a living nightmare. Not the loud kind.
Not the kind where monsters leap out of shadows and you wake up gasping.
This is worse. This is the slow kind. The kind where everything still looks mostly normal if you squint.
A motel room. A bed. A lamp. Three men talking in calm voices about files and tracking and death counts like any of this belongs in my life.
I turn back to them. Havoc is watching me with that unreadable almost-smile of his, like he can see every fraying thread and is curious which one will snap first. Knox looks grim and steady and infuriatingly certain. Vale just looks at me like he wishes I’d stop proving him right.
“I had a job yesterday,” I say, and my voice shakes no matter how hard I try to hold it still.
“I had coworkers and customers and the worst date in human history, and now you’re telling me I can’t even call my friends because somebody might be tracking me?
” I laugh again, quieter this time, and drag my hand down over my face. “This can’t be real.”
But it is.
I know it is because my body knows it. Because I’m still sore, still tired, still carrying too much adrenaline under my skin.
Because every time I look at the door, I half expect somebody to come through it with a gun.
Because part of me already believes them, and that part is the one that really scares me.
I lower my hand and look at Knox. “If I don’t call, they’re going to think I’m dead.”
“We can find another way,” he says.
“Like what?”
He doesn’t answer right away, which tells me he doesn’t have one yet.
Of course he doesn’t.
I look at Vale again. I don’t mean to. My eyes just go there, like some part of me is still trying to make sense of him. He’s the one who speaks truths like they hurt him too. The one who makes everything sound inevitable.
“I don’t want this,” I say, pacing the length from the window to the bed, which isn’t much. But I feel like I’m going crazy.
Vale’s expression doesn’t change, but something in his face closes a little anyway. “I know,” he says.
That does something terrible to me. Makes this feel more real instead of less. Makes me want to scream or cry or throw something, but all I do is stand there breathing too hard in a cheap motel room, feeling the edges of my life peel back one by one.
I fold my arms around myself because I don’t know what else to do with them.
For one stupid second, I want someone to tell me this is all a mistake. That they got the wrong girl. That I can go home, shower off the smell of this room, call my friends, and go back to being forgettable.
Knox is the first one to move. Not closer. Just enough to make it clear the conversation isn’t over. “Sit down,” he says.
I laugh under my breath, brittle and tired. “You guys really love saying that like I’m going to find it comforting.”
“Sit,” he repeats.
This time I do it. Not because he told me to. Because my knees feel weak in a way I don’t trust, and because I’m starting to understand that if I stay standing, I’m going to break in some humiliating, very public way.
The mattress dips under me. The lamp on the nightstand throws weak yellow light across the room, making all three of them look harsher than they already are.
Havoc stays by the wall, arms folded, watching me like I’m a match he’s waiting to see catch. Vale doesn’t sit. He just stands there, still and intent, eyes on me in that way of his that feels less like looking and more like being held in place.
Knox stays nearest. “Tell us about your past,” he says.
I stare at him. “My past.”
“Yes.”
“What kind of question is that?”
“The kind I’m asking.”
I let out a breath and shake my head. “I don’t have some dramatic backstory.”
Havoc huffs a quiet laugh. “Everybody says that right before the dramatic backstory.”
I ignore him. “There’s nothing to tell,” I say. “I was in foster care. I moved around. Then I aged out. End of story.”
Knox doesn’t blink. “Start before that.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t,” he says, “or won’t?”
Something hot flares in me then. Anger, maybe. Or panic wearing anger’s face.
“I don’t remember before that,” I snap. “That happens sometimes, in case your weird secret society didn’t cover basic childhood trauma.”
Silence. Not the empty kind. The listening kind.
I hate it.
Knox’s voice stays even. “How old were you when you entered the system?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“Approximate.”
I rake a hand through my hair again. My scalp aches where my fingers keep catching in the same place. “Four,” I say. “Maybe five. Somewhere around there.”
“Any names?”
I blink at him. “What?”
“Foster parents. Social workers. Anyone who stood out.”
I shake my head. “There were too many.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
My laugh comes out thin and ugly. “No, Knox, I don’t have a neat little index of every temporary bedroom and every adult who forgot me when it was convenient.”
His jaw tightens, but he lets that pass.
“Some homes were fine. Fine meaning nobody hit me and I got fed on time, which is apparently a very low bar but still. Some were worse.” I tilt my head a little, like I’m trying to remember whether it was rain or sun.
“Nothing too dramatic. I wasn’t Harry Potter.
No locked basements. No cigarette burns. Just the usual cheap stuff.”
Vale’s eyes stay on me. Too human, too understanding. I don’t like it.
Knox says, “Usual.”
I laugh once. “You know. Slaps when you talked back. Getting yanked around by the arm hard enough to bruise. Mouths washed out with soap because God forbid a foster kid develop a personality. Being told you eat too much, talk too much, take up too much space.” I shrug again. “Real family-values kind of material.”
Knox says, “Did anyone keep you for long?”
I look at him. The way he asks it makes something in my chest pull tight in a bad way.
“Not really,” I say. “I was easy to move around. Quiet enough. Old enough. Not cute enough for people who wanted babies, not damaged enough for the ones who wanted savior points. Just sort of… there.” The words come out lighter than they feel.
I force a little laugh. “I was basically administrative clutter. Human leftovers. Nobody’s first choice, but sometimes available on short notice.”
Vale speaks before Knox can say anything else. “Any memories before the homes?” His voice is quieter than Knox’s. Worse for it somehow. There’s no pressure in it. Just the question itself, laid in front of me like something I could pick up if I wanted.
I look at him.
For a second, I almost say no just to end this. But something about the way he asks it catches under my skin.
“Not really,” I say.
Havoc tilts his head. “Not really isn’t no.”
I close my eyes for half a second.
This is a mistake. I can feel it. Because the second I let my mind go backward, it doesn’t do it gently. It stutters. Skips. Gives me nothing, then too much.
“There are pieces,” I say slowly. “Nothing clear. Nothing useful.”
“Try,” Knox says.
I laugh again, tired and frayed. “You say that like memory is a locked drawer.”
“Sometimes it is.”
I look at him. “And what? You think if I pull hard enough, a secret family falls out?”
“No,” Vale says.
All of us look at him.
He’s still watching me. Not hard. Not soft either. Just steady.
“I think,” he says, “something scared you early enough that your mind buried it.”
I hate how plausible that sounds.
I hate even more that the second he says it, something inside me shifts. Just slightly. Like a door in a dark house cracking open.