Chapter 20
The window is cracked open just enough to let the night air in.
The study is dim, lit only by a single lamp on a heavy wooden desk and the faint glow from Sebastian’s tablet.
The walls are lined with bookshelves that are half filled with actual books and half with files we don’t want sitting in plain sight anywhere else.
There’s a rug underfoot that’s seen better decades, worn thin in the center, and a pair of mismatched chairs that look like they were stolen from entirely different rooms.
It’s normal and quiet, the kind of room that pretends none of this exists.
I stand at the window, watching. Cason is already halfway across the property grounds by the time I let myself breathe again. He stumbles once, catches himself, then keeps going. He doesn’t look back.
Something in my chest cracks and falters.
But it’s a good thing he’s not looking back. He shouldn’t. If he looks back, he might hesitate. And if he hesitates, I might—
Behind me, the quiet tap of fingers against glass helps to cut off that thought. Sebastian is sprawled in one of the chairs, tablet balanced on his knee, watching the live feed from the perimeter cameras like this is just another operation.
Maybe for him, it is.
“Your timing’s off,” he says casually. “He should’ve veered left by now.”
A soft voice speaks from the corner of the room. “He will.”
Right on cue, Cason slows. Even from this distance, I can see the shift in his posture, the slight turn of his head, the way his steps lose their rhythm.
He pauses, scanning the tree line like something isn’t adding up.
Then he starts moving again. Left. Right.
Then left again, sharper this time, like he’s trying to correct for something he can’t quite track.
I can feel Mia’s ability working the same way I feel my own shadows—subtle, invasive, threading through the edges of perception.
Cason slows again in the distance, his path turning uneven, erratic.
He glances over his shoulder once, then pivots like he’s second guessing his own direction.
By the time he makes it to the road, he won’t remember how he got there.
He won’t remember the turns, the landmarks, the exact stretch of woods that leads back here. He’ll only know that he escaped.
“It’s done,” Mia says after a moment. “He won’t remember the route. Not clearly enough to retrace it. It’ll be nothing but a blur.”
I nod once. “Thank you.”
When I glance back at her, she’s standing near the wall, arms loosely crossed, watching me with a look that’s a little too perceptive for my current tolerance.
Do I have a giant neon sign above my head that reads Property of Cason Bellrose?
I hold her gaze long enough to make the dismissal clear. “You can go.”
She inclines her head, then turns and leaves without another word. The door clicks shut behind her, and silence mercifully settles over the room.
I turn back to the window. Cason is smaller now, further away, still moving.
Still not looking back. I told Sebastian and Mia that this was strategy, that letting him go would give us an angle on Malcolm.
That Cason might lead us somewhere useful, flush something out, make a mistake we could exploit.
It wasn’t a lie.
It just wasn’t the truth.
The truth is…I didn’t want to hurt him anymore. It wasn’t making me feel any better like it was supposed to. As a matter of fact, when he said he hated me, it made me feel a lot fucking worse.
It turns out it was never the shadows that made me a monster. They only gave me a place to belong.
Behind me, Sebastian shifts in his chair, and I can feel his eyes boring into the back of my head.
“Just fucking say what you’re going to say, Baz,” I tell him, no real heat in my words, as I watch Cason completely disappear into the dark of the trees.
“You had to know I’d notice your shadows covering the camera down there.”
Yes, I knew. I didn’t care at the moment, but now I’m regretting it.
I’m regretting a lot of things.
“Are you ready to tell me yet?”
I don’t answer. I don’t turn around. The question hangs there anyway, Sebastian as patient as always. He’s not asking about the plan, or rather my lack of one. He’s asking about Cason, about why I let him go when every logical part of this operation says I shouldn’t have.
Instead of answering his question, I ask one of my own.
“Do my shadows make you…feel things?”
There’s a pause. He doesn’t answer right away, and I feel a little more unease in the silence than usual.
Then, “I thought you knew about that.”
“Ash mentioned it once,” I say, keeping my gaze out the window like I can still see him. But he’s gone now. “She said it made her feel…uncomfortable.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
I exhale slowly and turn away from the window because if I keep staring at the spot where Cason disappeared, I’m going to want to chase him and drag him back, even if it’s kicking and screaming.
As I start pacing across the room, I avoid Sebastian’s scrutinizing gaze. “With Cason, it was more than just discomfort. It was worse. A lot worse.”
“I have a theory. If you’re interested in hearing it?”
I nod.
“It hits harder for people who are already wired for it.”
I come to a stop in the middle of the worn carpet to finally look at him. “What do you mean?”
“Fear. Attachment. Obsession. Whatever flavor you want to call it.” His gaze flicks toward the window. “People who already feel things deeply don’t exactly get a buffer when your shadows decide to…amplify that.”
That thing in my chest tightens again.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
He shrugs one shoulder. “Fear.”
I look back out at the darkness as it finally hits—a slow, spreading pressure behind my ribs, like something is trying to claw its way out from the inside.
My lungs feel too tight, karma for how I hurt Cason I’m sure.
My hands curl at my sides, tendons pulling taut, like I’m bracing for an impact that already happened.
I can still feel it all. The way he flinched. The way his voice shook when he said my name. The way my shadows…
Moving back to the window, I stare out into the night again because I can’t face Sebastian when I say this. Hell, I can hardly face my own reflection in the glass.
“I wanted to make it stop.” The whisper comes out so rough and raw I’m not sure if he’ll be able to make out the words. “For him, I wanted to make it stop.”
Sebastian is silent for a beat.
“Reese,” he finally says, sounding sad and exasperated. “You’ve gotta tell me what’s going on, man. I don’t know how to help if you don’t.”
I should tell him that it isn’t part of his job, that I can deal with this myself.
If I can’t handle my own shit, how am I supposed to lead anyone against an entire Institute?
How am I supposed to keep everyone from being hunted and killed all over again?
How am I supposed to keep them all safe?
How am I supposed to keep from failing like I did three years ago?
By trusting my best friend, I think.
I close my eyes and lean my forehead against the cool glass. “You know I kidnapped him seven years ago.”
“I remember the story. Malcolm hired you to do it to set up your P0E.”
“Yeah.”
Standing straight, I suck in a long, deep breath and turn around. I lean against the wall by the window, cross my arms over my chest, and stare across the room at nothing.
“He developed Stockholm syndrome. I thought that was a myth, to be honest. I’ve kidnapped plenty of people in my life, and he’s the only one of my captives that happened to. I admit I…took advantage of it.”
“Is that what you’d call it?” Sebastian asks, and I can hear the question within the question.
I let out a humorless breath. “I think I got whatever the equivalent is for the captor.”
“Lima syndrome.”
My gaze snaps to him. “How the fuck do you know that?”
He shrugs. “Just that smart, I guess.” Then he lifts his tablet in the air with a grin. “Also, I just looked it up.”
Despite everything, the faintest smile curves my lips. I shake my head and look away again.
“I cared about him.” But the words feel wrong in my mouth, too…small. So I try again. “I was…” My jaw tightens. “Obsessed.”
The room is silent, but I feel no judgment from my friend, only patience and space.
“That night,” I continue, my gaze going out of focus, “before everything went to shit, we talked about leaving together. Running. Disappearing across the country. Starting over somewhere no one would ever be able to touch us.”
I let out a slow breath.
And prepare to admit something for the first time out loud.
“And the thing is…I would’ve done it. In a fucking heartbeat.”
That’s the part that still surprises me.
Even now. It wasn’t just make believe for me.
I was ready to run away with the man I’d held captive for a month.
I was willing to leave behind the infamous name I had made for myself, the one who took jobs from people who didn’t want the blood on their hands.
I would’ve spent every last cent of the money I had made from them all on him, on making him happy for the rest of his goddamn life.
Instead, all of that was ripped away from us, and my life became not my own.
I look at Sebastian. Now that he knows, I need him to know.
“I would’ve burned everything down and walked away from it just to take him with me.”
There’s no shift in Sebastian’s expression, like this side of me is of absolutely no surprise to him. There’s no recalculation of who I am or what I’m capable of. There’s only acceptance.
“Can I tell you something you may not want to hear?”
“If there’s anything I can count on you for, Baz, it’s that.”
He doesn’t hesitate. “It’s okay to forgive him.”
My jaw clenches, and I look away again. “He got Ash killed.”
“He played his part, yes. But he was also Malcolm’s puppet. Just like you were at one point.”
I take a step away from the wall and face him, the muscles in my face pulling into a scowl. “Watch it.”
He only grins.
As pissed off as he knew that comment would make me, he also knows I wouldn’t hurt him. That I kind of can’t hurt him.
I scoff. “Yeah, it’s real easy to sit there and talk your shit when you can just store up all the consequences and pull the trigger on them later.”
His grin sharpens like he was waiting for that. “You’re deflecting.”
Of course I am.
I face the window again because I can’t seem to fucking stay still. My palm presses flat against the cool glass, the chill grounding in a way nothing else is right now. I drag my other hand through my hair, exhaling hard.
“It’s not that simple,” I tell him.
“I think it is. You needed someone to blame and hurt because losing Ash was devastating. Losing all of our family was. Trust me, I get that. You couldn’t get to Malcolm, so you went for what you could get your hands on.
I was okay with it because I thought it was what you needed.
Cason was an easy target, and maybe it sent a message to Bellrose. But, Reese…”
I don’t turn. My fingers curl slightly against the glass.
“Cason may have been the gun, but Malcolm pulled that trigger.”
Something in me shifts, sharp and ugly. Because I know he’s right. And it’s what I want to believe.
“It’s okay to forgive him,” Sebastian repeats. “What’s your gut tell you?”
That is easy.
I turn just enough to look at him over my shoulder, my voice low when I speak.
“That Cason is mine.”
Sebastian’s expression settles, like I just confirmed something he already knew. He pushes himself up from the chair and walks over, holding out his tablet with a steady hand.
I frown down at it. “What’s this for?”
“I put cameras in his apartment when I was there this morning.”
My vision darkens as something snaps inside me. I have to hold my shadows back, and Sebastian notices. He tilts his head, and his mouth curves.
“Yeah, I thought so,” he says, too fucking amused. “Figured you wouldn’t want me watching that feed. He’ll probably find the cameras quick anyway, but I’m not about to risk my head watching something I shouldn’t.”
I take a slow breath to calm down, then take the tablet from him.
I could count the times Sebastian and I haven’t seen eye to eye on one hand. Even though he probably thinks I’m being too intense, I’m glad this didn’t have to be one of those times.
After a beat, he turns and heads for the door.
“Try not to break anything important,” he adds as he leaves.
The door clicks shut behind him, and I’m left alone, the room too quiet and too still. I stare out at the darkness where Cason disappeared, my reflection faint in the glass, fractured by the low light.
My shadows stir at my feet, restless.
Like they’re aware something is missing.