Chapter 13 I Am Not Who You Think I Am
I AM NOT WHO YOU THINK I AM
LUCIAN
She’s asleep in my bed.
I don’t want her to ever leave.
I can see her here forever.
A disturbing thought.
I never thought I’d feel this way about anyone.
She thinks I’m her protector—the man who stepped between her and death. The man who stayed. But she doesn’t know I was the first threat.
She snuggles up to me as I rest my head against the headboard. She nuzzles my chest and soothes herself.
I stroke her back, the curve of her hip, touching, feeling, not ever letting go.
The silence around me should feel peaceful, but it doesn’t. It feels like judgment.
I used to think silence was power, but now it feels like a cage I built with my own hands.
I’ve never allowed someone to get this close. I’ve never even been tempted.
I was twelve when my mother left. I didn’t cry. I watched the door shut behind her after she announced she was done with all of us.
I learned all about building walls then.
If a parent can be done with their children, being alone is better than suffering that kind of loss again.
Our mother had physically left, but our father had gone as well, drowning in whiskey and mistresses.
Our grandfather tried, but it was Gideon who became our parent, filling the void with orders, rhythm, and survival. Adrian took responsibility, filling the quiet with logic. Logan was too young. Six years to my twelve. He believed, for a long while, that she’d come back.
I stopped speaking, withdrew into stillness.
At first, they left me alone. But when it went on for months, Gideon dragged me to a doctor, then a psychiatrist. The consensus was that I was grieving our mother, internalizing the abandonment.
They said a lot of things that didn’t matter. What they didn’t understand was—silence wasn’t the problem. It was the cure. It was what was healing me.
Eventually, I started to speak again—first it was one-word answers, and then more. Even now, I was the quiet one. I didn’t talk much at work and in my personal life unless I had to.
I liked my night job because there was no need for conversation. It was meditative to empty my mind and focus on the target.
It started when I joined the military.
Gideon hadn’t approved, worried about me. Adrian had. He felt that the work would give me purpose. It did. They put me to work when they saw my nerves were steel and my conscience dark, missing.
They gave me rules. They gave me contracts. They gave me control, a life of clean exits and endings.
No complications. No emotions. Just results.
Until now.
I looked again at the sleeping woman in my bed, in my arms.
I want her.
Not just her body. I want her trust. Her laughter. Her forgiveness for a crime she doesn’t even know I’ve committed.
It’s confusing for me to feel like this. Out of control.
I watch the world from rooftops through the scope of a sniper’s rifle. I make people disappear. I don’t hold a target close; I neutralize them.
Once, Logan asked me how it feels to end a life. I told him I didn’t know because I haven’t ever felt alive.
All those kills—and I was the one who got dead, never having tasted life to start with.
My phone lights up. It’s Logan.
I look at the message: Remo has a kill contract on you and Calista.
Of course, he does.
Logan: Gideon and Adrian need to know.
I sigh.
Me: Group call in ten.
It was already six in the morning. All my brothers would be up. Working out. Working. Fucking. Living.
Logan’s right, I have to tell them—and I have to tell her.
What will happen when she finds out who I am?
She will leave.
I know it. I know her.
So, don’t let her find out. Don’t let go of this moment. This illusion. This woman who looks at you like you could be something more than what you are.
But I can feel it coming.
The fall.
The moment she sees the whole picture.
And the light in her eyes goes out—because of me.